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Port Arthur, 30th anniversary memorials

newsApr 28, 202622278

Survivors and officials gathered at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania for a 30th anniversary memorial, where survivor Jane Scholefield urged those still bearing scars to "keep love" while remembering the 35 people killed and 23 wounded in the 1996 massacre. The federal government announced sweeping firearm restrictions 12 days later, on May 10, 1996, and state governments had passed complementary laws by mid-1996. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told an interviewer there are "a lot of questions" about the 1996 attack and suggested it may have been a government conspiracy. The memorials reaffirmed survivors' calls for stronger gun-safety measures and underscored the massacre's continuing influence on Australian firearms policy.

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