Anthony Albanese has deplored the “unspeakable horror” of the Port Arthur Massacre, as Australia marks 30 years since its worst mass shooting.
On 28 April, 1996, Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people and wounded a further 23 in a violent rampage across the Tasmanian tourist hotspot of Port Arthur.
The attack prompted snap gun laws outlawing semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns, heavily restricting firearm licenses, and rolling out a national buyback scheme that destroyed more than 650,000 firearms.
“Thirty years after the Port Arthur massacre, the terrible, indiscriminate cruelty of that day remains beyond understanding,” the Prime Minister said in a statement.
“Australia pauses today to remember the 35 people whose lives and futures were so
pitilessly stolen from them just because they happened to be there.
“We think of everyone whose world was shattered by the loss of those who had been the
bright centre of their lives, their love left desperately wrapped around an absence.”
Among those killed were six-year-old Alannah and three-year-old Madeline Mikac.
Bryant, fleeing the historic grounds of Port Arthur, stopped where the young girls were walking with their mother, Nanette.
He fatally shot Ms Mikac and Madeline before gunning down Alannah as the older daughter ran away.
Left widowed and childless, Walter Mikac led the charge for gun reforms in the wake of the massacre and co-founded The Alannah and Madeline Foundation to support child victims of violent crimes.
Reflecting on “the extraordinary courage that emerged from shattering grief”, Mr Albanese praised Mr Mikac for channelling “his devastating loss into a call for national action on gun
reform, writing to Prime Minister Howard with a message that echoes through the decades:
‘Be strong, act now’”.
“Australia is a better place because the government and the parliament of the day came
together to answer Walter’s call,” Mr Albanese said.
“This is what we hold on to – the abiding memory that somehow amid the most terrible
darkness the best of humanity found a way to shine.
“Three decades on from that day when our nation stopped, let us stand together as we stood together then, united in love for everyone who never came home.”
Bryant, now 58, is serving 35 life sentences at Hobart’s Risdon Prison.
