The 25th Prime Minister of Australia John Howard was elected on the 11th of March 1996 to 3rd of December 2007. He had great influences on the Australian people and Australian policies. He influenced the constitution- federal and state law. Contributed to social influences and to regional agreements like the United Nations. John Howard has been a controversial figure during Australia’s post world war 2 period. His policies included gun control, the workplace relations act and the waterfront reform.
John Howard’s Gun control policy was one of the most major policies he made. Gun related deaths, Homicides, Suicides and unintentional shootings were on the decline. Every year the amount of gun related deaths were becoming smaller and smaller. After the Port Arthur Massacre of 1996 (30 deaths and 21 injuries) the gun death rate accelerated. Due to this, John Howard Brought in a law to ban private ownership of certain guns. Many farmers and sports shooters were against the gun ban but after the Port Arthur Massacre the general public supported the gun control law.
The gun control law was passed and gun owners gave up 643 726 prohibited firearms that costed the government over $320 million. Around 50 000 additional guns were handed in. The law stated that a person was only allowed a gun with a legitimate reason. Self defence was not a legitimate reason. A gun licence was usually given to farmers, hunters and gun sportsmen. His theory was that if a whole town or city had guns it would become less safe than if the town or city had no guns.
The waterfront reform was one of John Howard’s most controversial policies. All Union workers were laid off their jobs around the waterside import areas. John Howard didn’t want blue-collar workers working the Australian exports anymore, so he laid them off. They were given a choice of leaving with nothing, or accepting a redundancy package. The redundancies package offered a reasonable amount of money to support the
Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorkChoices http://goaustralia.about.com/od/knowthepeople/a/johnhoward.htm Australian History yr 10 text book http://www.skwirk.com.au/p-c_s-14_u-117_t-321_c-1096/john-howard/nsw/history/power-people-and-politics-in-the-post-war-period/prime-minister-and-policies-1972-today- http://www.c-l-a-s-s.net/prohibition.htm