Ask the Squiz: Gun laws, antisemitism and bankruptcy

Ask the Squiz

In the wake of the Bondi shootings - the worst terror attack in our history - we’ve received a lot of questions from Squizers about how our gun laws work and what constitutes antisemitism. So in our final edition of Ask the Squiz for this year, we’ll do our best to get you across those issues, and we’re also diving into what bankruptcy means in the Linda Reynolds-Brittany Higgins defamation case, and how adult Australians can boost their media literacy...

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Listen time: 18 minutes

How Australia’s gun laws work

Lisa has asked us to explain Australia's gun laws and how they apply…
There’s been a lot of talk this week about how our gun laws changed dramatically after the massacre at Port Arthur in 1996. Back then, there was a similar sense of shock and sadness in the community as we’ve felt this week, and the PM at the time, John Howard, put in place a gun buyback program. It resulted in almost 650,000 guns being handed in to authorities. But that was 30 years ago, and now the NSW government is rushing to further tighten the legislation.

Do the laws vary between states and territories?
A bit… We’ll cover some of the differences as we go along. But given that the father and son shooters in the Bondi attack had 6 guns, let’s start with what they’re like in NSW. The first step for legally owning a gun is that you must have a licence for it. To get one of those, you have to be over 18. And you also need a reason…

What constitutes a reason?
It can be for recreational hunting or it’s required for your job, for pest control, or maybe if you’re a firearms collector. Unlike in America, self-defence is not a valid reason to have a gun in Australia. Once you’ve established a valid reason, you then have to provide proof of it. 

What’s the application process like?
It involves a firearm safety course you have to pass. And during that process, you also have to identify the category of firearm you require. They are A, B, C and D and H. 

What’s the difference between them?
Category H is specific to handguns but there are other letters that are used for different things, depending on the state or territory. To hold a gun licence, you also need to be assessed as a ‘fit and proper’ person - aka the authorities think you’re likely to be a responsible gun owner. 

How is that determined?
The Firearms Registry conducts background checks before approval. Once the licence is approved, a permit for each individual firearm is needed. You need to explain your reason for owning the firearm, and where and how it’s going to be stored. There’s also a mandatory 28-day waiting period involved at that point.

How often do gun licences have to be renewed?
In NSW, they’re usually granted for between 2 and 5 years before they’re due for renewal. 

Is there a limit to the number of guns someone can own?
The average number of firearms owned by gun owners in Oz is about 4. There are around 4 million guns in the entire country, owned by about one million licence holders. Some states differ in the numbers of firearms people can hold. For example, earlier this year, Western Australia has limited the number of guns a licence holder can own to 5 firearms for recreational hunters, and 10 for primary producers, meaning farmers, graziers and such, and competition shooters. But there are changes ahead…

What sort of changes?
We’ll add a full list in the episode notes, but some of the key changes following the Bondi attack include limiting the amount of guns someone can own - as in the WA example, keeping gun owners to Australian citizens, and establishing a National Firearms Register - so basically a national database of gun owners and licences. It’s something that has long been discussed. 

Any other changes coming?
Yep… There are calls for criminal intelligence to be used in the firearms licensing process - that’s likely to be because one of the Bondi shooters - the son, Naveed Akram - was investigated by ASIO for 6 months in 2019. The agency deemed him not to be an ongoing threat, but there are questions about if and when that was raised in the licensing process for the guns owned by his father. 

What type of gun licence was his father allowed to have?
Reports say the elder Akram had an AB license which gave him access to Category B firearms, including high-powered bolt-action rifles. Those questions are still being investigated - we’ll no doubt learn more - but that gives you a basic sense of our laws around gun ownership.

What constitutes antisemitism?

Antisemitism is another issue that’s been talked about a lot this week after the Bondi shootings. In the second part of Lisa’s question, she asks: What’s the difference between antisemitism and other forms of racial prejudice?
The issue of antisemitism, how incidents have increased in Australia in recent times, and the role it played in this dreadful tragedy is something we’re going to be talking about for a while to come… 

Is there a straight definition of antisemitism?
It shares core elements with other forms of racial prejudice, but there are several unique historical and ideological characteristics.

What are they?
Features of racism are stereotyping, dehumanisation, and systematic exclusion… Historically, antisemitism has taken different forms, from religious persecution to racial and political biases. 

Can you give some examples of that?
Religious persecution started way back in the first century when there was a theological and social ‘parting of the ways’ between early Christianity and Judaism. And in the 4th century, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and there were edicts that prohibited Jews from holding public office, restricted the building of synagogues, and outlawed intermarriage.

What about racial anti-semitism?
That’s a more recent thing. Starting in the 19th century, the focus shifted from religion to ‘blood’ and biology. Under this logic, a Jew could not escape their status by converting to another religion. As we know, that led to the Nazis murdering 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust. 

And then we get to political biases…
This isn’t new to the recent Gaza war. There’s long been conspiracy theories that use Jews as a scapegoat for societal or economic problems. Unlike most racial prejudices that target groups for being ‘inferior’ or ‘weak’, antisemitism targets Jews for their perceived power.

Can you explain that a bit more…
This is about conspiracy theories where Jews are falsely accused of controlling global financial institutions, the media, even Hollywood… Antisemites often paint Jews as being uniquely powerful, and that they’re taking action for the good of the world by putting up a ‘righteous’ resistance.

What’s been happening in Oz?
In 2025, antisemitic incidents in Australia reached historically high levels - nearly 5 times the annual average recorded in the decade prior to October 2023. And we can expect the federal and state governments to be under a lot of scrutiny about how they’ve handled that. 

What bankruptcy means in the Linda Reynolds-Brittany Higgins legal case

Another question we’ve had steers us into one of the most contentious cases of the past couple of years. Jo asks: I was wondering if you could explain what it means for Linda Reynolds now that Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz have been declared bankrupt.
Linda Reynolds is the former Minister and Senator from WA who employed Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann, and it was in her office in parliament house where Lehrmann was legally found to have raped Higgins - that was the finding of a civil court, though he has no criminal conviction. 

Remind me about the facts of the defamation case…
In August 2025, the West Australian Supreme Court found that Brittany Higgins and her husband, David Sharaz, defamed Reynolds in a series of social media posts. The court ruled that allegations claiming Reynolds "mishandled" the rape report or "pressured" Higgins not to go to the police were untruthful. 

What was the outcome?
The court ordered Higgins to pay $315,000 plus interest in damages. And when you include legal fees, the total debt to Reynolds is estimated to exceed $1.3 million. As for Sharaz, he was ordered to pay a total of up to $220,000 in damages, plus legal costs, so his total estimated debt to Reynolds comes to around $750,000.

Have they paid?
No… So Reynolds initiated bankruptcy proceedings against them, and earlier this month, the Federal Court officially declared both Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz bankrupt. But that’s not where it ends…

What happens now?
The court has appointed someone to investigate the couple's finances with a view to recoup whatever funds remain from Higgins' previous $2.4 million compensation payout. That was made by the Federal Government. Reynolds says that effectively "publicly affirmed" the false cover-up allegations against her, so she is suing the federal government for a "breach of duty of care". 

Two questions - what does being declared bankrupt mean, and why is Reynolds pursuing it?
In Australia it means a court-appointed trustee takes control of a person's finances - if they’re working, big chunks of their income can be directed to pay off their debt. It can stop them from becoming a director of a company, they might be prevented from going overseas, and it makes it almost impossible to get a loan. The idea is that, over time, they’re overseen to get as much of the debt paid off as possible. 

Why is Reynolds pursuing it?
She says she wants to reclaim her reputation and that being falsely accused of covering up a rape in her office has been devastating. Her health has suffered badly, it affected her career significantly, and she’s taken out 2 mortgages to fight this in court. It’s a TBC into 2026…

Boosting media literacy for adults

To finish us up, Tenille asks: Media literacy for school children is important. But what about our older Australians who didn’t have the opportunity to learn it and may have found themselves on the side of a social media algorithm that’s steering them further to conspiracy theory territory, with no way to discern between real videos and AI-generated slop?
Great question and it’s bang in our sweet spot here at The Squiz… We’re hoping Squizers know about the work we do on media literacy for kids with our Squiz Kids Newshounds program. Equipping kids aged 8-12 with the critical thinking tools to decipher fact from fiction online is part of our mission.  

What about for older Australians?
We absolutely see the need for it and we’d eventually like to spread our wings in that direction, but our main game is trying to get funding support for our kids program. In the meantime, our short answer for adults is to follow Squiz-E the Newshound’s advice…

What does Squiz-E say?
He says to Stop, Think, Check. If you’re doing that, you’re a long way down the path to keeping safe online. But the truth is, it’s getting harder to decipher what’s real and what’s not on social media for all of us. If you’d like to read a bit more about our Newshounds program, there’s a link below to do that…

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Onto our Recommendations…

Listening: This episode of the ABC’s podcast If You’re Listening does a deep dive on our gun laws and former PM John Howard’s crusade to change them in 1996…

Watching: Linda Reynolds’ interview with Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30 last week gives an insight into her mindset…

Check out: Newshounds - our free media literacy program teaching kids to Stop, Think, Check what they read and see online…

Keep your questions coming…

We’ll be back with another edition of Ask the Squiz in January - so if you’ve got a question on your mind you’d like answered about the news, send it through to [email protected] or leave us a voice memo here (it’s super easy to do)...

We’re taking a break from Shortcuts for a couple of weeks. Have a wonderful Christmas from our Squiz Shortcuts team. Stay safe and we’ll see you on the flip side…

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