TRANSCRIPT - RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST - TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2025

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST WITH MELISSA CLARKE

TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: Bondi attack, Gun Law reform, Hate speech law reform, Immigration reform

MELISSA CLARKE: Tony Burke is the Minister for Home Affairs and joins us now. Tony Burke, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, TONY BURKE: Good morning, Mel.

CLARKE: Could the Federal Government have done more to prevent this attack?

BURKE: I think every Australian looks at something as horrific as what we’ve seen and you always ask that question. Your agencies are constantly reviewing because your simple objective is you want people to be safe and to feel safe. When I go through the different work that the security agencies do, our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies do absolutely extraordinary work. I’ve seen some of the criticism that’s been in the media. I have to say, the work of our agencies is second to none, and they are as horrified as anyone…

CLARKE: …Just on that matter, because I don’t think there’s any questioning of commitment of agencies to pursue or to attempt to prevent attacks or any such atrocities. I guess the question is, is there a way that there could be better information-sharing, for example, between ASIO and police agencies, when we know that one family has previously been investigated by ASIO. We know another family member has a significant gun collection. Is there a structural question here that might help improve efforts to prevent attacks like this in the future?

BURKE: There’s certainly issues in terms of connecting intelligence that we might have to gun licences. You’ve raised there it not only going to the individual but potentially going to other family members. Those issues using criminal intelligence to underpin the licensing of firearms is one of the things that National Cabinet agreed to work on yesterday. Previously on gun licences, the Howard Government did a great thing with the restrictions following Port Arthur, and we all thought that that had done enough and Australia was now immune. In the most horrific way we’ve seen, that’s not true. To make sure that we use all the tools available to us with respect to firearms is absolutely essential. The one that you’ve described there where some information was intelligence, it was actually a defence person who had the firearms licence. The issue of can you bring those together is one of the things that National Cabinet decided needs to be brought up to date yesterday.

CLARKE: National Cabinet seemed to also agree to look at options for things like limiting the number of guns an individual can own and limiting gun ownership to citizens, for example. Are they things that will definitely happen, or is this something that the states and territories are going to go away and consider but might not be implemented?

BURKE: These laws are largely held at a state and territory level. But I have to say there is extraordinary goodwill around the table. I’m very confident we go on a pathway now to having much stronger firearms rules than we’ve had. Clearly, as you’ve said, having all the information. Not all your listeners will be familiar with Bonnyrigg. I live in Sydney, and anyone in Sydney who knows that suburb is shaking their head at how on earth could there be a reason for someone in Bonnyrigg to have that number of high-powered weapons. For people who know the suburb, it just makes no sense. Similarly, the concept of you might qualify for a gun licence at the point of your original application, but how regularly should that be fully reassessed and make sure that the up-to-date information is being plugged back into the system. So, I’ve got a good level of confidence about the states and territories with respect to this. They’ll lead the work and…

CLARKE: …Are hunting clubs being misused here by people who want to collect weapons? Because we see people join clubs as part of their process of getting a gun licence. Does there need to be a tighter focus on the operation of hunting clubs?

BURKE: I think there’ll be a tighter focus around the lot. I think that’s what we’re looking at. Obviously there will always be some Australians where having a firearm is part of their work and is part of their management of their property. That’s always going to be the case. But making sure that we can better draw that line, and with the gun laws following Port Arthur, Australians and most of the world thought we’d drawn that line tougher than most of the world and more effectively than most of the world. We need to go through that process again.

CLARKE: Part of those Port Arthur reforms were setting up a National Firearms Register. That’s still in the process of being set up. I gather the current aim is to have that fully operational by 2028. How much quicker could you get to the point of having a fully functional National Firearms Register?

BURKE: Yeah, I’ve been dealing with the Criminal Intelligence Commission on this one since it was brought to my portfolio after the election. The Criminal Intelligence Commission is in charge of bringing this together. Effectively some of the states still had paper-based systems. So, what we are doing at pace now is getting the Commonwealth’s structure effectively ready that the states can all plug into. That date that you give would be the end date effectively, but what I’m wanting to see is that we can get the Commonwealth part of it up and running as soon as we possibly can so that for is there that the states can start sharing their information.

CLARKE: What's as soon as possible? What's as soon as you possibly can? What sort of time frame are we talking?

BURKE: It is difficult to get the Commonwealth part of it done before we get to the second half of next year. You’re looking at this time next year before the Commonwealth part of it is likely to be finished. I’ve been working with the Criminal Intelligence Commission to see is there a way of making that faster and would more money make it faster. These are conversations I had with them months ago and it was no, that is the time that they need to be able to set this up properly. Obviously, as you say, this is a recommendation from a very long time ago. We’re now pressing the accelerator as fast as we can.

CLARKE: You’re listening to Radio National Breakfast and my guest is the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke. When it comes to the two gunmen, the pair were believed to have visited the Philippines just weeks before the attack. Now, we know that the Philippines is an area where extremist groups are known to operate and that others, foreigners, travel to the Philippines for training there. Given that at least one of these two people was of interest to ASIO at some point in the past, did this not trigger some kind of alert? Is there a system to alert ASIO when people previously of interest travel to countries where there is history and record of extremist activity?

BURKE: Can I just explain what ASIO have made clear, because there’s been some shifting in some of the commentary - I’m not saying you - that’s out there about persons of interest and things like that.

What we are talking about is one of the two - the younger of the two - came to ASIO’s attention not because of anything that he had done but because they were focusing on other people who he had associated with. The investigation of him was done and it was determined at that point they did not have evidence of him reaching the threshold of being a person of interest himself.

Now, that was a point in time more than half a decade ago and obviously since that time - and we don’t yet know how rapidly - there was a radical change in the risk profile of that individual. But the assessment that ASIO made more than half a decade ago was effectively where you have the people who you know you need to be concerned about, you do a check on anyone they might be associated with. That’s a very large pool of people. That does not mean that back then this person was a person of interest in the way that’s being described.

CLARKE: We spoke to Mark Dreyfus earlier in the program, who was the Attorney‑General overseeing the Commonwealth hate speech laws in the first term of the Albanese Government. He said the Government should be open to potentially strengthening those laws, noting that the states have stronger laws in this department. Would you, would the Cabinet, be willing to consider strengthening those laws?

BURKE: First of all, can I say I am glad the debate has now shifted to how do we strengthen hate speech laws, because for about ten years the main debate that was happening in Australia was a whole lot of people - some very powerful people at the time - arguing that we needed to weaken them. It needs to be accepted that words themselves are not without harm, not without risk, not without very real danger and words themselves can find the pathway to the sorts of horrors that we saw on the weekend. So that shift in the debate, I am really glad that we are no longer in the ridiculous debate of should we weaken protections against bigoted hate speech.

What Mark Dreyfus has cast forward in terms of further protections against hate speech is something that the government does not stop looking at. Can I say let’s not miss what has more recently happened, including when Mark Dreyfus was Attorney-General. We’ve now taken our hate speech laws to the toughest they have ever been in Australian history with the hate speech laws advocating violence with very, very serious penalties. Also on top of that things that are as impactful as speech, whether they be things like the Nazi salute or symbols of terrorist organisations or Nazi symbols, having the laws making it illegal for people to be knowingly using those. There was a time when people would have argued back on forth on that as being some sort of curtailing of freedom of speech. The first priority here has to be the safety of people. That’s where it has to start.

CLARKE: Some in the Opposition have said that the crucial issue in responding to this case is not gun laws but immigration, given that one of the assailants was not an Australian citizen. Do you think immigration is a key issue here?

BURKE: Can I deal with that in two parts, because I agree that it is a relevant issue that we always need to have under consideration because when you give someone a visa you are giving them permission to be a guest in your country.

In terms of these two people, one was born here and is an Australian citizen. The other not born here but came here in 1998 as a student. There would be nothing in the immigration decisions that were made way back then by the Howard Government, I suspect, that would have pointed to necessity level of risk about that individual way back then.

So, I don’t think we can view this as an immigration issue. What we can say, though, is we always need to take very serious decisions about security checks when people come to Australia. I’ve taken a harder line than a whole lot of my predecessors when it comes to visa rejection and visa cancellation.

The most recent one was an antisemite Nazi that came to the public eye a couple of weeks ago. He would say he hadn’t broken any laws. My view was that didn’t matter. If you come to this country, you are a guest in Australia and if you’re spending your time here telling other Australians they’re not welcome, spouting antisemitism, spouting bigotry, then you can leave. His visa was cancelled and he’s no longer in Australia.

There are a whole lot of these decisions that don’t hit the media. The only ones that hit the media are the ones where people complain usually. But there have been a series of situations where people have not necessarily broken the law, but in direct line with Jillian Segal’s report, where they have been spouting anti-Semitism or other forms of bigotry I don’t want them in Australia and we don’t issue them visas.

CLARKE: We’ll have to leave it there, Tony Burke. Thank you very much for joining this morning.

BURKE: Thanks, Mel.

ENDS