Queensland cop shooting: Port Arthur survivor calls for gun crackdown
Pauline Grenfell watched as Port Arthur mass murderer Martin Bryant shot dead a woman and her two daughters aged three and six.
Pauline Grenfell watched as Port Arthur mass murderer Martin Bryant shot dead a woman and her two daughters aged three and six in a rampage that left 35 people dead and 23 wounded.
Now Ms Grenfell wants the federal government to close loopholes allowing people to purchase prohibited weapons, and supports the establishment of a national firearms register.
“As a survivor of Port Arthur’s massacre, my heart drops each time I see on the media how many innocent lives are lost,” she said.
“We survived, but many innocent people did not, and I will never forget them.”
Ms Grenfell said she was horrified by the shooting murders of Queensland police constables Rachel McCrow, 29, and Matthew Arnold, 26, at a remote property at Wieambilla, 290km northwest of Brisbane, in December.
“It was horrifying to think these people were able to access deadly weapons that cause such tragic outcomes,” she said.
“I support the national firearms register. The police force needs to have all the up-to-date information regarding registration of guns.
“There are far too many shootings and the question is where are they sourcing the weapons.
“The government must close those loopholes. I know it’s difficult, but they have to try.” There are questions over whether the two slain constables knew they were walking into a heavily armed fortress when they approached the property on Wains Road in Wieambilla, south of Chinchilla.
Waiting in ambush was Nathaniel Train, his conspiracy-theorist brother Gareth Train and wife Stacey Train, who was once married to Nathaniel.
The Trains killed neighbour Alan Dare during the six-hour siege before they too were killed.
Later, Queensland police found six firearms at the property and have deemed the shooting a religiously motivated terror attack directed towards police who the Trains saw as “monsters and demons”.
The gun licence of Nathaniel Train, formerly a widely respected school principal, was suspended in August 2022 after he illegally dumped weapons at the border with Queensland about eight months earlier when the border was closed due to Covid-19.
Police believe Train amassed the stockpile of weapons used to kill the two police officers with his suspended NSW licence, which Queensland retailers would have been unable to check.
National cabinet agreed to the establishment of a national firearms registry on February 3 in the wake of the Wieambilla massacre although it is unclear when the register will take effect.
Ms Grenfell and her husband Peter visit Port Arthur at least two times a year.
In 1996, they were at a nearby toilet block when they heard Bryant open fire on the patrons of the Broad Arrow Cafe.
The Grenfells fled to Jetty Road, where they encountered Nanette Mikac, who carried her three-year-old daughter Madeline and walked with six-year-old Alannah. The five of them continued up Jetty Road when a yellow Volvo stopped beside them.
An armed Bryant burst from the vehicle and shot dead Mikac and her daughters, as the Grenfells took cover behind a tree.
The Port Arthur killings remain the worst gun massacre in modern Australian history.
A national firearms registry was first recommended by the state-federal National Firearms Agreement struck in the aftermath of the atrocity.