Australians over 40 can identify with the grief gripping New Zealand just now. We felt it in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, when 35 people were murdered and dozens more wounded at the popular holiday location in Tasmania. Just as in Christchurch, the Port Arthur killer was a 28-year-old loner with no criminal record armed with semi-automatic weapons.

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In terms of numbers, the Christchurch shooting is much larger, with a death toll of at least 50. But the scale of this new calamity is even worse if the numbers are considered in context. In the 1990s Australia had about 350 homicides a year, so the Port Arthur massacre was a more than a month’s worth of homicides occurring on one day. New Zealand is a much smaller nation with usually about 50 homicides a year. This tragedy represents a whole year’s homicides for the whole country, occurring on one day in Christchurch.

As well as grief and horror, Australians in 1996 were overtaken by outrage and disgust as citizens realised how easily semi-automatic weapons could be obtained. Even prime minister John Howard was shocked to discover the weakness of our gun laws. Our elected legislators, whose first responsibility was to keep the population safe, had ignored years of recommendations from experts about closing the deadly loopholes. Now New Zealanders are experiencing that same rude awakening.