Obtaining a New “Individual License—Hunting”: Summary Outline
23/4/2025
After seeing all the (mis)information in the newspapers and the confused and often incorrect ‘help’ on Facebook I decided to put together this little post outlining the basics involved in applying for one of the new “Individual License—Hunting” licenses per the new firearms legislation (2024) in Western Australia.
Where useful, I have added in links to the related PDF documents on the W.A. Police Licensing Enforcement Division’s web page.
I am assuming here that you already have compliant storage for your firearms.
As from the 31st of March 2025 all existing firearms licenses were cancelled. The only reason you have not had a visit from the police to ‘seize’ you firearms is that we were all automatically issued with a Transitional Authority (here). Basically, from the 31/3/2025 all the ‘old’ firearms licenses were deemed to no longer exist and were replaced with the Transitional Authority. On the renewal date of our no-longer-valid firearms licenses this Transitional Authority will be cancelled. Hence, if something isn’t done before then … well … it won’t end well.
The following outline only applies to someone working towards obtaining an “Individual License—Hunting” license. My outline does not relate to any of the other new license types, such as:
Competition and/or Club
Paintball
Professional
Collector
Primary Producer
Business
Etc
So that I don’t have to keep writing “Individual License—Hunting” to refer to the new license that you need to obtain to keep your firearms I am going to use the abbreviation Hunting License.
Outline
Finding a suitable property owner
In order to successfully apply for one of these new Hunting Licenses to transfer your firearms to you first need to have found a suitable property owner. A suitable property owner would be someone who has a property of about 250 acres or more—under some circumstances the property can be smaller than 250 acres depending on the power/calibre of your firearm(s)—who genuinely have vermin on that property that need to be hunted/controlled.
When the property owner applies for their permission to then give you permission(s) or authorities it will be checked that they do, in fact, have a vermin problem involving the stated vermin. If there are issues with this check then they will not be issued with permission to give hunters authority to hunt vermin on their property.
Property Owner’s Details Need to be Current
Before proceeding, your chosen suitable property owner needs to ensure that their details with the Department of Transport and Landgate are current and correct. They also need to know the Landgate “Certificate of Title” details for their property.
See more here.
Property Owner Needs to Get Registered
When you find a suitable property owner you then need to buy a carton of beer, or, if they prefer, about four bottles of a nice red wine. If they don’t drink then I suggest crayfish.
Then you need to get them to use the new Firearms Portal (here) to register their property (notes here) and apply for the necessary approval to issue Written Authorities for hunters to go onto their property and hunt the designated vermin.
I have used the term Written Authority/Written Authorities because that is what the documentation used to call the required permission. However some of the more recently updated PDFs on the police site now also use the term Hunting Permission(s). However, I have been told that the portal still refers to these permissions as Written Authorities.
The process of a property owner registering their property via the portal can be stressful and cause significant levels of anger. It requires them having a “Strong Level” government issued digital myID. Beware that evidence from Facebook suggests this process can lead to divorce.
This is where you deploy the carton of beer or the four bottles of red wine, or light the BBQ and put the crayfish on, or, in some cases, all three.
There is a video on Youtube that will be of no use whatsoever in helping you with this, but I still suggest you watch it (here). This was done by Bevan Steelo from Steelo’s gun shop in Narrogin. It will provide you with some insights into how this process of logging into the portal might go.
You May Need to See Your G.P.
This part is a tad confusing. I am not sure if someone who already has/had a firearms license needs to complete the Firearms Authority Health Assessment (FAHA) or not. The first point in the clip below seems to say that we all need to do the FAHA. But then the second point seems to contradict this.
So, make of this what you will. But I am thinking that it will be necessary to complete this step. However, I bet hardly any G.P.s are aware that they are going to get 80,000 or so visits from license holders needing to do this.
The full document is here.
Let me know in the comments what you think this means.
Firearms Safety Training
This item is in the same category as the one above.
I am not sure if us existing firearms license holders (although they are technically all cancelled) actually need to complete the training course talked about in the clip below.
The full document is here.
As for the item above, let me know in the comments what you make of this.
Get a Written Authority/Hunting Permission
Once your suitable property owner gets registered, and it is my understanding this can take as long as 10 days for all the background checks to be completed, then you are on your way. I should point out at this stage that to the best of my knowledge, at the date of me writing this, nobody I know of has successfully managed to register their property as required.
But ignoring that, armed (excuse the pun) with their new firearms portal login credentials now you get them to go back into the portal and issue you with a Written Authority/Hunting Permission.
Applying For Your New License
Armed (sorry again) with your freshly minted Written Authority, which, as I have never seen one of these, I assume is just some kind of reference number or the like, you then now log into the portal yourself.
Good luck with this. You will likely need a relatively new Australian Passport with a good picture of you on it and someone handy nearby to take a good in-focus non-motion-blurred non-fisheye (i.e., you generally can’t use the selphy camera for this) picture of you with your mobile phone. I wish this was a joke … but it isn’t.
Once you obtain your “Strong Level” myID and get logged into the firearms portal you can then start the application for a Hunting License using the Written Authority you now have from the property owner and along with your old (completely useless since the 31/3/2025) firearms license.
As I don’t know anyone who has done this yet I have no idea what happens next. I assume that if there are no issues then the firearms on your old cancelled license will be magically transferred over to your new Hunting License. But I suspect there are a few things that could go wrong, such as:
You have too many rifles on your old cancelled license for the Written Permission that you have from your friendly property owner—maybe their property is not big enough for 15 firearms—e.g., properties up to 1,500 acres are, with some flexibility, limited to five firearms.
One or more of your existing firearms is overkill for the vermin on the property for which you have the Hunting Permission—that lever action 35/70 is too much gun for rabbits.
Your .243 cannot be used on a property that is only 250 acres.
You get the idea.
Well I hope this is of some use to someone. And if you have any refinements, insights, corrections, or updates then please leave comments so I can update the main post.
Edit: This Facebook post link will take you to the “Western Australia Firearms Licence Holders” Facebook page that covers some interesting points. The post itself links to a Youtube video made to help property owners through the steps to register their properties. You will need a Facebook login to open this link.
Edit 2: This link goes to a Youtube video by the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (WA branch) that is worth watching. It is 35 minutes. However, they do miss a few key points like the required medical and the training. While I typically don’t “Subscribe” to Youtube channels this might be one channel worth subscribing to.
Edit 3: Written Authorities need to be renewed every year. They are not perpetual.
Edit 4: Property owners cannot get a license for, or use a firearm on their own property, unless they register their property via the portal and then issue themselves with a Written Authority.
Edit 5: Most people, if not all, are going to require an Australian Passport to achieve a “Strong Level” myID digital ID. Be aware that if you don’t already have a passport it can take up to four weeks and $500 to obtain one.