A man of calibre
This was published 15 years ago
October 29, 2005 — 10.00am
John Tingle is an unusual politician: he tells the truth, even when it comes to his own shortcomings.
After 11 years as the lone parliamentary representative of the Shooters Party, the 73-year-old former radio announcer is retiring. He doesn't have to leave; in fact Tingle is not due to face the state's electors until 2011.
But the 74-year-old says it is time to go, partly because of his own failures. He won't finish until April but his successor will be chosen at a special party meeting in Sydney on November 19.
"I've been here long enough," he said, casting his eyes around the placards, newspaper posters and media cartoons lining the walls of his 11th-floor office in Parliament House.
"I had already been working for 56 years before I got into Parliament. I have got to the stage where I am frustrated by the difficulties in achieving all the things I want to achieve.
"At my age it is time to step aside and let somebody new and younger see if they can do a better job, which they probably can. I am feeling a level of burnout, put it that way.
"It is becoming more difficult. Laws governing firearms - I say governing rather than controlling because laws do not control firearms; they control people - are getting more restrictive and more difficult to comply with. My attempts to make them more reasonable have been largely unsuccessful.
"I've told my wife that when I die I want just one word on my headstone: 'Frustration.' "
On the surface it seems an amazing admission for a politician - that he is no longer effective - except that Tingle has always been a reluctant MP. The party and his own election victory in 1995 were accidents. He shot himself in the foot, so to speak.
As Tingle tells it, the party was born over a languid lunch with the former police minister Ted Pickering. Tingle, then a radio breakfast announcer with 2GB, was badgering Pickering over proposed new gun laws.
"I said: 'Look, Ted, if you bring in these laws shooters will go political.' He replied: 'No they won't, they're too disorganised, too inert, too lazy to get off their bums and do anything.'
"It was a pretty good lunch. We had a couple of bottles of French wine. Afterwards I went down and reserved the name, intending to ring him up the next morning and say: 'See what you've done now.' Unfortunately, word got out and it appeared in the media. By the end of the week we had 1000 members. I didn't really want to start a political party. It was a joke to put the wind up Ted, but it took off, and I got stuck with it."
While Tingle talks of recent frustrations, he is quick to point out his political victories - six pieces of legislation, including the Home Invasion Bill, which gives occupants of a house a Parliament-guaranteed right of self-defence, and the Game and Feral Animal Control Bill, under which the Game Council can issue licences to specially qualified hunters to control feral animals on public land.
So does the Shooters Party die with Tingle's departure? No, he says emphatically. Not only are there at least eight members vying for his free, five-year meal ticket but the party is growing, with more than 3000 members in 40 branches in the state.
The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia has recently joined forces, which leads Tingle to predict the party will win another seat in the upper house in 2007. The association has more than 35,000 members and the other mainstay of the shooting fraternity, the Federation of Hunting Clubs, has more than 50,000 members. It is the basis of a powerful lobby group.
Statistics also point to a renaissance in shooting, with police data showing that firearm ownership in NSW has grown from 516,468 to 648,369 in the past three years.
The party chairman, Robert Brown, is one of eight candidates, and the favourite, for Tingle's position. He says that of the 9000 new licences issued each year, 90 per cent are for hunting.
"Like many political parties we have gone through a period of declining membership but things have turned around in the past 12 months," he says. "John Tingle is going but the party will continue, even grow, as a political force."
Tingle agrees: "This is the only state where membership of a hunting club constitutes a genuine reason to have a firearms licence. That's important because 94 per cent of people who have licences do so for hunting, and don't normally belong to a club. They would have had great difficulty if it hadn't been instituted.
"It had the double effect. There are now clubs all over the place, bringing in people who had never been members before or shot on a range where they learn discipline and firearms safety.
"I had good access to [Bob] Carr because I had known him for 30 years. He was very good to us. We had shooting complexes developed and … money, millions of dollars, for clubs to develop facilities.
"My job has been to represent the shooter; not the bloke with all his front teeth missing, the big beard, the red checked shirt and floppy hat carrying a gun, but people like judges and surgeons and abattoir workers and builders and women - law-abiding citizens.
"In fact, most of my most effective work has been outside the chamber. Sitting in the chamber is one of the great wastes of time [because] you can make all the speeches you want in Parliament but the vote is a foregone conclusion.
"You learn in Parliament to be patient and persistent, and to hate with economy. You don't waste hatred; you save it for special occasions."
Samantha Lee, spokeswoman for the National Coalition for Gun Control, deplores the NSW concession which, she says, has led to the increase in gun numbers in NSW. She also acknowledges Tingle's role: "He is a passionate man who has contributed significantly to the firearms debate. As a parliamentarian he has represented his constituents and given them 100 per cent. "While I will continue to oppose his views and those of his successor I think the dedication of his work will remain a legacy."
And what of the gun debate? Has a decade of legislative restrictions made any difference to Australian society and crime levels?
Yes, says Lee, pointing to a 25 per cent fall in the number of homicides in Australia since 1989 when the national homicide monitoring program began.
The Victorian group Gun Control Australia recently pointed to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures which showed that gun deaths, including suicides and accidents as well as homicides, had fallen from around 700 per year in the 1970s and '80s to just 290 in 2003.
"We should all jump for joy with this improvement but the gun lobby seems to find the lower figures distasteful," the group's press release said.
Not so, says Tingle, whose website says that crime with firearms - assaults, attempted murder, kidnappings and abductions, and robberies - are higher now than in 1996 when John Howard announced the national firearm buyback scheme.
"We are in a slow regression … continuing this perception that if you tighten firearm laws you are going to control firearm crime, even though the opposite is true. Since 1996, when this started to happen, firearm crime has gone through the roof.
"Reasonable regulation of firearm ownership is fine, but restrictive laws against legitimate ownership and use do nothing to stop gun-related crime because, by definition, only law-abiding citizens will adhere to laws. They do not stop criminals using guns."