JOURNALIST: Well joining me now is the former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Thank you very much for coming back on our programme. Malcolm Turnbull I don't know if you heard what our report had to say, that despite the fact that this nation - your nation - always come together after these terrible tragedies this time round it might be more difficult.I wonder if you agree with that and why?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I think Australians are coming together. I disagree with Hamish there. Absolutely Australians are united in grief and solidarity. This type of hatred, this type of terrorism has no place in our country. And we have to have a very hard look at our gun laws. They are very stringent. I remember very vividly when they were introduced by John Howard in the late ‘90s. But they need to be improved and Anthony Albanese has undertaken to do that. And this type of crisis of course gives you the momentum to be able to do so with the States and Territories.
JOURNALIST: Because your gun laws have always been held up after the Port Arthur massacre as being some of the best and most stringent on the planet and then this awful event happens. What do you think is more important? Tightening these gun laws or tightening the intelligence around the gun laws because of course one of the suspects, one of the killers, was known to intelligence and not much was done about it.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, yes, there was a father and son. So the 50 year old father had licenses for six guns, he had hunting licenses, apparently. That seems a lot of guns for somebody to have in suburban Sydney, right. So I think there's an issue there about the number of guns.The son had been looked at by ASIO, which is our equivalent of MI5, in 2019 for links with extremist groups but they concluded - that he was that was six years ago of course - and ASIO concluded that he wasn't a threat. Now was there a link made between the son with extremist connections and the father with six gun licenses? I suspect not. And you know one of the problems is we're a Federation as you know we've got 6 states, two territories, the national government and the intelligence sharing between those jurisdictions has been improving over the years, but it's not perfect. The gun laws… we get a bit complacent about that. We're always being congratulated about how they are. Certainly you can't have automatic weapons. If those killers add automatic weapons, even more people would have been killed.
JOURNALIST: I wonder what you make of the criticism that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel was very quick to make hours after this terrible incident happened? He openly blamed your Prime Minister Anthony Albanese by saying that the recognition of Palestine was pouring fuel on anti-Semitism in Israel and in Australia. And that the government was weak in its response to those warning signs that Hamish reported about earlier. Do you buy that criticism from the Israeli government?
MALCOLM TRUNBULL: No, I do not. And I would respectfully say to Bibi Netanyahu, please stay out of our politics. If you've got that kind of commentary to make, you are not helping. I know Netanyahu, I know him pretty well actually. And look I understand where he's coming from, his passion and so forth. But this is not helping and it's not right. As Albanese has said, and as we all know, as Wes Streeting has said in your country, the vast majority of countries in the world recognise Palestine as a state.The vast majority support a two-state solution. Indeed, when I was Prime Minister, Israel notionally supported a two-state solution. It doesn't any longer. But this is not helping. And the message that I used to make when I was in Parliament and the message I've made since then is we cannot allow these foreign wars and conflicts to be imported here. We are a very successful multicultural society. We have the largest percentage of foreign born people in our community of any OECD country, apart from Luxembourg I might add, and we need to ensure that the wars in the Middle East, wars in any other part of the world, are not fought out here. So trying to link them, which is what Netanyahu has done, is not helpful. That's exactly the reverse of what we want to achieve.
FULL INTERVIEW HERE: Bondi attack: Australia moves to tighten gun laws as it mourns mass shooting
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