Former prime minister adds to condemnation of Liberal Democrat senator for suggesting gun laws had turned Australia into ‘a nation of victims’

The former prime minister John Howard has shrugged off calls to relax gun laws, saying the changes his government brought in after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 had kept Australia safe.

On Thursday, the Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm said strict gun ownership laws had turned Australia into “a nation of victims”.

He said the siege after Man Horan Monis took 17 hostages in Sydney this week might have had a different outcome if people were allowed to carry concealed weapons.

Howard said that was a “very simplistic and flawed analysis”.

“The gun laws that were brought in after Port Arthur massacre made Australia a safer place,” Howard said. “Around the world those laws are praised.”

He said it was “an exercise in logic” that the more guns there were in society, the greater the number of shooting homicides.

Howard pushed through a number of restrictions following the mass shooting at Port Arthur in Tasmania, including the banning of automatic, semi-automatic and pump action guns, and a wide-ranging buy-back scheme for firearms.

“I have been convinced that what my government did in 1996 made Australia a safer place,” Howard said. “I would like to see fewer weapons in the community, not more.”

Leyonhjelm told ABC radio on Thursday: “That nutcase who held them all hostage wouldn’t have known that they were armed and bad guys don’t like to be shot back at.” Instead, he said: “We are all disarmed victims.”



The Liberal Democratic senator said hostages would have fared better if they had been allowed to carry concealed weapons, and he called for the nation to engage in a “calm, measured” discussion on self defence.

But the former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, who worked with Howard on the legislation that followed the Port Arthur massacre, said the debate on concealed weapons in the US was being hijacked by lobby groups.

“Debate will always go on in a good democracy but where it is built on a pack of lies from the NRA [National Rifle Association] it should be dealt with swiftly,” Fischer said.

“It is seductive nonsense to say concealed gun laws would somehow work here in Australia.”

Leyonhjelm earlier told ABC radio: “It would have been illegal for them [the cafe hostages] to have a knife, a stick, a pepper spray, a personal Taser, mace, anything like that for self defence.” He added: “To turn an entire population into a nation of victims is just unforgivable.”

Gun enthusiast Leyonhjelm has long called for less regulation and greater access to firearms.

“What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even Switzerland as well,” Leyonhjelm said, adding guns were more readily available in those jurisdictions.

On Wednesday, Tony Abbott announced an inquiry into the Sydney siege, which led to the deaths of hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson as well as gunman Man Haron Monis. Of particular concern is how Monis obtained his weapon despite being charged with a number of serious violent offences.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, rejected Leyonhjelm’s call to relax gun laws, saying there was scope for how the laws could be tightened in the wake of the attack.

“I don’t see how providing more guns into the community will make us safer,” Shorten said. “In America, their rate of gun deaths is over 10 per 100,000 people, or over 100 deaths per million people. In Australia, its less than one per 100,000 Australians. Our rate of gun deaths for the same populations proportionately, is far less.”

The acting Greens leader, Adam Bandt, labelled the siege Abbott’s “Port Arthur moment”. “In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre John Howard did the right thing,” Bandt said, referring to the former prime minister’s tightening of gun laws after the 1996 shooting. “Tony Abbott needs to take a leaf out of John Howard’s book.”

Bandt wanted the government to implement “positive reforms” and rejected Leyonhjelm’s call to relax gun laws. “The idea that we will make Australia safer by becoming more like the United States … and giving more people access to guns just beggars belief.”

The head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Brian Owler, said shooting deaths and injuries were a “growing problem”, particularly in places like western Sydney.

“I think it would be a very bad to suggest that we would be loosening gun laws. You only have to look at the statistics from the United States and compared to Australia to know that we’re a much safer society by having less guns on the streets ... I think loosening the gun laws is a ridiculous reaction to the problem that we have seen and the sadness we have seen with the Sydney siege,” Owler said.

The attorney general, George Brandis, said he suspected the gun used by Monis in the attack was banned under the Port Arthur changes, but was waiting on the outcome of the investigation before drawing conclusions. “The question is not if the laws are tough enough, but the way in which the laws are enforced,” Brandis said.