This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Queensland politicians have become embroiled in controversy over their right to shoot rats, after the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, was urged to clarify a spokesman’s comments that people were allowed to fire guns in their own home.

The police minister, Bill Byrne, has admitted to shooting vermin at residential properties more than 20 years ago.

“As owner of the property, Bill didn’t require anyone’s consent,” a spokesman for Palaszczuk told the Courier Mail on Sunday night.

The opposition leader, Lawrence Springborg, has admitted to shooting rats himself but said he was a responsible gun owner who knew the law and would never fire a gun in his own home or in an urban setting.

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He said the advice from the premier’s office was wrong and needed to be corrected.

“What we’re seeing here is a police minister who is arguably engaged in illegal activity – somebody who should know the law – and a premier who has basically indicated to Queensland false, misleading information,” Springborg said.

“One would hope that it’s not deliberate but it’s certainly ignorant and certainly clueless.”

The president of the Queensland Shooters Union, Graham Park, told the Courier Mail Byrne might have committed an offence under the Weapons Act.

“This is why we are always trying to work with the government, so we can streamline legislation so police resources aren’t used on things like mouse shootings,” he said.

Further comment has been sought from Palaszczuk.

Springborg linked the incident to criminal gangs, saying it showed the government wasn’t serious about cracking down on bikies.

“What we have in Queensland is a gun-toting police minister carrying on like ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok in the wild west,” he said. “The criminal motorcycle gangs in this state are jumping for joy.”

The opposition police spokesman, Jarrod Bleijie, was due to write to the police commissioner, Ian Stewart, on Monday, to ask whether Byrne broke the law by firing his .22 calibre rifle at rats in the roof cavity of his house in suburban Rockhampton.

Byrne said he stopped the practice after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which claimed 35 lives in Tasmania.

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“I occasionally used firearms to dispose of vermin from residential properties at various times,” he said on Monday. “But Port Arthur changed all that. I was so disturbed by Port Arthur I disposed of my weapons immediately.”

The attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, said the opposition was using the issue to distract from its own problems.

“This is just muck-raking,” she said. “We’ve seen the LNP do it before, they’re doing it again and it’s all to cover up the division within their own party.”

A Queensland government spokesman later said that the law had been changed in 1996 in response to the Port Arthur massacre to restrict landholders from firing weapons in urban settings.

“The parliament’s passage of the amending legislation in 1996 was after Mr Byrne undertook vermin control at his residence,” he said.