Former prime minister John Howard, whose reforms to gun laws in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre spared Australia from countless shootings, says a move to further restrict gun laws is an “attempted diversion”.
After 35 people were murdered by a lone gunman at Port Arthur, Tasmania, Mr Howard fundamentally reshaped Australia’s gun laws, introducing prohibitions on some weapons, restricting who could acquire weapons and funding buybacks to remove guns from the community.
Last night, national cabinet agreed to consider tightening Australia’s gun laws to limit ownership to citizens, limit how many guns a single person could own and further restrict what weapons could legally be possessed.
A national firearms register funded last term would also be accelerated, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed his desire for licences to be time-limited, so that a person granted a gun licence does not hold it “in perpetuity”.
That work will be led by NSW and West Australian premiers Chris Minns and Roger Cook, alongside state and territory police ministers and attorneys-general.
Mr Howard reflected on how much more death may have been enacted if his reforms had not been passed.
“I’ve reflected on a number of occasions since this terrible event how many more people would have died if the guns we outlawed … had still be available for evil people to use,” Mr Howard told Sky News.
Mr Howard said he supported the laws being strengthened “where sensible tightening can occur”.
But the former prime minister said the renewed push to tighten gun laws was a distraction, and he feared it would be made into an “excuse”.
He said the failure that had led to the Bondi massacre was not gun laws but weakness on antisemitism.
“If the prime minister, immediately after the attack of the 7th of October 2023, had called an all-points cymbals and drum national press conference, convened a meeting of the national cabinet, he could have done that … and had that on the day after the attack, you would not have had that obscene demonstration at the Opera House,” he said.
“From the beginning, people of the Jewish community would have felt there is somebody on their side. He didn’t do that.”
The Liberal luminary also blamed a “premature” decision to formally recognise a Palestinian state, despite final boundaries and a governing authority being unclear.
He said that was “needlessly provocative and dumb”, and done to soothe internal political pressure.
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