Leaders choose explanation over applause

When leaders chose explanation over applause

Something you rarely see anymore is a national leader deliberately stepping into a hostile crowd not to rally supporters, but to explain an unpopular decision.

On 16 June 1996, a cricket field in the small Victorian town of Sale was filled with angry people. The headline speaker was Prime Minister John Howard.

Police advised him not to attend. One senior adviser urged him to wear a bulletproof vest. The crowd was furious, many of them people who had voted for him only weeks earlier.

National leaders usually avoid moments like this. They manage risk. They choose friendly rooms. They consult selectively. But Howard went anyway.

Not because he expected to persuade the crowd, he made it clear that this was not a consultation. It was an explanation.

Seven weeks earlier, after Port Arthur, Howard had told his staff he intended to ban semi-automatic rifles. Even within his own conservative cabinet full of lawful gun owners, the pushback was fierce. He knew little about firearms and sat opposite people who knew far more than he did. Yet he didn’t shift.

The policy challenge was genuinely complex. Police, military, farmers and professional shooters needed exceptions. Writing a legal definition that stopped weapons capable of killing many people quickly, without over-reaching, was complex. Like drink-driving laws, a threshold had to be set, knowing it would never satisfy everyone.

Around 90% of Australians supported the reforms. But leadership isn’t tested by the 90%. It’s tested by how you face the 10%.

Howard stood on that grandstand while some in the crowd hurled abuse and even Nazi salutes. He absorbed it. He explained the policy anyway.

Nearly three decades later, the results are measurable. Australia’s homicide rate halved. Mass shootings became vanishingly rare, so rare that when violence does erupt, it shocks us deeply. That shock is not weakness; it’s evidence of success.

Which brings us to today.

Recent shootings have exposed how gun laws, once world-leading, have been slowly neglected. Over the years, a cat-and-mouse game emerged between regulators and importers. Technical loopholes allowed increasingly powerful firearms to creep into less-restricted categories. Audits became infrequent. Estimates now suggest hundreds of thousands of illicit firearms are circulating.

Governments are now moving to close those gaps. The legislation will likely pass quickly. But the hard part won’t be the vote; it will be designing laws that stay ahead of clever workarounds and rebuilding regulatory muscle after decades of drift.

Harder still is confronting a more profound truth: laws alone cannot explain why someone would attack a religious celebration on a sunny afternoon at a beach playground.

That question sits beneath every policy debate, uncomfortable, human, and unresolved.

At The Odyssey Leadership Foundation, we return to moments like Sale in 1996 not to lionise politicians, but to ask better questions about leadership:

                  •               What does it mean to explain a decision rather than perform it?

                  •               How do leaders earn trust when they know they won’t win applause?

                  •               What civic muscles must young Australians develop if we want disagreement without dehumanisation?

Leadership isn’t about avoiding hostile rooms. Sometimes it’s about standing in them calmly, explaining your reasoning, and accepting the cost.

That’s a skill worth teaching and one worth putting into practice again.