NSW sends pro-gun Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm to Senate

Updated

The man elected to take one of six Senate seats in New South Wales says allowing the general public to carry weapons is one way of curbing gun crime in western Sydney.

Voters in New South Wales have chosen Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm for the Senate after the party appeared in the top left hand corner of ballot papers.

The seldom-mentioned party gained 8.89 per cent of the initial vote allocation, ahead of the Greens' 7.77 per cent.

The party, which believes in social libertarianism, a free market economy and small government now joins a key group of minor party and independent senators set to hold the balance of power after July next year.

Mr Leyonhjelm is a former vet who runs an agribusiness consulting company in Sydney.

His biography says he has been a member of Young Labor, the Liberals and the Shooters Party since getting into politics in the early 1970s.

He left the Liberals because of John Howard's crackdown on guns following the Port Arthur massacre, describing it as "a disgraceful attack on law-abiding citizens".

He also says it is an "objective fact" that the Sandy Hook school massacre in the United States could have been avoided if teachers had been armed.

Mr Leyonhjelm says allowing the public to carry guns would be a new approach to help tackle the spate of shootings in Sydney.

"What happens is that criminals don't know who's carrying a gun and they're very wary of using a gun themselves because they don't know who's going to shoot back at them," he said.

"In actual fact it's a massive deterrent. You don't make a safer society by taking the guns off the good guys and leaving the bad guys to have the guns."

Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos says he does not believe Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott will water down gun laws.

"I think if Tony Abbott were answering this question he would say we are not going to water down what we have done on gun laws, certainly not on the gun laws after Port Arthur," he said

"He's made it clear, and certainly in fact we have certain commitments how we stop the importation of guns to try and deal directly with the sort of problems the Liberal Democrat was talking about."

Votes gained in error

Mr Leyonhjelm accepts his party probably gained votes in error, with voters thinking they were choosing the Liberals.

The name has been raised as an issue before - in 2007 the Liberal Party objected and they ran as the Liberty and Democracy Party.

Mr Leyonhjelm admits the massively-long NSW Senate ballot paper may also have pushed votes to the Liberal Democrats.

"Oh yeah, we think there are three reasons why our vote was as high as it was," he said.

"There are some people who voted for us because of our policies and they like what we stand for and we would like to think that that was all of them, but I don't think that is the case.

"There would be some people who voted for us because we were first on the ballot paper - there is always a sizeable number of people who don't care and vote for the first one on the paper, and with such a big ballot paper that was probably a factor.

"Then there are some people who mistook us for the Liberals, probably the Liberals, but they could also have mistaken us for the Christian Democrats or even the ordinary Democrats."

Leyonhjelm unlikely to back Abbott's PPL

One of Mr Abbott's big ticket policies is his generous Paid Parental Leave scheme, funded by a levy on business.

But Mr Abbott is unlikely to gain support from Mr Leyonhjelm to push it through parliament.

"We don't think people who don't have children should be paying for people who do have children. So we would oppose that," he said.

"On the other hand we would wholeheartedly support the removal of the carbon tax and the mining tax.

"But then we don't think Tony Abbott should be spending billions of dollars on direct action on climate change. We don't think it would make any difference to climate change and it's a waste of taxpayers' money.

"We would much rather taxpayers paid less tax in the first place."

Other Liberal Democrat policies include the decriminalisation of drugs and assisted suicide and the legalisation of gay marriage.

But Mr Leyonhjelm says broadly speaking, his party will not try to block Coalition policies.

"You have to respect the fact that Tony Abbott was elected by a lot more people than voted for us and so you have to acknowledge he's got a mandate to implement his policies," he said.

"But there are two guiding principles that determine our approach to legislation - we would never vote for an increase in taxes and we would never vote for a reduction in liberty."

Topics: federal-elections, nsw, sydney-2000

First posted