Rod Emmerson: The heartache, turmoil and absolute dread of Port Arthur

Roaming the ruins of Tasmania's Port Arthur is a sobering experience.

I've made two pilgrimages there and on each occasion, been blessed with cloudless skies, millpond waters, manicured lawns and gardens, rich green landscapes dotted with the hint of spring colours. The picture postcard vistas belie its macabre history.

These now frail stone skeletal buildings stand as a sentinel to a period of history that saw these grounds as home to the most brutal of criminals Britain could possibly muster.

In the middle of all this damnation is a memorial to a more recent tragic event.

The 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, where a 28-year-old local apparently flipped out over a long-standing grudge involving a property dispute and went on a shooting rampage with an AR15 rifle, killing 35 people. Most of the slain were tourists to this corner of Australian history.

The youngest victim was Madeline Grace Mikac, just 3 years of age. For his barbaric act, the 28 year old is now 51 and serving 35 life sentences concurrently, with an additional 1035 years without parole.

The coincidental parallels with the Christchurch shootings are in lax gun laws; nationality of the alleged shooters; their similar age; the weapon of choice; New Zealanders among those killed and the age of the youngest victim.

Collectively, these acts of home-grown terrorism have cut short 85 innocent lives.

Rod Emmerson's comment on the Christchurch massacre.

I covered the Port Arthur tragedy as an editorial cartoonist, working from Rockhampton in Queensland, servicing a string of papers throughout the APN network and beyond. The grief, pain and suffering that we are all experiencing as a community is sadly, all too familiar.

What makes it worse, is that this vile calculated act in Christchurch allegedly was carried out by an Australian, on a very soft target. New Zealand is a welcoming, peaceful inclusive country - not without its own social ills, but a place that I have proudly called home for well over 15 years. It beggars belief that this poison has followed me here.

My experience of covering the Port Arthur aftermath is one of heartache, turmoil and absolute dread. It was of course, another time and another country. 1996 was an election year in Australia and the new Howard government had been in power a mere seven weeks when this atrocity occurred.

The Government promised immediate gun law reform and the wider community welcomed it, but with six state parliaments, two territorial parliaments and two federal houses of parliament, time was not all on Howard's side.

The resistance from rural communities, gun clubs, gun shops, gun owners and NRA- affiliated lobbyists managed to mobilise a terrifying campaign of fear-based hysteria that put the politicians and journalists on notice.

Mourners gather outside St. Davids Cathedral in Hobart on May 1, 1996, for the memorial service for the 35 killed during a shooting rampage in the nearby historic site of Port Arthur. Photo / AP

Like many of my contemporaries, I was subjected to death threats, warnings of beatings after work, and almost had 10 cubic metres of gravel dumped in my driveway, a mess averted by an alert truck driver.

My effigy was hung in a tree in Ipswich, and we lived daily with the threat of a drive-by attack on the family home. This sort of stuff rattles you to the core, but it also fills you with the adrenaline and conviction to barge on regardless. Such is the power of the pen and satire.

The 1996 March election was also the entry point for the Ipswich fish'n'chips shop owner, Pauline Hanson, who first stood on a Liberal Party ticket. She was sent packing at the last minute after her racially-charged campaign but won the seat as an independent.

Her maiden speech as the MP for Oxley was laced with racism, attacks on multiculturalism, Asian immigration and the Aboriginal community. It may well have appealed to the toothless underbelly but Australian communities and Asian countries were horrified. They reacted strongly, denouncing her diatribe.

Tim Fischer, the deputy Prime Minister, and many government ministers, condemned her tirade at every opportunity, especially in light of the trade connections with Asia. The elephant in the room through was none other than Prime Minister John Howard, whose silence was considered to be a formidable nod of approval.

Rod Emmerson's take on New Zealand gun laws after the Christchurch terror attack.

Thus the seed of hate was planted in Australia's conservative politics and it has done nothing but germinate, grow and spread like gorse across the political spectrum, spawning the likes of Fraser Anning. Hanson is now a regular welcome guest on morning TV chat shows and a 'go to' for comment on current affairs programs. Visual click-bait.

Off radar, Rashna Farrukh, a Muslim journalist based in Canberra with SkyNEWS Australia, handed in her resignation last Saturday morning. Her personal story appears in ABC online. Rashna cites the Jekyll and Hyde of SKYNEWS Australia and as she says, could no longer turn a blind eye to the platform it was providing to inflammatory right-wing commentary.

Rashna says she stood by while the 'fear and hate' continued to grow, until it became unbearable. "I am done being a part of something I do not stand for, and I urge other young journalists to do the same."

NZ was being fed the same diet via SkyNZ of course, and in hindsight, it's cringeworthy realising this is our closest neighbour, yet much of the nightly content is so foreign to our values and way of life. If only SkyNZ had replaced it with the ABC, rather than FoxSports.

But this is the new weapon - words. Words dressed and served as healthy debate, labelled free speech but laced with opinionated razor blades of misinformation and vitriol, much of it aimed at disenfranchised and voiceless minorities.

As my Sydney peer Cathy Wilcox said in her Sydney Morning Herald cartoon a few days ago, depicting a young Muslim child in a swing, saying.' Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can inspire someone to kill me.' Sadly, how very true. We now have a duty of care to individually and collectively call it out and shut it down.

Hundreds attend a memorial service in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on April 28, 1997. It was the first anniversary of the massacre of 35 people. Photo / AP

The globally-applauded New Zealand response to this tragedy has been one of genuine love, compassion, and inclusiveness. I doubt that the Call to Prayer last Friday - a united remembrance and defiant stand against the ideology behind this tragedy - would ever have happened in Australia.

Such is the divide.

Yet you need only read the open letter to Ardern from a 13-year-old Muslim student in Melbourne to grasp the depth of appreciation from abroad. This is the New Zealand I know and love. As we move through to a gun debate, I'm not anticipating the response I experienced 26 years ago..(he said..fingers and toes crossed multiple times).

Quite the opposite.

We are better than that, and I'm eternally grateful to find myself on the right side of New Zealand history - and on the right side of the Tasman.

Mā te kotahitanga e whai kaha ai tātau (In unity, there is strength).

#TheyAreUs

• Rod Emmerson was the 1996 QLD winner of the Print, Television and Radio section of the MBF Awards for his work on The Gun Debate.

• The names of the killers have been deliberately withheld.

• The events in Christchurch are distressing. If you, or someone you know, needs mental wellbeing support or advice then call or text 1737 anytime. There is advice on coping after a traumatic event here https://www.health.govt.nz/node/9714 It includes information for parents for children.