Those who say Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is trying for a ‘John Howard moment’ by turning the Bondi terrorist attack into a campaign against guns do not know how right they are. They are also missing the truth by a mile.

An oft-repeated fable is that when then-Prime Minister Howard pushed gun law changes after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, he took on his own base. In my view, Howard was not so much taking on his own blue-ribbon North Shore Liberals, as the roughneck Nationals. The endgame was more about permanently changing the internal dynamics of the fractious coalition, than guns or principles.

When the socialist-leaning farmers’ party backed the ‘Joh for PM’ push that scuttled Howard’s 1987 run at the Lodge, Howard described the Queensland Nationals as ‘wreckers’ setting themselves on a course of destruction with the Coalition. The relationship between the Liberals and Nationals was never quite the same. It would be naïve to think this did not enter Howard’s thinking 1996. This played out remarkably well. The then-Nationals lost big at subsequent federal and state elections and never recovered. Whether deliberate or otherwise, it set a course of action that would decimate the irksome Nationals – their numbers less able to withstand losses than the Liberals – which paid off for Howard: the coalition ‘partner’ became irrelevant.

Like Howard, Albanese is not truly taking on his own base. Far from it. He is doing exactly what his own base – the Labor left faction that controls the party at federal and most state levels – want. He is setting out to damage the Labor right, who are to Albanese what the Nationals were to Howard. It is unsurprising that Albanese appears to be using his crusade against guns to harm his Labor Party enemies, while dangling the fool’s fantasy that being tough on guns will entice Greens voters back to Labor.

Unlike the inner city effete, many Labor right parliamentarians hold seats in outer suburban or regional areas. They will bear the brunt of shooter backlash at the ballot box. It is easy to picture Albanese gleefully rubbing his hands together at the thought of Labor right members having their margins so far reduced as to render them impotent in the party room. Even better, if they outright lose their seats, they can be replaced at the next election by compliant left faction appointees. The fewer right faction members exist, the happier Albanese’s green-left is, with fewer internal restraints over their disastrous policy directions. No wonder New South Wales Premier Chris Minns looks unhinged when he rants about gun laws. He, a right faction member in the only state where the right has vaguely held out, would be well aware of what a Pandora’s box he has just opened by capitulating to the left.

History tells us that going after guns is only ever a vote loser.

This happened in 1996 and again in Western Australia, after WA Labor used its thumping majority to pass gun laws that New South Wales Labor has now embraced. At the March 2025 WA state election, there was an undeniable correlation between the number of gun licence holders in an electorate and swings against sitting Labor members. A handful of seats fell. The Nationals who opposed the laws did well, but the bumbling WA Liberals’ support for the laws ended any possibility of differentiating themselves enough from Labor to be a real alternative.

The Nationals, nationwide, have learned from history. Queensland and the Northern Territory, where the Liberals-Nationals-Country Liberals are in power, also seem to have woken up. Meanwhile, Liberals who sit in laughably misnamed ‘opposition’ in other states, fronted by identical doe-eyed damsels who look more like fish out of water than serious strategists, seem incapable of comprehending electoral politics 101: do not be the same as your rivals.

Albanese and co are desperately attempting to goad the Liberals, state and federal, into supporting Labor’s gun crusade. If the Liberals refuse, then gun owners – and their families – will have a viable choice. Labor is obviously on edge about that, because collective shifts in shooter votes to the Liberals could cause Labor real damage. But if the Liberals get spooked into playing Labor-lite as they have in Western Australia and New South Wales, Labor has them creamed yet again. Votes will bleed to minor parties and swirl around haphazardly in a ‘pox on all of you’ preference dance rather than make a real difference. Labor will still lose some parliamentarians, but not enough to matter – and often of the type that Albanese’s left is glad to jettison.

When Albanese spruiks tougher gun laws, all he is selling is a future where the Labor left goes unfettered. The same left that is responsible for the strokes of policy brilliance that have given us an Australia that is angry, divided, overcrowded, overregulated, unable to afford the cost of living, and fearful about what lies ahead. If the Liberals cannot find spines, then they will be complicit in delivering a future where we are ruled by row upon row of Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek clones grinning smugly … all thanks to gun laws.

Lillian Andrews writes about politics, society, feminism and anything else that interests her. You can find her on the site formerly known as Twitter @SaysAwfulThings