Australian PM rules out minor party deal to protect gun laws

Australia's prime minister said Thursday that he had ruled out any vote-sharing deal with an influential minor party in a bid to protect the nation's strict gun controls.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison made his decision after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson apparently questioned the official account of a 1996 massacre in which a gunman acting alone killed 35 people in Tasmania state.

Less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, Australia banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. New Zealand similarly banned a range of semi-automatic firearms after a lone gunman killed 50 worshippers in two Christchurch mosques on March 15.

Morrison said his conservative Liberal Party would disadvantage One Nation candidates under Australia's preferential voting system at general elections due in May by refusing to share votes.

Under Australia's systems, voters rank candidates in order of preference. The higher candidates are ranked by a majority of voters, the better their chances of being elected.

The Liberal Party would normally direct its supporters to rank the opposition center-left Labor Party last, because Labor candidates have a chance of forming government. Like-minded parties often make deals to rank each others' candidates ahead of a common enemy.

But in a move interpreted by some as putting principle ahead of politics, Morrison said his party would urge voters to rank Labor ahead of One Nation.

"This is a decision which is based on our strong view about the sanctity of Australia's gun laws and to ensure that at no stage that those things should ever be put at risk," Morrison told reporters.

"It's very important, having been the party that introduced those laws, that we ensure that they are forever protected and there can be no compromise when it comes to those issues or any trading on the issue of those gun laws," he added.

Anti-Muslim One Nation has been widely condemned after an Al Jazeera documentary reported this week that two party officials flew to the United States for meetings with pro-gun interests including the National Rifle Association and political donors Koch Industries in September last year seeking money to undermine Australian gun laws.

The two-part documentary that uses video secretly filmed by a fake gun lobbyist reveals Hanson said during a dinner with party officials in her home state of Queensland last year that she has "a lot of questions" about the Port Arthur massacre.

She quoted an Australian state premier who said almost a decade before the mass shooting in the ruins of a 19th century Tasmanian prison: "It will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get gun reform in Australia."
Barnaby Joyce, a senior lawmaker in the Nationals party, the rural-based junior partner of the ruling coalition that most directly competes against One Nation for conservative voters, described Hanson's comments on Port Arthur as "bonkers mad."