Thanks Dave, that is interesting, and your story about the broomstick sort of mirrors my experience with the NSW police about 10 years ago over transporting some operational semi-automatic firearms between Canberra and Greytown, Victoria, and back again. They would be in NSW for maybe 5 hours each way.
Government-owned (but not Defence), and in a government vehicle. Victoria said go for it, no problem, thanks for the phone call. NSW wanted an application for a ministerial exemption, told us that would take months to process, and were pretty abrupt about it.
The solution, silly as it may seem, was to consign them to a civilian transport company, which are apparently exempt in terms of transporting 'prohibited' weapons if they are packed in a sealed box!! Go figure that one out: I never could.
I'll look forward to hearing how things progress on that front.
Mike