Already the Safest.
So What Does This Buy?

When National Cabinet meets on Wednesday 26 August, the National Firearms Agreement and the ACT’s buyback are on the agenda — confirmed by the Assistant Minister for Health, Rebecca White, at a doorstop on 21 August. The ACT Government has already agreed to take part: the Commonwealth will fund 75 per cent of the ACT buyback and 100 per cent of the cost of destroying the firearms. No start date and no compensation schedule have been set. Before the ACT is committed any further, its own record deserves a place on the table.

On the ABS’s latest Recorded Crime — Victims data (2024), the ACT records among the lowest crime rates of any state or territory. It has the lowest recorded sexual assault rate in the nation — 89 per 100,000, against a national 147 — and the lowest recorded assault rate of the jurisdictions for which the ABS publishes comparable data. Its homicide rate is consistently among the lowest, and frequently the lowest. These are the offences that involve actual violence against people — and Canberra already sits at or near the bottom of the tables on each.

Firearm theft is the risk the ACT’s own committee prioritised. On the fullest national compilation — The Australia Institute’s Firearm theft in Australia (October 2025) — the ACT has the lowest firearm theft rate of any jurisdiction: 3.1 per 100,000, against Tasmania’s 29.3, and below every other state and territory. ACT thefts have fallen to a handful a year — five in 2023, three in 2024, and one in the first half of 2025.

That figure comes not from the shooting community but from The Australia Institute — the parent body of The Point — so it cannot be waved away as “gun lobby” data.

The buyback is called “national,” but the country is not united behind it. New South Wales is proceeding, and the ACT has agreed how its buyback will be funded — though the scheme’s terms are not yet set. Tasmania has agreed to take part and is discussing the terms; the rest are out. Yet the Commonwealth’s share — 75 per cent of the ACT buyback, and every dollar of the destruction — is raised from all Australians, including those in the states that declined it for their own residents.

New South Wales is proceeding; the ACT has agreed funding but not the scheme’s terms; Tasmania has agreed to take part and is discussing terms, its funding unresolved; Victoria and Queensland have declined; South Australia has no plans; the Northern Territory will not fund it; Western Australia ran its own. A clear majority of the country is not part of the national scheme as designed — yet all of it is paying.

Against that record, the questions to answer before the ACT is committed further are simple: What measurable improvement in public safety will caps and a buyback deliver, when the ACT is already among the safest jurisdictions, has the nation’s lowest gun theft, and the independent evidence — the Lay Rapid Review, and the ACT Committee’s own Finding 1 — shows no clear benefit from caps? What will it cost the ACT and the national taxpayer? And why should Australians fund a scheme most of the country is not part of, to destroy lawful property where gun theft is already the lowest in the land?