Australia’s last widely recognised mass shooting, under the common definition of four or more victims killed in a single incident (excluding the perpetrators), was the Wieambilla shootings in Queensland on 12 December 2022.
Date and location
The Wieambilla shootings took place on 12 December 2022 at a rural property in Wieambilla, in the state of Queensland. During this incident, two Queensland police officers and a neighbour were killed before police fatally shot the three offenders after a prolonged confrontation.
Why sources may differ
Different organisations sometimes use different definitions of “mass shooting”, for example whether to count only civilian victims, exclude killings linked to terrorism, or include incidents with fewer fatalities but many injuries. Because of this, some discussions focus instead on the Port Arthur massacre of April 1996 as the last large civilian mass shooting involving semi-automatic rifles before major gun law reforms, even though other multi-victim shootings have occurred since then.
