Veteran politician Bob Katter made a series of false claims about the Bondi terror attack, gun laws and crime statistics during a 20-minute press conference.
The Queensland MP was speaking to the media after new gun laws passed the House of Representatives in the wake of the Bondi attack.
In opposing the legislation, Mr Katter described the new laws as a government "diversion".
AAP FactCheck asked Mr Katter for evidence for the various claims he made, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Among the claims were that Queensland had no gun laws "until about 1992" except for restrictions on concealable firearms and machine guns (timestamp 0:15).
"Anyone could walk in, buy a gun any time they like," he said, before recounting how he bought an AK47 while on holiday at the Gold Coast.
He then claimed that despite the lack of restrictions, Queensland had far fewer gun deaths than Victoria in the year he purchased the rifle before tighter gun restrictions were legislated in the 1990s.
"Queensland, in that year, had eight deaths with guns," he said. "Victoria, with draconian gun laws, that year had 54 deaths with guns. So, so much for your gun laws".
This is false. A 1996 report on firearms deaths published by the Australian Institute of Criminology shows that in 1992, Victoria had 124 deaths caused by firearms (Page 30, Table 5.2).
Overall, this was a rate of 2.79 gun deaths per 100,000 people. The report included figures between 1983 and 1994 and in no year were there 54 gun deaths in Victoria.
Queensland had 153 deaths caused by firearms in 1992, at a rate of 5.05 per 100,000 people (p31, Table 5.3).
This was the third highest in Australia, behind the Northern Territory and Tasmania.
Again, in no year between 1983 and 1994 were there eight deaths - the lowest was 119 in 1993.
Looking at gun violence deaths, firearms were responsible for 26 recorded fatal assaults in Queensland in 1992 at a rate of 0.86, the second highest in Australia, while Victoria recorded 20 at a rate of 0.45.
The report includes data between 1983 and 1994, which showed gun deaths were higher in Victoria in four of those 12 years, although the rate per 100,000 people was lower than in Queensland in every year.
A 1997 report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) also collated firearms deaths by state in three-year blocks between 1980 and 1995.
It shows that in 1992-94, Queensland recorded 401 firearms deaths at a rate of 4.3 per 100,000 people, while Victoria recorded 335 at a rate of 2.5 per 100,000 (page 13).
Firearms deaths were higher in Victoria between 1980-82 and 1986-88, but were lower in each period after, while the death rate was lower in Victoria in every period.
Mr Katter appears to be correct that Victoria had stricter gun laws than Queensland in the early 1990s, however these laws appear to have reduced gun deaths.
The state passed laws to restrict semiautomatic long-arms in 1988 following two mass shootings that killed 15 people in 1987, according to a 2004 study.
The study found gun death rates in the state were steady before the reforms and subsequently declined by 17 per cent compared to the rest of Australia in the seven years after they were introduced.
Mr Katter also claimed that the US state of North Dakota has the "highest firearms ownership in the world" but recorded few gun-related fatalities (timestamp 1:07).
"The last time I looked there'd been no gun deaths with firearms in North Dakota," he said.
This is false. The state recorded 103 gun fatalities at a rate of 12.8 per 100,000 people in 2023, the latest figures reported by the US National Center for Health Statistics show.
This was the 35th highest rate in the US out of 50 states and Washington DC.
By comparison, North Dakota's gun death rate was 14 times higher than Australia's, which was 0.9 in 2019, according to ABS figures.
While the state has a high rate of gun ownership, it's not the highest in the US, which as a whole has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, according to figures from the Small Arms Survey (Table 2, page 4).
North Dakota had the tenth-highest rate in the US, according to figures in a 2020 RAND report (Figure 2, page 21).
Mr Katter also referenced gun deaths in Switzerland, claiming it had the "lowest death rate with guns" despite having high levels of gun ownership (timestamp 1:19).
"Every single house, by law, has a gun," he said.
This is also false based on the available data.
Switzerland does not appear to regularly report on its gun death rate.
A number of papers (including from 2013 and 2024) claim Switzerland had a gun death rate of 3.84 per 100,000 people.
This is more than four times higher than Australia's gun death rate.
A 2018 study on global firearm deaths found Switzerland had an age-standardised gun death rate of 2.8 in 2016 (Figure 7, page 802), whereas Australia had a rate of 1.0 (Figure 1, page 796).
Many other countries had a lower gun death rate than Switzerland in the study - the global average rate was 3.4.
It's also incorrect that every house in Switzerland is required to have a gun by law.
Military service is mandatory for men in Switzerland. However, people can opt to undertake non-military 'civilian service'.
Those who attend military service are given a gun and are able to take this weapon home, however they can also store it at a barracks, according to a 2016 article from the Swiss public broadcaster.
Switzerland had 27.58 civilian firearms per 100 people in 2018, according to the global Small Arms Survey. This was the 16th highest in the world, according to a briefing paper (Table 2, page 4).
Australia, meanwhile, had 14.5 civilian firearms per 100 people, according to a supplementary table.
Mr Katter went on to make a range of claims about immigration and the alleged gunmen behind the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
He claimed the Albanese government let the two alleged gunmen into the country (timestamp 0:08).
"...the government let in two extremely dangerous people into this country," Mr Katter said.
"It's not about you letting the worst possible people into this country, then leaving them with the firearms and giving them the firearms," Mr Katter also said (timestamp 2:50).
This is false. The younger of the alleged gunmen, Naveed Akram, was born in Australia in 2001 and is an Australian citizen.
Naveed's father, Sajid Akram, the second alleged gunman, came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa under the Howard government.
He then obtained a partner visa in 2001, again under the Howard government, and after that obtained three resident return visas.
Mr Katter also claimed the alleged gunmen were placed on an "ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] watchlist".
"If you put a person on an ASIO watchlist, I mean surely you check out whether he's got firearms," Mr Katter said (timestamp 2:24).
But this is at odds with what ASIO has said.
The prime minister said in an ABC interview on December 15 that ASIO had confirmed that the younger of the two alleged gunmen, Naveed, was not on an ASIO watchlist, while his father Sajid wasn't on the intelligence organisation's radar prior to the attack.
ASIO said it undertook an assessment of Naveed in 2019 because of his association with what the ABC reported was a Sydney-based terrorist cell.
However, ASIO's assessment was that there was no indication of an ongoing threat of violence from Naveed, according to Mr Albanese's description of the organisation's advice.
Importantly, Naveed did not obtain the four firearms that were allegedly used in the attack. They were obtained by his father, who legally possessed six firearms, according to multiple statements from the prime minister.
Mr Katter also suggested the gunmen came from the Middle East or North Africa while arguing only people from countries with certain attributes should be allowed to migrate to Australia.
"Do you have rule of law? Do you have democracy? Do you have Christianity or some similar religion? Do you have industrial awards? Do you have egalitarian traditions?" he said (timestamp 4:59).
"Middle East? No, no, no, no. North Africa? No, no, no, no, no. Where do these people come from? That area."
This is false. As previously identified, Naveed, the younger of the alleged gunmen, was born in Australia.
His father Sajid was from Hyderabad in southern India, according to a photo of his passport that was published by the Philippines' authorities and reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
This is corroborated by a Reuters report that quoted from interviews with Akram's family members living in Hyderabad.
Later in the press conference (timestamp 7:37) Mr Katter admitted he hadn't "done his homework" when a journalist asked him about the fact that Sajid was from India.
"I think if you look at his antecedents, you will find - now I don't know and I haven't done the homework, I should have done there - but if I was a terrorist wanting to come to Australia, I would be doing my best to hide the fact that I come from the Middle East or North Africa," Mr Katter said.
Mr Katter also made a series of claims about the gun licence that was held by Sajid during the press conference and in a separate Facebook post that has been widely shared.
"I've got to say, and introduce a political element here, that when these terrible people applied for licences, the Liberal government in NSW knocked them back, for three years continuously knocked them back," he said (timestamp 5:27).
"The minute the current ALP government in NSW got into power, they immediately gave them the rifles."
This statement is misleading as it omits key context.
Sajid first applied for a gun licence in October 2015 when the Liberals were in power, according to a statement from NSW's Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon on December 16, 2025.
But Mr Lanyon also said that it was "recommended" the licence be issued in November 2015 under the same Liberal government.
Mr Lanyon pointed to an administrative, not security, reason for the application subsequently "lapsing".
"He [Sajid] did not get a photo taken as required by that licence and the application lapsed in 2016," Mr Lanyon said.
He applied for a second gun licence four years later. It was recommended for issue in 2023 and then granted later that year.
The Australian reported the licence was granted in July 2023, months after the Labor government was elected in NSW in March.
AAP FactCheck asked NSW Police when the second application was recommended for approval and issued. A spokesperson said they were unable to comment, citing court proceedings.
The process for applying and obtaining gun licences in NSW is administered by a specialised branch within NSW Police and does not require explicit ministerial approval.
NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley said on December 24 that a delay between Sajid reapplying for a licence in 2020 and receiving one was caused by application backlogs, not security concerns.
Mr Katter also made claims about crime in Queensland during his press conference.
"Our lives are in danger from the highest crime rate in Australia is in Townsville," (timestamp 11:55).
Griffith University School of Criminology researcher James Ogilvie told AAP FactCheck that while it's true Townsville has a high crime rate, it's not the highest in Queensland according to the latest statistics.
Crime figures released by the Queensland Government Statistician's Office show that Townsville had 19,050.1 recorded offences per 100,000 people for the reporting year 2023-24 (page 16).
In Queensland, the highest rate is reported for an area classified as "Outback", with 30,982.4 reported offences per 100,000 people.
Dr Ogilvie said that the Northern Territory is generally considered to have the highest crime rates in Australia.
National crime rates published by the ABS show that the offender rate in Queensland in 2023-24 was 1645 per 100,000 people aged 10 and over, while the rate in the Northern Territory was 3954 per 100,000 persons aged 10 and over.
However, Dr Ogilvie noted there are complexities in comparing crime rates across regions due to several factors.
"Regional differences can reflect population sizes and structure, concentration of socioeconomic disadvantage, and policing practices, for example.
"In Queensland, like most places in Australia, higher crime rates tend to be seen in regions characterised by greater socioeconomic disadvantage."
There are also inconsistencies in the ways authorities classify offences and collect data across different jurisdictions.
Later in the press conference, Mr Katter stated that over a period of 15 years, statistically every person in Townsville will experience car theft or attempted theft (timestamp 19:35).
"If you extrapolate the figures out for 15 years, every single person in Townsville will have his car stolen or attempted to be stolen - windows broken and people trying to get the car to start and take away," he said.
However, Queensland Police data shows the local government area (LGA) of Townsville recorded 1333 unlawful use of motor vehicle offences in 2025 and 1504 offences for stealing from, or entering with intent to steal from, a vehicle.
Multiplying this raw number by 15 equates to 42,555 offences.
Over a historical 15-year period, from January 2010 to December 2025, there were 38,517 reported offences.
According to the Queensland government's 2024 estimated resident data the population of the Townsville LGA is 204,541.
