JOURNALIST:
When you look back to Port Arthur, a very troubled time, is there an image or a memory that stands out for you now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Going to the place straight afterwards and meeting people, also meeting survivors and medical people at the memorial service at the cathedral in Hobart, that's a memory I have very vividly.
JOURNALIST:
It must have been a testing time for you. You were pretty new as Prime Minister then. How testing a time was it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it was an unprecedented act of mass murder, the worst in Australia's history; arguably, with a single gun, the worst in the world. That's pretty extraordinary for Australia. We still had a streak of innocence about ourselves. It was an opportunity amidst all of the tragedy to try and do something about gun control. I'd always had a strong view that Australians shouldn't have guns unless they really needed them for their work or genuinely for their self-protection or they were farmers. I still hold that view very strongly and out of the tragedy we were able to get some very tough gun control laws that have made a big difference.
JOURNALIST:
How urgent in your mind at the time though was the need for gun law reform in the wake of what happened?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well clearly it was made a lot more urgent by what happened. It dramatised the need and I was determined to seize the moment and we were able to persuade the States to pass very tough gun control laws because this is a state matter. There were some misgivings, there was some criticism and there was a lot of difficulty but I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of Australians supported what we did.
JOURNALIST:
Speed was obviously a critical factor. Is that because it's difficult to change the approach on gun law reform and this was, in an awful sense, an opportunity?
PRIME MINISTER:
It was. It was a question, tragic though the moment was, of seizing the moment. It was a tragic moment, but if those people were not to have died in vain, if I can put it that way, the moment had to be seized.
JOURNALIST:
Each state passed their own legislation with various amendments, such as introducing minors' permits. Were you disappointed that there was a, perhaps a softening of the spirit of the agreement that you reached in those weeks following Port Arthur?
PRIME MINISTER:
I was a little bit disappointed, but the laws are overall much tougher and there has been not only a drop in the number of murders using guns, but also the number of gun-related deaths. And the figures the Institute of Criminology put out several years ago showed a very sharp drop. So it is unarguably the case that these laws have saved lives.
JOURNALIST:
Is there more to be done in the area of gun law reform?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there's always more that can be done at a state level yes, and we did a lot more in 2002-2003 with handguns. But we really must resolve as a nation never to go down the American path. There are many things about America I admire but I do not admire their gun culture. I think it's abhorrent, I think what it does it to facilitate murder. In anger, people will grab a weapon and shoot somebody. It takes a greater level of anger to use a knife or a tomahawk or a hammer.
JOURNALIST:
Ten years on, obviously the immediacy of it has passed. Has the horror diminished at all?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well because 10 years have gone by, it tends to recede into the background, but as we mark this macabre anniversary it is still something that leaves you speechless and searching for answers. 35 people. I remember getting a message from the then British Prime Minister John Major, he'd just gone through the tragedy of Dunblane, the massacre there, which seemed on an unprecedented scale. It was only a few weeks earlier and he actually said that in his message, I couldn't believe that a country that we feel very similar to, there would be a mass murder of the same or greater magnitude.
JOURNALIST:
In terms of your 10 years in office. Where do the gun reforms sit in terms of what you've achieved, the significance of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think in a social sense, they've been as great as anything the Government has done because they have unarguably made Australia safer. Not as safe as we would like, we still have a lot of violence, but there are fewer gun-related deaths, there are fewer gun-related murders; there are fewer gun-related suicides. And that has to be a good thing.
[ends]