Christopher Pyne recalls storming of Australian Parliament House by protesters in August 1996

Scenes at the US Capitol Building earlier this month were described as unprecedented. But a similar scenario unfolded in Australia 25 years ago.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the storming of Capital Hill. I haven’t lost it, nor am I writing as though it is 2046. Despite the overworked use of the word “unprecedented” in recent times, those describing the events of January 5, 2021 at the site of the Capitol Building in Washington DC as such, have short memories.

I was present on August 19, 1996, when union thugs and their supporters stormed the Australian Parliament House on Capital Hill, Canberra.

Twenty five thousand Australians were holding a rally on the front lawns of the building over the industrial relations aspects of the Howard Government’s first national Budget.

Then-opposition leader Kim Beazley, along with other Labor luminaries and figures from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, addressed the rally and called for action.

To be fair, Beazley certainly didn’t demand the protesters storm the Parliament. He was as aghast as anyone and condemned it entirely.

But at some point, someone did. Matters got quite out of hand.

Riot police amid the damage at Parliament House after protesters stormed it in August 1996.

A mob descended on the nation’s democratically-elected Parliament and broke it up.

The front doors were smashed in. The Parliament House gift shop was ransacked. Much of the merchandise was stolen. Police responded with batons and police riot shields.

Police, attendants, security guards, journalists, staff and innocent bystanders were assaulted.

There was blood on the marble of the Marble Foyer entrance of the building. People were being treated in a haphazard way on the spot because the rioters certainly had the element of surprise on their side.

Doctors, nurses and anyone with medical training were being called forward to assist the injured.

I distinctly remember watching from half way down the towering marble staircases that dominate each side of the foyer as two South Australians, Dr Brendan Nelson and the former Member for Adelaide, Trish Worth, who had been a senior nurse in her previous incarnation, tended to the damaged and bleeding.

Ninety police and security staff were recorded as being officially injured. Forty nine rioters were arrested. It took 200 police several hours to quell the insurrection.

At some point during the riot, one of the union leaders from the CFMEU returned to the rally to tell the more peaceful protesters about their success at disrupting the democratic process through violence.

It was an unedifying day in the history of our democracy.

Of course, the political leadership on all sides condemned the riot.

The riot on January 5 in Washington was wrong in every respect. So was the riot on August 19, 1996 in Canberra.

A tyre wrench is handed to other protesters as they attempt to force open another door at the front of Parliament House during the August 1996 riot.

The first was instigated by the Far Right. The second by the Far Left.

Everyone was quick to blame former president Donald Trump for the appalling behaviour of the rioters after he had spoken at their rally that morning. They are right to do so.

But it would be unwise for politicians of the left of the political spectrum to be too quick to adopt the tone of the unblemished and to take the moral high ground. The use of violence to achieve political objectives is not a weapon confined to fascists and others on the Far Right.

It has often been the weapon of choice for communists and others on the Far Left.

In 1996, the spark that lit the fuse was alcohol imbibed by reckless and stupid people.

In 2021, the riot came about because of hyper partisanship.

Fortunately, we don’t have the poisonous political system in Australia that exists at the moment in the United States. For that, Trump shoulders a large part of the blame.

The Presidency of Joe Biden is a chance for a reset of the political climate in the US.

It wasn’t that long ago, before the 1990s, that politics in the US was more like ours in Australia.

Sure, our politics is competitive, but it is rarely personal. It is a battle of ideas, not, as it has become in the US, a battle more akin to a cage fight.

In the US, democracy was the loser on January 5.

For all the hideousness of the last few months and some would argue years, in US politics, I am optimistic.

I sense that there has been a stepping back from the edge of the abyss.

Biden beat Trump easily. He won a big majority in popular votes and a comfortable majority in the state based Electoral College.

American voters said “no more” to Trump on election day in November 2020. His performance since, culminating in the storming of the Capitol, will, most likely, end any future political ambitions he may have had.

Maybe now, the Grand Old Party, as the Republican Party has been nicknamed for more than a century, can shake off Trumpism and return to being the party of the centre right that produced some of the greatest presidents and many of the most important policy measures that have made the US the most powerful country the world has ever known.