SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: If you're in the market for weapons of war it doesn't get much better than this.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Laughter

SEAN NICHOLLS: The Land Forces expo in Adelaide draws the top political and army brass.

PYNE: You know Rick Burr do you. Chief of the Army?

SEAN NICHOLLS: Major military hardware manufacturers are here to show off their wares.

SALESMAN: Your left trigger finger, go ahead and click that and lock on the target you'll get some crosshairs.

SEAN NICHOLLS: There's a virtual anti-tank missile...

SALESMAN: And then fire with your right trigger. Ok, let's see if you hit it. All right you killed it. Look at that.

SEAN NICHOLLS: ...and body armour for the modern warrior.

SALESMAN: This is so intimidating.

CUSTOMER: It looks awesome.

SALESMAN: You also have to be careful that you don't walk into somewhere and it kicks off.

SEAN NICHOLLS: And in prime position is Australia's largest privately-owned guns supplier. A company called Nioa.

Its owner Robert Nioa is here doing business.

Nioa's company holds Australian defence contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And sells guns and ammunition used by hunters, shooters and the police

Robert Nioa is also a founding director of a gun lobby group, the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia, known as SIFA.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Excuse me Mr Nioa. Hi, Sean Nicholls is my name from the Four Corners program with ABC television. How are you?

ROBERT NIOA, OWNER NIOA: Robert Nioa. Going well.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Robert Nioa is prominent in defence circles but today prefers to keep a lower profile.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Would you have a chat with us today?

ROBERT NIOA: No. I'm here today to do defence work, focusing on what we can do for the Australian war fighter, creating technologies and export opportunities.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Is there any particular reason that you wouldn't talk about SIFA to us? It is something you're quite open about as a director. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing. We just want to ask what your purpose is and why you're involved.

ROBERT NIOA: Everything is on the website, public forum. And I suspect you've got a different agenda and you want to say strange things

SEAN NICHOLLS: Well you won't find out until I ask you the questions. So if you've got five minutes?

ROBERT NIOA: I don't. I'm in the middle of a meet. Trying to give the soldiers something to help them out with.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Alright. Thanks for your time.

ROBERT NIOA: Thanks.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The Shooting Industry Foundation was launched in late 2014 by five of Australia's biggest firearms wholesalers including Nioa and the Australian subsidiaries of global gun makers Winchester and Beretta.

These companies have funded SIFA with more than $1.2 million.

PHILIP ALPERS; GUN LAW ANALYST, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: This represents the re-emergence of the very well bankrolled industrial gun lobby, which is there not so much to go shooting, but to make a profit. And that's exactly the way it is in other countries. You've got an industry which is prepared to leap in. And they've got a lot of money. This is the gun industry lobby redux. They're back. And they're ready to spend.

TIM FISCHER, FORMER DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: There is a muscling up by those making money out of a trade of guns into this country and we need to watch that very closely lest it lead Australia and the state and territory parliaments, legislatures and at the federal level, down the wrong path.

LAURA PATTERSON: Hi I'm Laura Patterson and welcome to SIFA news. It is SIFA's objective to enter a new era of consultation with Australian states and territories to ensure the development of quality policy.

SEAN NICHOLLS: SIFA's public face is Victorian gun shop owner Laura Patterson.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Why was SIFA set up?

LAURA PATTERSON, SIFA SPOKESPERSON: There was no industry body, no peak body that represented the interest of firearm businesses in this country. And so, the five directors got together and negotiated over a period of time to establish the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia so that they could work together to have a body that represented their interests.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Given that SIFA is backed and conceived by large firearms wholesalers, doesn't it follow that SIFA's overwhelming objective is to sell more guns?

LAURA PATTERSON: No, I don't think that is the case. I think SIFA's overwhelming objective is to uphold the standards of Australia safety, security, and sovereignty. Our objectives are around advocacy. They're about research. They're about safety promotion and they're about education.

SEAN NICHOLLS: SIFA does more than just talk to politicians.

At the 2016 federal election it gave more than $60,000 to the Liberals, Liberal Nationals and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.

That year it sponsored a fundraiser for pro-gun Nationals Senator, Bridget McKenzie.

It also organises political networking events.

LAURA PATTERSON: We sponsored our successful politicians shoot with the National Press Club and the Parliamentary Friends of Shooting in Canberra, just prior to Christmas.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Bridget McKenzie was there. So was Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud.

DAVID LITTLEPROUD: That's the right idea.

ROBERT NIOA: So here we are, eh?

SEAN NICHOLLS: Apart from being an avid hunter, SIFA director Robert Nioa is also a generous political donor.

ROBERT NIOA; The hide here is almost an inch thick

SEAN NICHOLLS: At last year's Queensland election a company he controls gave $150,000 to Katter's Australian Party.

ROBERT NIOA: Too many buffalo.

Robert Nioa is the party leader Bob Katter's son-in-law.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Your son-in-law is in the business of selling more firearms. Is your party happy to be helping him do that?

BOB KATTER MP, LEADER KATTER'S AUSTRALIAN PARTY: Absolutely. I want more firearms sold because I want more firearms, you know? I want more people involved in protecting our country.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Bob Katter's son Robbie is the party's leader in the Queensland Parliament.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Does Mr. Nioa have any policy input into your party's firearms policies?

ROBBIE KATTER, LEADER KATTER'S AUSTRALIA PARTY QLD: Oh, not really. No. We would

SEAN NICHOLLS: Not really or no?

ROBBIE KATTER: I'd say no to that because we've got all sorts of avenues to and usually to avoid questions like this in the media, we deliberately go to other groups out there that represent the industry.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Presumably you've discussed the firearms issue with Mr. Nioa?

ROBBIE KATTER: Of course, you know he's my brother-in-law and we're close. So, clearly, we'd ... but I don't have veto or the say on everything in the party. I'm a voice in it, but there's a lot of other people involved than me.

SEAN NICHOLLS: What's your view, broadly, of Australia's gun laws?

BOB KATTER: They are restrictive to a point where you have a defacto ban. I think it is very hard for anyone to meet the requirements of gun laws in Australia. So, you have what I would consider effectively a ban on the use of firearms in this country, if not the most restrictive laws on earth, outside of the totalitarian regimes, I would say definitely the most restrictive laws on earth.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Katter's Australian Party is fiercely pro-gun. It wants to scrap limits on ammunition sales and to give farmers the right to use to handguns.

BOB KATTER: I want my nation able to protect itself. We're a tiny, little country, 25 million people and a lot of those people would owe allegiance to other countries that may well be our enemies, in any future confrontation. I mean, not only have you got this threat from outside, but increasingly you've got a threat from inside and it may not just be a threat. I mean, they may have a majority in this country within the next 25 years, if you want to extrapolate the number of people coming in. So you've got a threat from within as well as a threat from without.

NEWSREADER: It promises to be an election like no other. We could be in for another cliffhanger.

SEAN NICHOLLS: SIFA'S first big political hit out was at last year's Queensland election. Labor was just clinging onto government and One Nation and Katter's Australian Party had a real chance of seizing the balance of power. SIFA did its best to make that happen.

LAURA PATTERSON: What we were aiming for was a good quality cross-bench and we were aiming for a government which couldn't be formed by majority.

SEAN NICHOLLS: So when you say you hoped to achieve minority government and create an environment for better discussion about issues, what were those issues?

LAURA PATTERSON: Well, one of the issues for us was around the re-categorisation of firearms in Queensland.

SEAN NICHOLLS: One of the firearms SIFA wanted re-categorised was the controversial Adler lever action shotgun. To make it more freely available. Robert Nioa imports this gun into Australia.

ROBBIE KATTER: We're glad to have support of sporting shooters, Rob Nioa and anyone else that supports-

SEAN NICHOLLS: Do you understand the perception that your brother-in-law wants to sell more firearms to make lots of money? Your party is an advocate for loosening of firearms laws. I mean, what does that look like?

ROBBIE KATTER: I can't separate the two issues. He does what he does. He's a business and I'm a politician. Whether he didn't exist as a business or not, I'd still be pushing the same issues because I've got relationships with sporting shooters and others and this is an issue I grew up with.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Three weeks before polling day a major campaign was launched backing the minor parties.

FLICK 'EM ADVERT: MALE VO: The LNP and Labor have failed on powering our state. Flick 'em.

FEMALE VO: Labor and the LNP are all problems and no solutions. Flick 'em.

MALE VO: LNP and Labor don't care about regional communities. Flick 'em.

Put the majors last.

EVAN MOORHEAD, FMR QLD LABOR CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR: This campaign came out of nowhere. We had no warning that it was coming, but candidates started seeing these ads appearing in Facebook feeds, we saw the billboards popping up.

FLICK 'EM ADVERTS: MALE VO: In Queensland the ALP and LNP have sold off Queensland assets.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Flick 'em focused on high electricity prices and the lack of services in the bush.

MALE VO: Regional Queensland has been forgotten by the ALP and LNP.

VOXPOP: Families are struggling as it is I just got an $1100 power bill

SEAN NICHOLLS: It was presented as a grass roots movement angry at Labor and the Liberal National Party.

MALE VO: Flick 'em and put the ALP and LNP last at this election.

DR PAUL WILLIAMS, GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY: Obviously the campaign was very much to tap into the electorates, especially voters in regional Queensland, into the anti-politician sentiment that's been bubbling along in Queensland and other parts of Australia now for years. In fact, a couple of decades. So, obviously it was targeting the disgruntled, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned voter, who might be most likely to vote for One Nation or Katter or a conservative independent. Really, the campaign was urging voters to stick one up the major parties.

EVAN MOORHEAD: It became clear that it was a protest campaign being put together by advocates for gun law reform here in Queensland.

SEAN NICHOLLS: And that was masked, was it?

EVAN MOORHEAD: Yeah, the campaign they were running had nothing to do with guns. The idea I think was to inspire people to move their vote to protest vote with minor parties in the hope that they'd hold the balance of power after the election.

SEAN NICHOLLS: And why would that be of benefit them?

EVAN MOORHEAD: Well, the choice of the election was Premier Palaszczuk or a conservative government beholden to minor parties. And I think those minor parties in Queensland often have support for liberalisation of gun laws which would have seen the gun lobby put in a really powerful position here in Queensland.

SEAN NICHOLLS:SIFA ploughed $220,000 into the half million dollar campaign.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Why wasn't there any branding, any SIFA branding, on any aspect of the Flick' em campaign.

LAURA PATTERSON: Because the Flick 'em campaign was a communications campaign based in Queensland, based on the ideas and views of Queenslanders and it wasn't about SIFA. It was about getting a better representative government for the people of Queensland.

SEAN NICHOLLS: It looks like you were trying to hide your involvement.

LAURA PATTERSON: We weren't trying to hide our involvement.

BOB KATTER: Well I saw the big billboards and I saw the advertisements on television and I thought they were excellent. I mean, no one consulted me about them, I just saw them up there and I thought that they were excellent. I mean, the major parties, I mean you just walk the streets anywhere and they are just hated.

SEAN NICHOLLS: For one high profile politician, the election campaign became intensely personal. The state's small business minister became a target after she complained about a gun shop billboard in her electorate.

LEEANNE ENOCH, QLD LABOR MINISTER: This billboard had an image on it of a woman dressed in some Santa gear, if you like and on the billboard it said, "Santa knows what you really want for Christmas." And it was a picture of this woman holding a gun. My first reaction to it was one of horror. This is really diminishing the value, the importance of, the responsibility of, gun ownership.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Leeanne Enoch launched a Facebook petition to have the ad removed. She said it didn't reflect her community's desire to be gun free.The response was savage.

LEEANNE ENOCH: I was receiving threats of sexual violence, of physical violence. I had threats to my life and that spilled over towards some of the people that were actually making positive comments about bringing the billboard down as well.

SEAN NICHOLLS: More than 3,000 comments flooded in from Australia and overseas. Among them: 'Let someone break into your house and rape and kill you.'' Someone shoot this bitch'.And: 'Remember that while being raped.'

LEEANNE ENOCH: There were moments where I really thought, "Am I in danger here?" I mean, these are people who were advocating the watering down of gun laws. These were people that had access to guns.

SEAN NICHOLLS: SIFA condemned the petition accusing her of wanting to ban all guns.

SEAN NICHOLLS: How did it feel to be targeted like that by a big, powerful firearms lobby when it dawned on you that it just wasn't a bunch of maybe foul-mouthed, irresponsible people on Facebook?

LEEANNE ENOCH: I mean, there is a bit of a difference between being the subject of a group of trolls, if you like. I think we all understand how that works. To then being the subject of a campaign that had some pretty powerful, wealthy individuals and wealthy associations attached to it.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Does SIFA bear any responsibility for what happened to Leeanne Enoch?

LAURA PATTERSON: It upsets me personally and I'm sure that behaviour is absolutely something that the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia would condemn. We do not condone, in any way, any activity of that variety in any form.

SEAN NICHOLLS: On election day the Liberal National Party vote dropped seven per cent and Labor scraped home by two seats.Katter's Australian Party and One Nation each picked up a new seat.SIFA had failed to get the minority government it wanted but boasted it caused the lowest major party vote in Queensland's history.

DR PAUL WILLIAMS: It did actually fall below 70% of the primary vote, and that's a remarkable historical event for Queensland, even for a state that's had One Nation for more than 20 years. But, it's probably a bit rich for Flick 'em to take sole responsibility, but there's no doubt it would have contributed to that.

SEAN NICHOLLS: There are about three million firearms legally registered in Australia.On this Saturday morning more than a hundred licensed shooters are gathered at Malabar in east Sydney. The NSW Rifle Association's annual open competition attracts shooters from across the country.This is the type of event the gun industry is proud to promote.

INDY COONER, COMPETITION SHOOTER: It's a different sport and you also like learn a new thing every day or every week, we come out here, as well as the community around it. You meet heaps of different and new people. And yeah, I just really enjoy it.

PHIL COONEY, COMPETITION SHOOTER: we've got families out here where they're both Australian representatives competing at international levels. Fathers, sons, mothers and their sons, mothers and their daughters shooting side by side out here. Competing against each other in a friendly competition or maybe not so friendly sometimes.

GRAHAM PARK, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, SHOOTERS UNION OF AUSTRALIA: Legitimate firearm owners in Australia are probably one of the last groups that are happily discriminated against by all levels of government and demonised by politicians when election times come around.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Cattle farmer Graham Park is the national president of the Shooters Union of Australia. A lobby group that claims 10,000 members in Queensland alone.

GRAHAM PARK: The gun control thing in Australia is a never ending story, because the people on one side of the argument keep wanting to make it stricter and stricter and stricter and the reality of it for anyone who owns firearms is they have seen the regulations and the policies change incrementally all over that time to make it far more difficult to own firearms. Especially for those who use them occupationally.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The Shooters Union is a fee-paying affiliate of one of the most powerful lobby groups in America. The National Rifle Association.

NRA SPEAKER: I urge every law-abiding American to take measures to defend yourself. Arm yourself. Get the proper training. Demand your national right to carry and use it. Your safety is in your hands and thank God we have the Second Amendment.

SEAN NICHOLLS: By publicly acknowledging and celebrating your affiliation with the National Rifle Association, aren't you aligning yourselves with an organisation which is widely regarded as having very extreme views on firearm ownership?

GRAHAM PARK: Their views on firearm ownership are related to the United States, which is a radically different cultural situation to here and we don't advocate that for here and they don't advocate ours for there. So whilst they are probably one of the world's most successful grassroots lobby groups, whether you like them or dislike them, we can maybe learn some things from them on that.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Graham Park believes shooters are changing Australian politics.

GRAHAM PARK: They are supportive of independents or minor parties who are more supportive of their interests and their needs. I think it's partially why you're seeing some votes move away from the major parties and to some of the smaller parties like the Katter Party in Queensland is probably a good example. One Nation, in different parts of the country. The Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party, especially in New South Wales and other states, Victoria, are having some success.

SEAN NICHOLLS: NSW is the power base of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. In Tumut in the state's south party chief Robert Borsak's keeping watch over his candidate in the Wagga Wagga by-election.

MC: Please welcome Seb McDonagh.

SSEAN NICHOLLS: Seb McDonagh's making his pitch at the final voters' forum.

SEB MCDONAGH: "I know many of the frustrations which people are experiencing through the lack of services that smaller towns receive."

SEAN NICHOLLS: He never once mentions gun rights.

SEAN NICHOLLS: So how'd your boy go Robert?

ROBERT BORSAK MLC, NSW SHOOTERS, FISHER AND FARMERS PARTY: He came across as likeable. Certainly not the most polished of the lot. But I think basically across all the issues that were put forward.

SEAN NICHOLLS: So there was absolutely no mention of firearms in any way, shape or form here. What do you make of that?

ROBERT BORSAK: Look I ... well what I make of that is it's basically a city preoccupation. It's something that the usual suspects get out and talk about and beat up to the point of being ridiculous. It's less than a tenth rate issue in the bush.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Here in the bush the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party is broadening its appeal building up its political muscle for the NSW parliament where it's been cutting deals for 20 years.

STALLHOLDER Come on we're going to give you a go on this one.

What's this one.

SEB: Oh, come on! No, no, no.

It's ok it's Nerf guns.

No guns in this campaign!

Have a go at Superman.

STALLHOLDER: Hey! Head shot!

SEAN NICHOLLS: Robert Borsak is a key figure in the strategy to recast the party's image.

ROBERT BORSAK: If we are going to be successful as a movement, eventually we need to widen our base and we think that we've got an affinity as a party with the bush. We want to work on that. We want to make a better deal out of that for the people in the bush.

PHILIP ALPERS: Linking the shooters and the fishers and the farmers was a really clever idea, and it got them a long way, and it's kept them in power. They've got the balance of power quite often, which is scary when you think about what a tiny minority they are.

SEAN NICHOLLS: In NSW, ready access to guns has led to fatal consequences and moves to tighten firearms laws have been resisted.

PETER STENZ, FMR NSW POLICE OFFICER: Well I never knew it was so easy to get a firearm licence. I thought that they brought in laws to make it more and more difficult. After finding out what happened in my matter, it's quite surprising how easy it is for someone to get a firearm.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Ten years ago at Eastwood in north west Sydney a massacre was narrowly averted.

One lunchtime in March 2008 police responded to reports of a man acting strangely in the mall. Sergeant Peter Stenz and his partner followed him into this laneway.

PETER STENZ: Well at this point here I thought we've got to stop this guy. And I started running and I sort of yelled out to him and he started running as well. I saw him reach behind him and he pulled out a gun.

I had my gun out looking down the barrel of my gun, slowly walking around here. At this point I've seen him with his gun drawn pointed at me. At this point here, everything went into slow motion. It's just, yeah. Bringing back shocking memories now. So yeah. He started shooting at me.

I've then returned fire. Fired three quick bullets. I quickly pulled out of the way and heard him to continue to fire at me. I've tripped over this here I think I've landed onto the ground I think I've still got my firearm pointed in that direction and then I lost sight of him.

And Glen was just on that corner there with his firearm pulled. I've got up. Glen's called out, "stop police" or "drop the gun."

I've heard another shot and Glen said "he's shot himself in the head."

SEAN NICHOLLS: The 22-year-old gunman had more than 120 rounds of ammunition with him.

PETER STENZ: He was armed to cause death and harm, or have a war, I don't know. I don't know. No one knows, you can only speculate exactly what his intentions were.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The gunman was a member of St Mary's Pistol Club in Sydney's west, run by a lobby group, the Sporting Shooters' Association. His firearms licence had expired three months before the shooting but illegally he'd kept the weapon at home.An inquest heard he was probably mentally ill.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The deputy coroner in the inquest recommended that anybody applying or reapplying for a firearms licence in New South Wales should be subject to a mental health check. What do you think about that idea?

PETER STENZ: Yes. Yes. If the government did something and maybe introduced a new law> It wasn't anything unrealistic, it's something that could've been easily put in place. It would've made things harder for some people but ultimately it would've saved lives.

ROBERT BORSAK: I don't think a GP is qualified to mentally assess me, for example, or you. For a start, the AMA has always seemed to be anti-gun. It doesn't matter what you say or do, they'll always mitigate against anything in relation to that. So, I don't think that doctors and the art of so-called psychology or psychiatry is well enough to advance to be able to get around a fair assessment of anyone in relation to a firearms licence.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The mental health check recommendation was never adopted. The NSW police told Four Corners it was "not feasible". And four months after the Eastwood shootout, firearms laws in NSW were weakened when the Labor government supported a change proposed by the Shooters party.

MICHELLE FERNANDO: Before 2008, the firearms laws required people to be licensed before they could shoot a firearm. In 2008, they amended the law to allow people to access a club and shoot, even though they were unlicensed.

ROBERT BORSAK: We wanted to look to get people who were interested in going shooting an opportunity to turn up at a range and have a shot. And I think history has shown us that with a couple of exceptions in the last 10 years that that's largely worked properly and it's worked well.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The law change had devastating consequences for Michelle Fernando's family.

MICHELLE FERNANDO: Well, my father was shot and killed with a pistol from the Sydney Pistol Club. And the person who shot him was one of my sisters. She was very mentally ill at the time and she was accessing the club through the loophole in the law. Had she gone through a proper licensing process, then it seems highly likely to me that a background check would have raised concerns about her mental health.

SEAN NICHOLLS: How long have you been lobbying politicians on this issue?

MICHELLE FERNANDO: I've been lobbying governments from both sides for about eight years. I've had mixed responses. And ah the law remains as it is. I certainly haven't been able to achieve the closing of that loophole.

SEAN NICHOLLS: And why do you think that is?

MICHELLE FERNANDO: I think because the gun lobby is incredibly powerful. It wields a level of power that is disproportionate to the interests, the minority interests, that it represents.

ROBERT BORSAK: As tragic as that particular example is we don't think that one or two or maybe three in the last 10 years of failures should actually mitigate against the creation of maybe another 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand licences of perfectly ordinary people who just want to participate in the sport of shooting.

NEWSREADER: Tonight, two children shot dead and a third person injured in northwest Sydney.

SEAN NICHOLLS: In July this year, another member of the St Marys Pistol Club, retired financial adviser John Edwards, shot dead two of his children before killing himself.He used legally-acquired handguns to murder 15-year-old Jack and Jennifer who was 13, in their west Pennant Hills home.

MICHELLE FERNANDO: How many people have to die for a small group of people to pursue a sport in such a casual way? I'm not even asking that nobody be allowed to shoot for fun anymore, that's not what I'm asking for. I'm just asking that access to firearms not be so casual.

SEAN NICHOLLS: One of the most audacious attempts by the gun lobby to change firearms laws happened in the least expected place, Tasmania. It was here at Port Arthur in April 1996 where a gunman killed 35 people. Hobart GP Phill Pullinger was then 16 years old. He's now president of the group Medics for Gun Control.

PHILL PULLINGER, PRESIDENT, MEDICS FOR GUN CONTROL: It's one of those events I think particularly so for Tasmanians where, where you were and what you were doing when you heard just absolutely sticks in your memory. I can remember being at home with mum and the story came through on the radio about someone had gone crazy at Port Arthur and a couple of people had been killed. Then, as the afternoon rolled on, that number just kept going up and up and up.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The Federal Government's response was the National Firearms Agreement it struck with the states and territories to amend their gun laws.

TIM FISCHER: We, as a parliament of the land in 1996, at that time together we made a difference. John Howard's reforms took the semi-automatics and the automatics out of the suburbs, towns and yes, it was a turning point and it made a difference.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The states and territories agreed to ban wide access to semi-automatic rifles and shotguns which were bought back and destroyed.

TIM FISCHER: It was a huge ask on law-abiding citizens, but it was an ask worth obtaining and delivering on, because it has made a huge difference.

PHILL PULLINGER: Since those laws were brought in, there has been a collective sense that that issue was fixed. That in Australia, we didn't have to worry about mass shootings. We didn't have to worry about seeing the sort of violence that we see every week in the United States. That we'd fixed the issue and we could get on with our lives.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Last year, a review found the states and territories are failing to uphold this agreement. Under-18 year olds can still get gun licences. Some states have dumped a 28-day cooling off period for second and subsequent firearms. The review's author was Professor Philip Alpers.

PHILIP ALPERS: There are three pillars to gun control. One is licencing, the next is registration and then of course there's that it's a conditional privilege, not a right to own a firearm. Now all of those three are still intact in the National Firearms Agreement, now what's happened is that there's been a lot of whittling away around the edges, trying to water down the effect of the law, to do anything possible to reduce the effect of the law for the convenience of shooters and the benefit of the arms industry. That's been going on for 20 years now and there's been some success.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Earlier this year the Tasmanian government was facing a tight election. It needed all the help it could get and turned to the gun lobby to help write its new firearms policy.

ROLAND BROWNE, GUN CONTROL AUSTRALIA: The government was trying to walk a line between giving into the gun lobby, but not putting the community offside and the end result of that was that this policy was created in secrecy, in consultation with the shooting groups.

SEAN NICHOLLS: One of those consulted was the lobby group, SIFA.

ROLAND BROWNE: in my view, a number of firearm lobby groups just wrote a wish list and said to the police minister, "This is what we want. If you want our support, this is what you're going to have to deliver to us."

SEAN NICHOLLS: In a letter to shooting groups the police minister proposed easier access to semi-automatic rifles and shotguns for sporting shooters; to double the licence period to 10 years for some firearms and allow the use of silencers.

ROLAND BROWNE: Well, my first thought was that it was a forgery, because the idea of a Tasmanian Liberal government wanting to reintroduce semi-automatic, rapid fire guns into the hands of the community, after they had been taken out of the hands of the community, was astonishing.

IVAN DEAN, TASMANIAN INDEPENDENT MLC: Stakeholders had been notified back in February 9th, of this year of some changes. But the stakeholders did not include, in my opinion, probably the most important stakeholder in this whole thing, that was the public. The public had no knowledge of what was going on.

SEAN NICHOLLS: News of this secret deal leaked on the eve of the election.The government was accused of breaching the National Firearms Agreement.

WILL HODGMAN, TASMANIAN PREMIER: We will not compromise the National Firearms Agreement. We will not do anything in any way do anything to endanger Tasmanians or to do anything but better support Tasmanian farmers and recreational shooters.

PHILL PULLINGER: In terms of a national precedent, if Tasmania, the place where Port Arthur happened of all places, if Tasmania started unwinding the national laws and acting at odds with the national laws, then the national laws would be in deep, deep trouble.

SEAN NICHOLLS: The public outcry forced the government to dump the policy after the election.

ROLAND BROWNE: The deals that are done behind the scenes with politicians are not in the community's interests. They are solely in the interest of the gun importers and distributors in Australia. The gun debate is very much about money, and influence, and power.

SEAN NICHOLLS: Groups like yours are accused by gun control groups of chipping away at firearms laws incrementally, so that nobody's really noticing that, gradually, there are going to be significant changes to Australia's firearms laws.

LAURA PATTERSON: The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia has never advocated for the chipping down or otherwise dilution of the National Firearms Agreement. The Firearms Agreement needs critical review in order that it continues to uphold Australian standards of safety, security, and sovereignty.

SEAN NICHOLLS: SIFA is now eyeing off elections in Victoria next month, NSW in March and the upcoming federal poll.The divisive question of gun laws is again confronting Australia.

LAURA PATTERSON: We're looking to enter a new era of engagement. We want it to be open. We want people to understand who we are and why we're doing what we're doing. We want governments to be held accountable for the decisions they make.

TIM FISCHER: It is just a determination by some very smart operators to keep attacking the harmonised gun laws, gun safety laws of this country. It's about politics on the margins. And it's dangerous.