Due to a string of knife attacks in the Australian state of New South Wales, its premier, Chris Minns, has been considering stricter knife laws.
Minns said that the violence had left the state's capital of Sydney—where all of the recent stabbings occurred—in a "combustible situation" and was looking at ways to lessen the likelihood that it would happen again.
It could be recalled that a 16-year-old boy was charged with murder after allegedly stabbing two teenagers, one fatally, near a school in the Sydney suburb of Doonside on Apr. 12.
A day later, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi fatally stabbed six people, five of them women, at a Bondi Junction mall before he was shot dead by a lone female police officer responding at the scene.
It was followed by an incident at a church in Wakeley, where popular Assyrian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and another priest were stabbed by another teenager in what authorities call a terrorist act.
The Daily Mail reported that both Cauchi and the attacker who stabbed Emmanuel had a history of possession of knives for potential use on others, with the teenager on a good behavior bond over a knife crime just three months ago.
"It's a combustible situation and I'm not going to sugarcoat it," Minns told Sydney radio station 2GB on Tuesday, April 16. "We increased knife laws about six months ago... but I'm not prepared to rule anything out right now."
The state government recently doubled the maximum penalties for possessing or wielding a knife in a public place.
Under legislation introduced to state parliament in June 2023, the Crimes Act was amended to include the offenses of having a knife in a public place or school and wielding a knife in a public place or school.
The maximum jail term for those offenses increased from two to four years while the maximum fine for possessing a knife increased from AU$2,200 to AU$4,400 ($1,409.01 to $2,818.02), and for wielding a knife to AU$11,000 ($7,045.06).
