Nationals have broken ranks and voted in defiance of government policy – supporting a motion by the Liberal Democratic party Senator David Leyonhjelm that would have ended the current import ban on the controversial lever action Adler shotgun.



On Monday night, party senators Bridget McKenzie and John Williams crossed the floor to vote in favour of ending the import ban, and Nationals ministers Fiona Nash, Nigel Scullion and Matt Canavan were absent from the chamber during the critical vote.

The orchestrated show of dissent appeared to catch Liberals by surprise. When Liberal senators entered the chamber to vote they looked surprised to see McKenzie and Williams on the other side of the chamber.

In openly supporting Leyonhjelm, McKenzie, who is the driving force behind the parliamentary friends of the shooting lobby, told the Senate she supported the disallowance motion because “law abiding gun owners are derided by political elite who think they know better”.

McKenzie argued gun control should be based on facts, not conflations or “mistruths”, and she challenged someone to produce evidence that an Adler shotgun was involved in crime.

The public show of division between the Liberals and their junior Coalition partner was triggered by a motion moved by Leyonhjelm to disallow the regulation currently enforcing the import ban on the Adler shotgun imposed by the federal government in 2015.

The ban prohibits the import of any lever-action shotgun with a magazine capacity of more than five rounds, and firearm magazines with a capacity of more than five rounds for lever-action shotguns, even if not attached to a shotgun.

The government wants the current import ban to remain in force until state governments decide which category to place the gun in under national firearms regulations.

The move by Leyonhjelm was defeated in the Senate 45 votes to 7.

The Senate debate and the show of dissent by federal Nationals, followed confirmation earlier in the day that Philip Donato of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party’s won the Orange by-election – a significant political upset in New South Wales which has triggered significant nervousness in Canberra among National parliamentarians.



It also followed a candid admission by the government’s Senate leader, George Brandis, that One Nation was on track to pick up several seats in the Queensland state election.

Brandis attributed One Nation’s current strength in Queensland in part to underperformance by the state LNP, and he suggested the Liberal and National parties might split in the state.

One Nation voted as a bloc on Monday night to support the disallowance motion on the shotgun.

The One Nation senator Brian Burston told the chamber during the debate the Adler was “unsuitable for serious crime” and he said there were already Adler seven shots legally in the country.

“Where is the murder spree?” Burston said in support of the Leyonhjelm motion.

Burston said the debate around gun ownership had been “hysterical” and “responsible gun owners had been treated like trigger happy psychopaths”.

Labor used the opportunity of the debate to highlight government divisions.

Labor’s senate leader Penny Wong went back exhaustively over a rancorous display on the floor of the House of Representatives last month between the former prime minister Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Dutton and Michael Keenan during the so-called “guns for votes” row.