Gun laws in Australia were remarkably different from state to state.
Western Australia had some of the strictest with any "military-style" semi-auto rifle unable to be owned, sold or transferred, even something as innocuous as the (hideous looking IMHO) .22LR Armscor M16-22 was not allowed because it vaguely resembles the M16.
Ex-military firearms other than bolt-actions were not legal for ownership unless they were licensed as historical/curio items (even museums had to comply with this law) and even with that they had to be demilled. Later the laws were changed to include the prevention of private ownership of any high-powered semi-auto rifle and semi-auto shotguns.
However, in Queensland it was perfectly legal to own any semi-auto that you could find for sale in the USA e.g. the AR10, the AR15, civilian versions of the M14 and the HK G3 & HK33 and so on. And also the L1A1. Queensland as well as New South Wales, were also notorious for lax registration of firearms.
So for example, in Western Australia, the person who wanted one had to obtain a licence/registration for that specific firearm and then go through the qualification process all over again for any additional firearms they wanted, whereas in Queensland and New South Wales, you only had to obtain a Shooters Permit from the local police and this entitled you to purchase any firearm in the gun shop.
One of my father's ex-Army mates who lived in New South Wales owned approximately 30 different firearms or more before the gun buyback.
Whether the gunshop kept a strict register of firearms sold (and their serial numbers) varied from shop to shop. And if you knew the right people you could buy ex-military rifles from places like East Timor or Pakistan - I've personally seen a Pakistani made G3 in private (and obviously, illegal) ownership in Western Australia in the 1990s that was bought in Queensland and smuggled into Western Australia. The laws in Western Australia were so restrictive (some would say anal) that groups lobbied for nearly a decade to allow paintball to be played as a sport in this state and even then there were still restrictions on private ownership of paintball guns (the government decided that they needed to be registered as firearms).
A number of rifles purchased legally in Queensland ended up being traded to locals in Papua New Guinea for marijuana. The guns were passed on to resistance groups in West Papua who were fighting against the Indonesian invasion of West Papua. This trade of guns from Australia for drugs from Papua New Guinea went on for several years and was only effectively ended with the federal government's 1996 gun buyback scheme where the federal government basically dictated what the future of gun ownership in Australia would be.
There was almost a 100% compliance with the handing in of registered but now restricted firearms. However, in Queensland and New South Wales there were many, many firearms that were never registered when they were legally purchased and the vast majority of these were not handed in.
So in some cases, you can still find semi-auto rifles for illegal sale in this country but you'll pay a premium for them and obtaining the ammunition can be a little problematic. A person who qualifies for the restricted licence category can legally purchase semi-autos such as the AR15 or L1A1 but the prices in those gunshops who stock them are almost as bad as the illegal prices e.g. the last price I saw for an AR15 was Au$5800 (around US$4900)
And a last few words on the Port Arthur massacre. The water here is very murky and further illustrates the lax laws that were in place in some states of this country.
Martin Bryant didn't shoot all 35 of the murder victims, some were stabbed and some were bludgeoned.
A live radio report after the massacre (that I personally heard on the day) quoted a security guard at the scene as saying that if security guards in Tasmania were allowed to carry guns, he could have stopped Bryant after the first few shootings - this was later removed from all broadcast lists and never played again.
The anti-gun fanatics and the government like to overlook all of that - it didn't fit with their agenda (you can see where my sympathies are, even without me stating that I have been a legal owner of registered firearms in Western Australia for over 20 years).
Bryant purchased his AR10 through a newspaper add but is thought to have bought his AR15 from a gunshop in Tasmania but he did not have a firearms license. He did however, have a sizeable inheritance of over US$400,000 and it's rumoured by some speculators (although there's no proof) that he offered a lot of money for the guns he bought.
The gunshop had bought the AR15 from the police of Victoria. The Victorian police had obtained the AR15 from either a gun amnesty or a confiscation and sold it along with hundreds of other firearms (obtained in the same manner) to gunshops in Tasmania to raise funds for the police service.
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