The Liberal Gun Club Forum

(CANBERRA, Australia) — Australia’s prime minister on Tuesday accused an influential minor political party of trying to “sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders” by asking the U.S. gun lobby for donations.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was responding to an Al Jazeera documentary that reported One Nation party officials Steve Dickson and James Ashby 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 for money to undermine Australian gun laws.

The trip took place weeks before the Australian Parliament banned foreign political donations with laws that took from Jan. 1, 2019. It is unclear whether they secured any money.

What are the allegations?
In September 2018, journalist Rodger Muller posed as a pro-gun activist and secretly filmed Ms Hanson's chief-of-staff, James Ashby, and another party figure, Steve Dickson, in Washington DC.

Mr Ashby is filmed saying he wants to raise A$20m (£11m; $14m). Mr Dickson says: "If we could get that amount of money, imagine, we could change Australia."

He adds: "We are pro-guns and pro people in this party owning guns."

In the recording, James Ashby, the chief of staff for Pauline Hanson, leader of the One Nation party, is heard to say that his right-wing party could “own” the Australian Senate and House of Representatives with a $20 million donation from the American gun lobby.

The recording — by a reporter for Al Jazeera — was made in the United States during a trip last year, just weeks before an Australian law banning foreign political donations took effect.

The recording was revealed on Monday in the first part of a two-part Al Jazeera documentary, “How to Sell a Massacre,” for which the Australian reporter Rodger Muller posed for years as a gun-rights advocate.