ALR782 Public Affairs & Opinion: Port Arthur Massacre Case Study

This case study examines the public affairs response to the Port Arthur massacre in Australia and the subsequent gun control legislation. It highlights the role of key social actors, including Prime Minister John Howard, and the influence of public sentiment in driving policy change. The study details the implementation of a nationwide gun buyback program and the tightening of gun ownership laws. It also explores the lessons learned for public affairs managers, emphasizing the importance of understanding public emotions and framing policies that benefit the general population. The case study concludes that the gun reform laws, enacted swiftly after the tragedy, significantly reduced firearm-related deaths and suicides in Australia.

Running head: PUUBLIC RELATIONS
Public Relations
Name of the Student:
Name of the University
Author Note:

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Introduction- Public relations can be described as a process of public relations that
organizations, individuals and the companies will be using to build a beneficial and cordial
relationship with the public. The main objective of public relations is to maintain a positive
reputation so that a brand image can be maintained and the strategic relationship can also be
bettered. The positive relationship is maintained with the stakeholders, employees, investors,
partners, prospective customers and the general public. There are various type of public relations
and it includes the customer relationship, internal relations, community relations, government
relations, investor relations, media relations, and marketing relations (Grunig 2013). This study
will be emphasized on the government relations and it focuses on the representation of the brand
to the government with respect to the fulfilment of the policies like the employee protection,
consumer protection, fair competition, and corporate social responsibility.
The incident of Port Arthur Mass shootings- on April 28th 1996, a person named Martin
Bryant who is an Australian resident ate his lunch at the Broad Arrow café in the Port Arthur,
Tasmania. After finishing his meal, the person returned his tray and removed his semi-automatic
rifle from his bag and the started to open fire. The massacre killed 35 people and 23 were found
to be wounded and this incident turned into a worst mass shooting in the Australian history.
There have been previous incidents of shooting in Australia but this Port Arthur Mass Shooting
was of a high magnitude. The controversy- it has been seen that there was a widespread
opposition during the time of legislation in Tasmania and Queensland and it is important to
mention that the traditionally Tasmania and Queensland were opposed to the legislations on gun
control. At that time the United States National Rifle Association worked with the gun rights
activists that opposed the legislation owning the guns (Dean et al. 2015). Arguments were raised
by the people that highlighted that guns do not kill people and called the legislations as an insult

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to the huge number of people that abide the gun laws. While at the same time, people that were
proponents of gun control have highlighted that even before the massacre of Port Arthur, the
people that committed the gun violence did not have ant psychiatric or criminal record. Such
people also added that it a baseless to compare a person with semiautomatic rifle with the one
who is brandishing a knife. The advocates of gun control have pointed that there were evidences
of successful gun control (Calamur 2019). After the massacre the coalition government worked
towards the engaging the territories and the states to enact an identical law. The move was an
attempt towards hindering the occurrence of occurring of the event like the Port Arthur in
Australia. The measure taken by the conservative federal government were found to be opposing
by the conservative state governments as well as by the gun owners. Later on a gun amnesty and
a gun but back plan was executed that the allowed to surrender their weapons to the authorities
without facing the legal consequences. The people were offered that the firearms will be bought
back and it will be submitted to the police and later on destroyed (Chapman 2013).
Impact of the social actors- Australia’s new prime minister at that time was the John
Howard and he is considered to be one of the conservative leader in the decade. Just after the 12
days of the shooting, the major act of leadership of John Howard came to the forefront and his
government for the first time in the history announced a nationwide reform of the gun laws. The
attitudes of the regulations and the firearms transformed the scenario overnight. The new
legislation brought to the forefront and all the major states had agreed to it which addressed the
mass shootings. The licensing of the gun owners was tightened, shot guns were banned along
with the rapid fire rifles and the remaining firearms were registered so that a uniform national
standard can be maintained (Chapman and Alpers 2013). This legislation was based on a
federally funded buyback of the guns and this kind of legislation was never conducted before. It

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is important to note that the national government of Australia banned the import of the semi-
automatic weapons and the automatic weapons. While gun control was never in the election
manifesto of the Howard campaign and he was the head of the liberal party that supported the
status quo on the guns. Furthermore, the legislative push of Howard was successful for several
reasons and also due to the clever design of gun buyback. Howard focussed on the reward
mechanism and for this case the people were paid for handing their guns that were lying off in
their basements. The judge of the Martin Bryant’s trial case has highlighted that it was only the
magnitude of the atrocity that shook the base of the foundations in the Australian Society. There
was another factor that played a role in this case is the speed with which the liberals and Howard
responded to the situation (Newman and Head 2017). The associate professor of the University
of Sydney said that the gun lobby was actually the ruling lobby in Australia. Being a
conservative politician, Howard pushed forward the left wing policy that were able to gain
support from the conservative base and as well as from the opposition party. Guns were actually
controlled by the states and the Howard had the responsibility of convincing the buyback plan.
The two powerful states of Western Australia and the Queensland initially were opposing the
legislation. However, these states later on these states were agreed because the residents of these
states were willing to accept the gun reform legislation. The women were on the final part, and
they were actually upheld the buyback scheme which led to its success. The grandmothers,
mothers, wives and the daughters rallied together and took the responsibility of persuasion and
even hounded their grandsons, brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers to cash in their weapons.
Women constituted about 52 percent of the voters and it was more than the voice of the nation
(Chapman, Alpers and Jones, 2016).

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Lessons learnt for the public affairs manager- Following the announcement of the 1996,
the legislation was specifically designed for the gun massacre. After the landmark legislation,
there has been reduction in the number of the shootings, and it is important to mention that the
due to the intervention of the Australian government, the firearm suicide rates have dropped by
80 percent. The evidences from the gun law reform suggested that the Australians are less likely
to get killed from a firearm. Even before taking major public health interventions, it is important
to note that the death rates in Australia from the usage of firearm is significantly less. Study have
indicated that the death rates that have occurred from the firearm suicides, firearm homicides and
firearm deaths have reduced after the legislation of the gun laws. The National Firearms
Agreement entered into an agreement that was enacted immediately after the massacre of
Tasmania. This led to the destruction of the millions of firearms and the it is the third of the
country’s private gun stock (Lankford 2016). The agreement included a uniform type of the gun
registration and the banning the usage of the pump action gun and the semi-automatic rifles from
the civilians. Thus, it can be said that the general populations are the one that were benefitted
from the legislation that was framed in the later part of the 1996. The public affairs manager
must learn from the incident that to maintain a positive relationship with the general public it is
necessary to frame laws that will be beneficial for them both in the long term and short term. The
gun reform laws were framed at the right moment and it is one of the best decisions taken during
the times of crisis. It is important to note that the public affairs managers must be able to utilize
the emotions of the people that can be actually utilized in taking landmark decisions. From the
point of view of the leaders it is necessary to not to tamper with the feelings of the pubic as the
democratic government is actually for the benefit of the general public and their support during
the times of crisis (Peters 2013).

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Conclusion- From the above discussion it can be concluded that, there have been
previous incidents of shooting in Australia but this Port Arthur Mass Shooting was of a high
magnitude. After the massacre the coalition government worked towards the engaging the
territories and the states to enact an identical law. The two powerful states of Western Australia
and the Queensland initially were opposing the legislation. However, these states later on these
states were agreed because the residents of these states were willing to accept the gun reform
legislation. The licensing of the gun owners was tightened, shot guns were banned along with the
rapid fire rifles and the remaining firearms were registered so that a uniform national standard
can be maintained.

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Reference
Calamur, K., 2019. Australia's Lessons on Gun Control. [online] The Atlantic. Available at:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/australia-gun-control/541710/
[Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
Chapman, S. and Alpers, P., 2013. Gun-related deaths: how Australia stepped off “the American
path”. Annals of internal medicine, 158(10), pp.770-771.
Chapman, S., 2013. Over our dead bodies: Port Arthur and Australia's fight for gun control.
Sydney University Press.
Chapman, S., Alpers, P. and Jones, M., 2016. Association between gun law reforms and
intentional firearm deaths in Australia, 1979-2013. Jama, 316(3), pp.291-299.
Dean, R.G., Dean, J., Heller, G.Z. and Leader, L.R., 2015. A mass shooting at Port Arthur,
Tasmania, Australia: a study of its impact on early pregnancy losses using a conception time-
based methodology. Human reproduction, 30(11), pp.2671-2676.
Grunig, J.E., 2013. Excellence in public relations and communication management. Routledge.
Lankford, A., 2016. Public mass shooters and firearms: a cross-national study of 171 countries.
Violence and victims, 31(2), pp.187-199.
Newman, J. and Head, B., 2017. The national context of wicked problems: Comparing policies
on gun violence in the US, Canada, and Australia. Journal of comparative policy analysis:
research and practice, 19(1), pp.40-53.
Peters, R., 2013. Rational Firearm Regulation. REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE, p.195.

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