southeast varmiter wrote:Here you go sweetheart. As I said public place is well defined and if your in one you need a public place permit as described here.
So if your concerned about hunting in a state forest - apply for a permit.
http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.as ... t_ID=34424
Thanks cupcake. Thanks also for editing your post to remove the reference to earlier posters as idiots.
The linked page on the Victoria Police web site is interesting. I am very impressed that they seem to have at least made an attempt to update their web site only three months after the change to the legislation. Unfortunately their update made the page more misinformative than it would have been had they done nothing.
Section 130 of the Firearms Act 1996 says that "a person must not carry a loaded firearm or use a firearm in a town or public place or on any thoroughfare or place open to or used by the public for passage with vehicles".
This is wrong. The act doesn't say this and never said it. They have taken the old wording of section 130 and substituted the words "public place" for "populous place".
Victoria Police considers a public place to be a place where people gather, populated or generally frequent. Examples include (but are not limited to); shows or events, designated parks or open spaces like walking tracks.
This is a statement of police policy. Apparently they consider a public place to be something different to what the Victorian parliament has defined it to be. This goes to the question of likelihood of prosecution. As I said in my previous post, I do not believe anyone would be likely to be prosecuted. As to the question of whether it is actually an offence to carry or use a firearm in a state forest, this statement is totally irrelevant.
It should be pointed out that what the police have done here is update some wording on their web site that previously described what they considered to be a "populous place". Again, all they did was change the words "populous place" to "public place". "Populous place" was an undefined term used in the old section 130.
If you want to see what the web site used to look like, see this link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180313053051/http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=34424A town is defined as:
a densely populated area within a parish; or
any area declared a city; or
any suburb within a city; or
any land zoned by a Municipal or Shire Council as anything other than land zoned Rural, Environmental Rural, Rural Living, Public Conservation and Resource or Farm Land;
Other zone listings which fall within the definition of town are, Residential, Low Density Residential, Mixed Use, Township, Industrial, Business, Public Land, Public Use, Public Park And Recreation, Special Purpose, Comprehensive Development, Urban, Urban Floodway, Capital City or Docklands.
Under the Road Safety Act 1986 a thoroughfare is defined as any street, road, lane, track, bridge or tunnel that is accessible from both ends or any place that is a highway by virtue of a declaration under sub-section (2)(a) of the Road Safety Act 1986.
A place open to or used by the public for passage with vehicles is considered as being any open place, track, carriageway, footpath, bike path, traffic island, nature strip or any area provided to separate vehicle traffic on any street, road, lane, bridge, thoroughfare, track or other place.
For ease of reference, the Licensing and Regulation Division refers to the above places using the umbrella term, populous places.
All of this relates to the wording of the old section 130, the one that used to be in place before the amendment that this whole thread is about. It is now redundant and irrelevant.
When a person is accused of committing a statutory offence, the courts are required to interpret the wording of the legislation that sets out the offence to determine whether the offence has indeed been committed. This process of statutory interpretation is governed be longstanding rules established by legislation and case law. When the courts are trying to interpret wording in a statute and the statute itself provides a definition of the wording, that is the start and the end of the process. In this case, the act in question provides a definition of the term "public place". What you or Victoria Police or anyone else (including "plonkers") considers to be a public place is totally irrelevant. The definition provided by the act is paramount. That definition was provided in an earlier post. A "public place" includes, amongst other things, "any open place to which the public whether upon or without payment for admittance have or are permitted to have access".
If you used a firearm in a state forest and the police decided to charge you with a section 130 offence, you would have to argue to a judge that a state forest is not an "open place" and/or that the public do not have access to it. How would you rate your chances?
The police often get the law wrong. Do not rely solely on their interpretations. The NSW Police web site states in several places that it is illegal for people to repair their own firearms. This interpretation is inconsistent with the wording of the relevant act and inconsistent with decisions of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. If their interpretation was correct it would have several ludicrous consequences. Nonetheless, it is their view and it is on their web site.
When amending firearms legislation, Australian state legislatures often use broad, ill considered language that can unintentionally criminalise common practices. Unfortunately, if the meaning of the wording is clear, it doesn't matter what their intention was. What they actually write becomes the law.
I'm fairly confident that a 2002 amendment to the
Firearms Act 1996 (NSW) makes it an offence, punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment, to strip clean and reassemble a pistol in accordance with the manufacturers instructions. This is not what the legislature intended but the poor choice of wording made it so. I don't believe anyone is likely to be prosecuted for this but it is not a good situation.