Making Sense and Learning Lessons from the Port Arthur Killings

Abstract

It is now a year since the Port Arthur massacre. But the lessons of the event have progressed little since the killer's answer to the question“Why?” when he said,“S'pose it happens, doesn't it?”

Yet we need to know what motivated the killer to give us hope to be able to prevent similar tragedies. If such knowledge can prevent future deaths, die deaths of the victims and the sufferings of the survivors may not have been totally in vain. Even if adding but little, it is in this spirit that this paper is written.