Inside the ‘anyone but Labor’ movement working to flip crucial seats

Shooting groups are mobilising an “anyone but Labor” campaign to flip marginal seats with high numbers of firearm owners, as the premier hits out at “violent imagery” in social media advertising.

The Shooters Union has identified seats including Monaro, Lismore, Bega, Cessnock, South Coast, Camden and Penrith as government seats it will target with flyers and doorknocking campaigns in support of opposition challengers – which in many cases will benefit One Nation.

They will zero in on seats such as Penrith, where after preferences Labor won by 1.6 per cent, or about 1500 votes. The Shooters Union of Australia estimates, based on postcode data, that close to 2000 gun owners live in the seat.

The campaign comes as 525 guns were handed in after the first week of the gun buyback, and bookings from firearm owners wanting to hand in their guns reached 1032 after a week. A total of 4704 guns have been listed for collection.

The Shooters Union has begun spending on an election campaign advertising blitz, dropping $13,000 on social media advertising since August, analysis of Meta advertising data shows. Those ads, which have also been targeted to voters in postcodes with high gun ownership, claim Labor is waging a “war on hunting”.

The ads also call for volunteers who are “fed up with being overlooked” to help hand out flyers.

One of those posts was captioned “Minns is missing the point, stop Labor’s war on hunting” and featured a stock image silhouette of a man, with physical similarities to the premier, in the crosshairs of a weapon.

A Shooter’s Union spokesman denied the image represented Minns and said the image was intended to represent gun owners targeted by the buyback, however Minns labelled the post “violent”.

“This image should be withdrawn. There is no place for this violent imagery in our politics. Debate the policy, make your case, but do it without imagery that threatens or intimidates,” Minns said.

The Shooters Union and the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia are both registered third-party campaigners ahead of the March election.

The challenge for gun groups will be convincing swing voters who do not own guns of their cause while Labor campaigns on a platform of greater firearm safety after the Bondi terror attack. A Resolve Political Monitor poll conducted for this masthead in August and September showed 53 per cent of voters support the gun buyback.

Shooting Industry Foundation Australia chief executive James Walsh said: “From our perspective, there are seats like Kiama and South Coast, Penrith, seats in the Hunter. We believe that there are 12 or more seats that we can focus on and flip.

“There are a number of seats where the number of shooters is greater than the people who make up the margin, and we’ll be using that to our advantage.”

Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park said: “It’s an anyone but Labor campaign.”

Park said the union would support any party that commits to ending the buyback. He appeared at a One Nation event in Tamworth last month alongside Barnaby Joyce and NSW Leader Mike Newman, and will speak at a party forum on firearms policy in Windsor this month.

“What Mr Albanese and Minns have done is create the very thing they said they didn’t want, which is an effective pro-gun advocacy lobby, which has never existed in Australia.”

Park said the campaign would highlight Anthony Albanese as the architect of the gun buyback, leveraging on voter dislike of the prime minister over cost-of-living pressures.

Minns is also seeking to leverage his government’s firearms reforms against Liberal Leader Kellie Sloane. The government is counting on most angry firearms owners already being rusted-on conservatives, rather than Labor voters jumping ship.

“If you want firearm laws watered down in NSW, then you should put Labor last, because we’re not changing our point of view,” he said.

Minns is digging in his heels, but also attempting to position gun reforms as a safety issue, appealing to voters to see the Liberals, who first supported the laws but have since changed position, and One Nation as two sides of the same coin.

Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane will scrap firearm caps for farmers and professional sporting shooters.

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