Canberra joins Australia gun buyback as Albanese expands Bondi attack response

Australia’s national firearms crackdown has expanded after the Australian Capital Territory agreed to join the federal government’s gun buyback programme, bringing Canberra into a post-Bondi Beach reform effort intended to remove surplus, newly prohibited and illegal firearms from circulation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the ACT’s participation on August 22, 2026, months after 15 people were killed in the December 14, 2025 attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney. The federal government has described that attack as an antisemitic terrorist incident inspired by Islamic State, and authorities say firearms used by the alleged attackers had been legally obtained.

The ACT has approximately 23,000 registered firearms and more than 7,000 firearms licence holders. A start date for its buyback had not yet been announced, but the decision adds another jurisdiction to a national scheme that Albanese’s government says will become Australia’s largest firearms buyback since the sweeping reforms introduced after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

How will the Australian Capital Territory participate in the national gun buyback?

The national scheme is designed to purchase surplus firearms, weapons newly prohibited by tougher state and territory laws and illegal firearms surrendered through the programme. The federal government has proposed sharing acquisition costs with participating states and territories on a 50:50 basis, while local authorities handle collection and payments and the Australian Federal Police oversees destruction.

New South Wales, where the Bondi Beach attack occurred, was the first jurisdiction to commit to implementation and is due to begin its programme on November 2. The ACT has now agreed to participate, although authorities had not provided an equivalent commencement date for Canberra by August 22.

The ACT’s involvement is also linked to firearms legislation already moving through the territory. Proposed reforms include limits on the number of firearms an individual can possess, restrictions on certain categories of weapons and a new Firearms Prohibition Order framework intended to prevent people considered high risk from acquiring or retaining guns.

Those changes form part of a larger National Cabinet programme agreed after the Bondi attack. The reform agenda has also included tighter licensing standards, accelerated development of a National Firearms Register and greater ability to use criminal intelligence when authorities assess whether an individual should hold a firearms licence.

Why did the Bondi Beach attack trigger another Australian gun-law overhaul?

Australia already has some of the world’s most closely watched firearms regulations following the Port Arthur massacre, where 35 people were killed in Tasmania in April 1996. The Howard government subsequently coordinated a national agreement restricting several types of firearms and established a major buyback that removed hundreds of thousands of weapons from circulation.

The Bondi attack reopened the political debate because authorities said one of the alleged attackers possessed a firearms licence and had access to multiple guns despite living in suburban Sydney. The federal government argued that the circumstances demonstrated gaps between Australia’s historically strict firearms framework and contemporary threats involving terrorism, extremism and the growing number of privately held weapons.

National firearms holdings have also increased substantially since the original buyback era. The federal government has said more than four million firearms are now registered in Australia, exceeding the number believed to have been present around the time of the Port Arthur reforms.

That does not mean registered firearm ownership itself caused the Bondi attack, and the surviving suspect has not yet been convicted. He faces numerous charges, including 15 counts of murder, and the allegations against him remain subject to the judicial process.

The policy response instead reflects the government’s conclusion that licensing, weapon-number limits and intelligence sharing should be tightened before another legally acquired firearm can potentially be used in an extremist or mass-casualty attack.

What firearms restrictions is Canberra already considering?

The ACT introduced the Firearms (Public Safety) Amendment Bill 2026 in February as part of its response to the National Cabinet agreement. The proposed legislation would place quantitative limits on firearm possession, recategorise some weapons and prohibit belt-fed firearms, subject to specified exemptions.

A separate Firearms Prohibition Order proposal would give courts the ability to prohibit high-risk individuals from acquiring, possessing or using firearms or related items. Police would receive additional search powers when dealing with someone subject to such an order, although the legislation contains safeguards requiring officers to document the basis of searches and consider privacy implications.

ACT officials have framed these measures as an attempt to modernise a firearms system that must simultaneously accommodate lawful sporting and occupational use while responding to organised crime, domestic violence, terrorism and emerging technologies such as 3D-printed weapons.

The territory is also upgrading its firearms registry to participate in Australia’s National Firearms Register. The national system is intended to improve authorities’ ability to determine who owns firearms and where particular weapons are registered, addressing information gaps created by historically separate state and territory systems.

Why is the new buyback politically different from Australia’s 1996 firearms reforms?

The Port Arthur reforms followed an attack that fundamentally changed the Australian political consensus around gun ownership. The current programme arrives in a country where restrictive firearms law is already well established, meaning policymakers are attempting to tighten an existing system rather than create one almost from scratch.

The latest changes also respond to a different security environment. Authorities are increasingly concerned about violent extremism, organised crime, domestic violence risks and the ability of intelligence information to identify people who may remain technically eligible for firearms licences under conventional background checks.

That makes implementation potentially more complex. Governments must determine which weapons become prohibited, what ownership limits are appropriate, how compensation should be calculated and whether differing state and territory rules can be brought into a sufficiently consistent national framework.

Firearms groups and some lawful owners have questioned aspects of the reform agenda, particularly where restrictions affect people with no criminal history. Governments, meanwhile, argue that the December attack demonstrated why gun laws need periodic reassessment even in a jurisdiction already known internationally for tight regulation.

Could Australia’s new gun buyback become as consequential as the Port Arthur programme?

That will depend on participation by states and territories, the number of weapons ultimately surrendered and whether the wider legislative reforms produce a more consistent national licensing system.

The ACT’s 23,000 registered firearms represent only a small share of Australia’s overall stock, so Canberra joining the programme does not by itself transform national firearms availability. Its importance is institutional: every additional jurisdiction makes the national framework broader and reduces the likelihood of large regulatory differences developing between neighbouring parts of the country.

The government will also face scrutiny over whether the reforms address the specific failures revealed by the Bondi attack. Removing surplus weapons can reduce the overall pool of firearms, but preventing future extremist violence also depends on intelligence, licence reviews, information sharing and the ability to act when an otherwise lawful gun owner begins presenting a security risk.

Australia’s post-Bondi response is therefore becoming a test of whether one of the world’s best-known gun-control systems can be tightened further without simply repeating the architecture created three decades ago. Canberra’s decision to join the buyback moves that programme another step towards becoming genuinely national.