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Alpers, Philip and Zareh Ghazarian. 2019 ‘Australia's 'Perfect Storm' of Gun Control: From Policy Inertia to World Leader.’ Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand. J. Luetjens, M. Mintrom and P. 't Hart, Eds (Chapter 9), p. 208. Canberra: ANU Press. 1 January

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A Policy Success?

Australia's reaction was immediate and strident: Port Arthur was the last straw. The earlier succession of mass shootings had made gun control a prominent public issue, but now widening coalitions for gun control ignited a wildfire campaign for law reform.

The nation's newly elected prime minister was John Howard, its most conservative leader in decades (see Robinson 2007). If any constituency might be forgiven for assuming the legal status quo, it was the rural and gun-owning rump of the Liberal–National Coalition that had swept him to power. Yet, less than two weeks after Port Arthur, Howard's government delivered a nationwide bipartisan gun law reform.

After decades of forcing politicians into repeated consultation, electoral weakness and delay, Australia's gun lobby was
outpaced, outflanked and outwitted by a leader with both the mandate and the personal conviction to move decisively within 12 remarkable days.

ID: Q15228

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