Analyst: Tougher gun laws won’t fix Australia’s institutional failures and polarised society

0 January 21, 2026 02:18

Australia has enacted new laws for a national gun buyback, tighter background checks for gun licences and a crackdown on ⁠hate crimes in response to the country’s worst mass shooting in decades at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach last month. Josh Roose, an associate professor of politics at Deakin University, says that Australia’s prior gun laws were already among the toughest in the world and “reasonably fit for purpose”. The political sociologist tells CNA’s Asia First: “This was an easy fix for the government in the immediate aftermath. This isn’t just about gun legislation. There’s been a much bigger set of institutional failures at play here, (including) the broader social climate, which has been highly polarised.”

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