The senior officer was correct Yohan, you should not need the B709B, before, about 20 years or so back, you did need this doc for everything, but as a follow on from the Port Arthur black op and after John Howard bought back a whole heap of firearms, NSW set out to alter knife legislation.
The first drafts of the new legislation were ludicrous, if introduced they would have resulted in kids wanting pancakes for breakfast at Maccas eating them with their fingers.
Well, a lot of people got pretty upset about this, amongst those people were members of the Antique Arms Collectors Society of Australia, of which I, & a number of legal & para legal people, & also including a judge were/are members.
Reasoned correspondence with politicians and bureaucrats followed & eventually we got new legislation where the focus had shifted from possession to use.
At the moment I think I can say that our NSW knife legislation is reasonable & intelligently drafted.
However, the early days after introduction of this new use-focused legislation were --- in my eyes --- like something out of Monty Python.
For example:- in NSW one must not carry a knife unless it is being carried for a legally identifiable reason. Seems fair to me.
However, the rural town of Goulburn is home to our police training college. One, or maybe more than one, of the instructors at this college had the idea that it would be a useful training exercise for the young gentlemen & women who were training to be police officers to raid the local stock auction & take legal action against all people at that auction who were in possession of a knife.
Australian stockmen, graziers, farmers, in fact virtually all rural workers have a pocket knife --- usually a 3 blade premium stock knife permanently attached to their belt, they put their trousers on in the morning, those trousers come fitted with a 3 blade premium stock knife.
A very great number of people were much offended by the police actions on that day.
I do not know what the final outcome of this idiocy was, but these days it does seem that our police officers have got the right approach.
As you comment Yohan, laws can be reasonable, but the way in which those laws are enforced can sometimes be idiotic.
Customs procedures at Sydney airport have changed a lot over the years, & although I do not really need the B709B these days, I normally do carry one, just in case I get an officious Customs officer.
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