A former state premier who in 1987 prophetically predicted there would be a massacre in Tasmania – almost nine years before the Port Arthur carnage – has spoken out against One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Barrie Unsworth was in his final months as the New South Wales Labor premier, more than 31 years ago, when a gun summit was called in Canberra, with representatives from every state. In less than a year, four mass shootings had occurred, in Sydney, Melbourne and the Northern Territory.
This was an era when gun shops across Australia sold powerful semi-automatic weapons for just $295.
Former New South Wales premier Barrie Unsworth (pictured) in 1987 prophetically predicted there would be a massacre in Tasmania nine years before the Port Arthur carnage
Then Prime Minister Bob Hawke had called state premiers and senior ministers to Old Parliament House in November 1987, three months after seven people were shot dead in Melbourne’s Hoddle Street massacre.
A month earlier, a man at Canley Vale, in Sydney’s south-west, had killed five members of one family.
Angered by the spate of gun massacres in their states, Victoria’s Labor premier John Cain and Mr Unsworth pushed for national gun laws banning self-loading rifles.
After hours of talks, Queensland’s National Party government and Tasmania’s Liberal attorney-general John Bennett remained opposed to any kind of national consensus to ban semi-automatic and automatic weapons.
In frustration, Mr Unsworth agreed to Mr Hawke’s suggestion he front the media on the steps of Old Parliament House.
‘It will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get gun law reform in Australia,’ he told reporters.
Eight years and five months later, in April 1996, Martin Bryant gunned down 35 people at Port Arthur, a former penal colony turned popular tourist attraction in southern Tasmania on a Sunday afternoon.
Little more than eight years later, in April 1996, Martin Bryant gunned down 35 people at Port Arthur in southern Tasmania (Broad Arrow Cafe car park pictured after the carnage)
Mr Unsworth, who turns 85 next month, told Daily Mail Australia in a rare media interview he regretted saying it.
‘I said that. I regret having said it and certainly some years later, of course, we had Port Arthur,’ he said.
‘You could see that Bryant would have had some psychiatric problem to go around and kill all those people.
‘I just regret that I said that but you’ve got to understand the history of the movement against the proliferation of guns.’
The former premier also revealed a friend of his had hidden under a table during the Port Arthur massacre.
‘Port Arthur was horrific,’ he said.
‘A friend of mine’s wife was hiding under a table and was wounded at Port Arthur but there were 35 people killed.’
The morning day after that massacre, this reporter witnessed Mr Unsworth looking ashen-faced as he bought petrol from his local BP service station at South Turramurra, on Sydney’s Upper North Shore.
Mr Unsworth recalled why he had expressed his frustration in November 1987, after he had lobbied Mr Hawke for a national gun summit.
‘We argued all day – this is in the Old Parliament House – that there should be a national approach banning and removing from sale military-style weapons and self-loading rifles,’ he said.
‘That’s what people were doing, they were killing people with rapid-fire weapons.
‘We couldn’t get agreement and the Tasmanian was particularly obstinate.
Mr Unsworth, who turns 85 next month, told Daily Mail Australia in a rare media interview he regretted saying in 1987 there would be a massacre in Tasmania (Seascape Guesthouse near Port Arthur where two people were killed before the main carnage at the tourist site)
‘And Hawke said to me, “We’re not getting anywhere. Go out and speak to the media”.
‘I stood on the front steps of Old Parliament House in Canberra and I said, “We’re just not getting anywhere” and I was mindful of the fact the main objector was the Tasmanian.
‘I just said, “We certainly won’t get anywhere with a national approach to this and unless there’s a shooting in some small place in Tasmania”.’
Mr Unsworth, who now lives on Sydney’s northern beaches, has spoken out against One Nation leader Pauline Hanson for wrongly claiming, in an Al Jazeera hidden-camera documentary, his words had been said in Parliament.
‘Nobody seems to be able to research it, particularly Pauline Hanson,’ he said.
‘What was said was not said in Parliament. There’s other people who have misquoted the situation.’
As Prime Minister Bob Hawke (pictured right with wife Hazel and his treasurer Paul Keating) in 1987 had called state premiers and senior ministers to Old Parliament House for a national gun summit
Mr Unsworth said One Nation appealed to voters who were ‘alienated from the major parties’.
‘We’ve now got to deal with the attitude of the constituency and that’s where One Nation appeals to some people,’ he said.
‘Not everybody takes the trouble to study what One Nation’s all about.’
Mr Unsworth said his 1987 comments were made during an era when automatic and semi-automatic machine guns were selling in gun shops for $295.
‘It was possible to buy a Chinese-made AK47. An AK47 is a Russian military weapon,’ he said.
‘You could buy them in gun shops for $295, probably all over Australia.
‘It’s a rapid-fire weapon which the Russians developed to defeat the Germans.
‘I had served in the citizens’ military forces and I had fired 302 rifles, I knew a little bit about guns, and I agreed wholeheartedly that military weapons should be banned.’
Mr Unsworth has spoken out against One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured with her chief-of-staff James Ashby) for wrongly claiming, in an Al Jazeera hidden-camera documentary (pictured), his words had been said in Parliament
The former Labor leader went on to lose the March 1988 election, months after banning self-loading rifles in the wake of massacres in Sydney and Melbourne.
Cessnock in the Hunter Valley voted Liberal for the first time in its 68-year history as a Labor electorate as the Unsworth government lost a swathe of country seats.
Mr Unsworth maintains he lost the election honourably to Liberal leader Nick Greiner, who undid his Labor government’s ban on semi-automatic weapons.
Gunman Martin Bryant (pictured) went on a rampage at Port Arthur, eight years and four months after Barrie Unsworth predicted there would be a massacre in Tasmania before Australia had national gun laws
He is particularly incensed at the American National Rifle Association for using his prophetic 1987 quotes in propaganda material to suggest the Port Arthur massacre was a conspiracy.
‘If you look at the National Rifle Association’s website, they quote me, they name me, and it’s the NRA that said it was a conspiracy, Port Arthur, “You’ve only got to look at what was said in 1987”,’ he said.
‘You’ve seen the NRA up on Tuesday night. They’re evil.’
On Tuesday, the ABC aired the Al Jazeera documentary showing Senator Hanson’s chief-of-staff James Ashby and One Nation’s Queensland leader Steve Dickson talking about the possibility of accepting $20 million from the NRA.
Additional footage from How To Sell A Massacre is airing tonight, featuring Senator Hanson suggesting the Port Arthur massacre was a government conspiracy to take away guns.
‘An MP said it would actually take a massacre in Tasmania to change the gun laws in Australia,’ Senator Hanson told Al Jazeera reporter Rodger Muller, who had posed as the founder of the non-existent Gun Rights Australia lobby group.
Addressing the media on Thursday afternoon, Senator Hanson claimed the ‘Islamist’ Al Jazeera network had ‘heavily edited’ her comments on Port Arthur which ‘do not reflect how I feel about those tragedies’.
‘There is no question in my mind that Martin Bryant was the only person responsible for the murders of 35 innocent lives and my belief stands today that he should have faced the death penalty,’ she said.
Addressing the media on Thursday afternoon, Senator Hanson claimed the ‘Islamist’ Al Jazeera network (footage of her with undercover journalist Rodger Muller) had ‘heavily edited’ her comments on Port Arthur which ‘do not reflect how I feel about those tragedies’
While Australia hasn’t had a gun massacre since Port Arthur, it had suffered a series of shootings after that 1987 gun summit in Canberra.
This included the Strathfield massacre, in Sydney’s inner-west, in August 1991 when seven people were shot in a plaza.
It was one of nine gun massacres, defined as the death of four or more people, that had occurred after Mr Unsworth had called in vain for national gun laws.
The 1996 Port Arthur massacre led to national gun laws banning semi-automatic and automatic weapons, which were spearheaded by a newly-elected Liberal Prime Minister John Howard.
Mr Unsworth, who has been a Labor Party member for 63 years, now prefers to hand out how-to-vote cards rather than speak with the media.
‘I’ve seen a fair bit but the good old days are over,’ he said.
‘I’m 85 years old, I am not getting involved in front line politics.’