John Howard reflects on Port Arthur massacre 30 years on

0:00What was the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history, victims and dignitaries will gather at the historic Port Arthur side in Tasmania today to mark 30 years since the massacre when a gunman shot dead 35 people and wounded many others. In the days and weeks that followed the tragedy, the then Prime Minister John Howard was part of efforts to push through tough new gun control measures. John Howard, apparently on the advice of his security staff, took the unprecedented step for a Prime Minister of wearing an anti-strap nor jacket, the outline visible beneath his coat. The whole thing smells to me of a stunt to try to arouse public sympathy for the Prime Minister and his stand against shooters. Right now we have the biggest public descent Australia has ever seen with a government decision. I'm not going to give up any guns that they're going to take off me. Are you going to give yours up? Get rid of the guns and you stop homicides.

1:00Get rid of the guns and you stop rubberies. What a load of unadulterated bloody garbage. Listening to you on the telly, you have said and so has what's he known, flak jacket Johnny. Flak jacket Johnny Howard, you have said that it is a close shop that we cannot get those weapons for those legitimate shooters. I can all just shout a offensive language but I don't forget the passes of the bait very far. I have been here to listen and to hear this is where this debate has got right off the rut. Sim Fischer has displayed more guts on this issue than anybody. We need to turn away from heading in the direction of the USA and thank God we're not there yet. It would be simply unforgivable if in the wake of Port Arthur we don't go for uniform tighter gun laws. If it's a political process that is yours, then it is the cause of the situation that I can fight for like seven battered machines.

2:03Some of the sounds of the political aftermath of Port Arthur, well the former Prime Minister John Howard, John Me earlier. At John Howard, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast. Thank you. I take you back to this time. You got the call at home at Curibilly House on the afternoon of April the 28th. Was it immediately clear to you how deadly and significant this attack was at Port Arthur? Not immediately but it pretty quickly became apparent that it was a tragedy of a special magnitude. I think I was first alluded to it by my press secretary Tonya Leary and I naturally turned on the television coverage and it was just extraordinary and it rocked the country. Is there other way I could describe it? Three days later you were in Tasmania at the site and met with victims and community members. How challenging was that as a leader trying to console those who had been directly affected?

3:09Well, I told immediately that I had to go to Tasmania and the Premier of Tasmania. I suggested an idea and I really needed suggestion but I was happy to do so and I did make a point of ringing Kim Beesley who was the leader of the Labor Party and the opposition and also Cheryl Kerner and I suggested that they should accompany me so we could demonstrate from the beginning that this would be a bipartisan response and it was about politics and I'd just been elected to 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 in this year to bet you use it? Within a week or so a cabinet had signed off on the landmark firearms agreement including a buyback scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars that scrapped around 650,000

4:15weapons. Were you confident then in the face of some significant opposition that most Australians were with you on that move? I was certainly confident that the great majority of Australian supporters what we did but there were pockets of opposition and there were a lot of people who were farmers and in the regions who took the attitude that they'd always handled their firearm there as possible way that they needed them for their work and to run their businesses and it was a bit unreasonable what we were trying to do but what I proposed and I had to get the cooperation of the states because the only the rest constitutional power the federal government had was to control the importation of automatic and semi-automatic weapons and there were the weapons that we were seeking to prohibit and we had to get the states now the states were in the main helpful but there was understandably a lot of concern on our cyber politics in

5:26some of the national party seats and the way in which Kim Fischer is no longer with us and John Anderson leader and deputy leader of the national party and Rob Dorvich the national party premier and Queensland the way that they cooperated despite the difficulties they had with some of their own constituency was quite magnificent and I think would be sent and said again this morning that without their cooperation it would have been very very difficult. One of the enduring images of that time in politics was you attending a rally at one rally wearing a bulletproof vest what lessons did you take from that my federal police detail came in sentence they'd got advice from the victoria police that somebody had made a very explicit

6:31threat that they were shooting at the rally if I turned up and their advice was to wear this bulletproof vest not that they were convinced it was going to happen how could you even know or not that or something like that and I remember my senior political adviser and close friend Graham Morris he'd both you better do this and I said I'm a careful with that thing I don't feel unsafe and he persisted and he came back to me the next day he said you've got to wear it I said why you said I'll tell you why he said if you do get shot he said I've got to tell you net my wife and and I'm going to explain to her why it is we allowed you to appear without it and I very reluctantly put it on and I felt a fool up with stepping down there because I never really felt unsafe in space and although that was a very hostile rally I didn't think anybody was going to try and shoot me and after the rally was over I went down and talked to a lot of

7:31people in the crowd some of them worked a lot others worked so polite but that parcel of having life in Australia do you believe Australian governments have lost the ability to do difficult things oh no I have not I well I don't I mean I think I am specifically critical of this government which is fading through act about anti-semitism after the terrible events of October 2023 but I'm not going to say generally thing government started to think it's easy when you're out of it to say that and I don't want to say it was difficult to see we took the truth is that people felt some of our own supporters got left out felt we thought they reached and we hadn't over reached it was the right thing to do and all the evidence that emerged since is that they were very effective changes and I often seek to myself if we hadn't

8:36taken automatic semi-automatic weapons out of the system the death toll and that terrible event people Christmas at non-die might have been much worse in the wake of the Bondiatera attacker Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sought agreement on tightening regulations and a new national gun by-back scheme was he right to do that do you think well not if he saw that as a diversion from his responsibility to lead an effective campaign against anti-semitism now if there are loopholes in the law I'm in favor of posing but that's that wasn't the main issue the main issue to do is Bondi and was ultimately addressed when the establishment of the Royal Commission was of course anti-semitism not all states have signed on to the by-back scheme is that lack of consensus disappointing in the wake of such a tragedy well as I say that's not the main I mean anything

9:41that will tighten the laws on a uniform basis are to be done a bit it should be done but and clearly if you can't get consensus and the consensus that is sort of raised well that is disappointing but I don't think that's the main issue and I think it would be a mistake to allow that to become the main issue it's important that it's not the main issue John Howard thank you very much for being my guest this morning thank you thank you bye bye