Former prime minister John Howard has described the Port Arthur massacre as a “tragedy of a special magnitude” after reflecting on his government’s response to Australia’s worst mass shooting three decades on.
On April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant went on a violent rampage across one of Tasmania’s most popular tourist destinations, Port Arthur, and killed 35 people as well as wounding 23.
On Tuesday, the Liberal stalwart told the ABC the significance of the attack “pretty quickly became apparent” after he was informed of the incident by a staffer.
“I naturally turned on the television coverage, and it was just extraordinary, and it rocked the country. There’s no other way of describing it,” he said.
John Howard had been elected as prime minister a month prior to the attack. Picture: James Brickwood/ Pool via NewsWire
Mr Howard visited Port Arthur three days later and met with victims and community members.
“I felt immediately that I had to go to Tasmania … and I did make a point of ringing Kim Beazley, who was the leader of the Labor Party, of the opposition, and also (then-Australian Democrats leader) Cheryl Kernot.
“And I suggested that they should accompany me so we could demonstrate from the beginning that this would be a bipartisan response, that it wasn’t about politics.
“And I’d just been elected to be prime minister after a long period in opposition with a huge majority, and I developed a view pretty quickly that I had to do something significant.
“What’s the point of having a big majority unless you’re prepared to use it?”
The Port Arthur attack prompted a bipartisan push led by Mr Howard’s government to outlaw semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns, heavily restrict firearm licences, and implement a national buyback scheme.
The Port Arthur massacre is the worst mass shooting in Australia’s history.
He said he was confident “the great majority of Australians supported” the legislative response, but there was “understandably” a lot of concern on the conservative side of politics, particularly in some of the National Party seats.
But co-operation from National Party leaders, despite these difficulties in their own constituencies, “was quite magnificent”, Mr Howard said.
“And I frequently said to them, and I say it again this morning, that without their co-operation, it would have been very, very difficult,” he said.
Mr Howard also reflected on the famous moment he addressed a hostile crowd of gun owners at a rally in Victoria while wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit.
Former opposition leader Kim Beazley was invited by Mr Howard to visit the site of the massacre in 1996. Picture: Martin Ollman
“My (Australian Federal Police) detail came to me and said that they’d got advice from the Victoria Police that somebody had made a very explicit threat that they would shoot me (at) the rally if I turned up,” he said.
“Their advice was to wear this bulletproof vest … and I remember my senior political adviser and close friend, Grahame Morris, said, ‘Boss, you better do this’. And I said, ‘I’m not going to wear that thing. I don’t feel unsafe’. And he persisted.”
Mr Howard conceded he “felt (like) a fool” after reluctantly donning the safety vest.
“I never really felt unsafe … and although that was a very hostile rally, I didn’t think anybody was going to try and shoot me,” he said.
“And after the rally was over, I went down and talked to a lot of people in the crowd.
“Some of them were polite, others weren’t so polite. That is part and parcel of public life in Australia.”
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