Talk:List of massacres in Australia

Mass Shooting
At least one item is incorrectly as a mass shooting ("four or more people selected indiscriminately, not including the perpetrator, are killed"), when all victims were part of the murderer's close family.

2A02:8109:85C0:D7C:646A:5DBA:DDAD:7DDE (talk) 09:45, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Misleading title, lacking a clear definition of "massacre"
The title is "massacres in Australia", the fist paragraph states that this is a list of "massacres and mass murders", and the list itselfincludes items that definitely do not qualify as any of those, because they involve less than four deaths.

To explain the term "massacre", this article merely references the article Massacre, which gives no less than four different definitions:


 * 1) "a specific incident which involves the killing of people"
 * 2) "wholesale slaughter, carnage"
 * 3) "the intentional killing by political actors of a significant number of relatively defenseless people"
 * 4) "involving the murder of more than one individual, within an outrageous moral deficiency"

It is rather obvious that terms like "significant number", "outrageous moral deficiency", "relatively defenseless", "slaughter" and "carnage" are somewhat ambiguous terms that do not lend themselves to qualify items for inclusion to a list, so we need to with better criteria than can actually be argued.

More definitions from various dictionaries


 * "indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of many people"
 * "the unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings or animals"
 * "The act or an instance of killing a large number of humans indiscriminately and cruelly", " the wanton killing of a large number of esp. unresisting human beings", "the wanton or savage killing of large numbers of people"

What appears common to all dictionary definitions of massacre is the number of deaths, which is described as "many", or "large number". The article on mass murder quotes the widely used FBI definition of "murdering four or more persons during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the murders".

So without going into the argument what is a "large number", since this list also includes mass murders, the cut off point for this list should be four deaths, the minimum number that qualifies as mass murder. I doubt anyone would argue that less than four would make a "large number".

I will remove all other items from the list.

Since none of the definitions of "mass murder" include anything about the number of injuries, and most of them are marked as "unknown" or "0", I will remove them from the list.

2A02:8109:85C0:D7C:646A:5DBA:DDAD:7DDE (talk) 09:20, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Time/date format
I'm going to clean the date format up. I'm not going to fact-check, but the date/time formatting is horrid and negates the sort-by-date filter. Legios (talk) 16:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Events that should be deleted?
Why are the Snowtown Murders included? They took place over decades, therefore not usually defined as a "massacre".

Why are the family murder/suicides included? Are those to bolster the gun lobby's argument that the gun laws passed after 1997 had no effect? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.173.213.71 (talk) 12:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Missing Events
Childers Palace Fire - In June 2000, drifter and con-artist Robert Long started a fire at the Childers Palace backpackers hostel that killed 15 people.

Monash University shooting - In October 2002, Huan Yun Xiang, a student, shot his classmates and teacher, killing two and injuring five.

Found on the Australian mass murders page. Is there really a difference anyways? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.178.48 (talk) 08:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Monash University shooting does not qualify as a mass murder (less than 4 deaths), let alone a massacre ("a large number" of deaths) 2A02:8109:85C0:D7C:646A:5DBA:DDAD:7DDE (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I came across the mention of a 4 victim murder in the 2004-05 Homicide in Australia annual report. I have no idea where or when in that time frame or even if it qualifies for this page. I just wanted to make sure it was annotated somewhere. Rklute (talk) 05:14, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Merger Proposal: Australian mass murders
I am following up on a merge proposal from Australian mass murders back in October 2011. If anyone would like to discuss merging this article with that article please discuss below. The merge will require a bit of work but should be easy enough. If anyone wants to share opinions below let me know otherwise I'll proceed in 30 days. Figure81 (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I support merger. I guess we can WP:BOLDly merge the content. I will also help. Feel free to rewrite my stuff because I will be hastily doing it. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 11:08, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Long entries. last two massacres
First, I'm not sure I'd call like half of these "massacres". Two or three people killed hardly seems to be fit to add with the rest of the list. Second, there are several entries in here that are far too long. Instead of squeezing the information in here, a page should be made about the incident, and a link made to it. It throws off the whole pattern to have paragraph after paragraph, then suddenly a whole page's worth. The last two entries fall into that category, but are also not in the right place chronologically, and appear to be listing the same massacre twice, but with slightly different details each time. And the person who wrote it seems to have a limited grasp of English, or of writing, at least. AnnaGoFast (talk) 02:00, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The fundamental issue is what constitutes a massacre. The FBI standard definition of a massacre is four or more persons killed by a single person with no cooling off period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.190.17.246 (talk) 00:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The only official, current U.S. definition of which I am aware regarding what constitutes a mass killing is found within the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 and that states that a mass killing involves the death of 3 or more people. I'm not sure if Australia has an official definition or not. Syr74 (talk) 00:25, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

The final entry in the list is for the Ingleburn Shooting event, and it states that Wayne Williams killed one person and then himself. It then classifies this as a MASS MURDER and suicide. How can this be considered a massacre, or even a mass murder? This seems completely misleading and I do not think that this event even belongs in this list. 3dSurveyor (talk) 06:01, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Darwin massacre
Did you know that there was a massacre in Darwin today???144.130.158.65 (talk) 22:24, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Domestic violence killing
Does the guy who killed his family in a car fire and killed himself, all in a depressed, narcissistic rage count as a massacre? There are a lot of similar massacres on the list. Jordf32123 (talk) 07:21, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, domestic violence and/or mental health (the guy that said he was Al Qeda, but wasn't for example, like Lindt Cafe) needs its own subsection and there needs to be a distinction between 'lone perpetrator' incidents and state sponsored massacres. The massacres of Indigenous Australians is an incomplete list and many of these were state sponsored, and there was opposition by settlers in many cases (not enough) although the state did 'sanction' the activity historically. Making those incidents state sponsored massacres. Wikiusers with greater resources are advised to research AIATSIS and Tent Embassy for information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.151.189.2 (talk) 00:16, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

change title of page to be accurate
It excludes all the massacres of Indigenous people in Australia but the title of the page is 'List of Massacres in Australia' - this is incredibly inappropriate and inaccurate 2405:6E00:30D5:700:184:1B14:B680:C942 (talk) 13:07, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Readers are capable of reading the second sentence, which clearly directs people to the article that covers that. That said, I believe the matter could be addressed in a clearer way by simply changing the title itself to 'List of massacres of non-Indigenous Australians', and make this current title a disambig page. I'm not skilled in such matters however. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The first sentence should always give an accurate statement of an article and it's subject. This one fails to.
 * Although I do agree page title change is a better move. 101.114.168.109 (talk) 05:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 24 April 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – Material  Works  21:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

List of massacres in Australia → List of massacres of non-Indigenous Australians – An anon has made a valid point regarding the current name. I would propose changing this article's title as above, then having the former title redirect to a disambig page with this article and the other related article (List of massacres of Indigenous Australians). It's hard to make a case that the old title should just redirect to the new title, considering the nature of the matter. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 20:17, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The current list is not exclusively non-indigenous. See, for example, Bradshaw massacre in 1905. Also, I see List of massacres in Australia as the parent article, with List of massacres of Indigenous Australians a spinoff article which is too big for inclusion in the parent article. WWGB (talk) 02:00, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Support The page is a filtered list of massacres in Australia.
 * It relegates the vast majority of the massacres to a specific page so it cannot purport to be a representation a general page of massacres in Australia.
 * The first sentence and title should be an accurate description of what the page describes and I think the change supports that. 2405:6E00:30D5:700:3AED:49A0:E3AE:D937 (talk) 02:20, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose, due to modern view, in contrast to old views, that indigenous Australians are equally as human as Europeans. If indigenous Australian massacres are missing from the list, the answer is to added them. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:32, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose for the simple reason that I don't see any indication of the victims being non-indigenous. Are you sure every person listed here is not an indigenous Australian? Statements like "11 people killed" doesn't indicate their ethnicity. It seems the difference between the two article is not really ethnicity, but rather time frame (with the former article tapering off in the early 20th Century), whereas this list is primarily after that. I could see a separation of "non-indigenous" for pre-1920s, but not post-1920s.  Thus article could be better structured with sub-sections organized that way, e.g.  Leave the current title as is, but split the article text into sub-sections: "Non-Indigenous massacres before 1920" (with their  handful of instances), "Indigenous massacres before 1920" (with link to the full list in the child page) and " Massacres in Australia after 1920" (not differentiated by ethnicity).  Or something like that. Walrasiad (talk) 22:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * he pattern here is pretty clear though, Indigenous people's massacres are relegated to a separate page.
 * There is a long list of European murders and massacres in the 19th century on this page.
 * Massacres of Indigenous people in Australia tapered off after the 1920s which is why you see that pattern you note. 101.114.168.109 (talk) 05:44, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Neutral Just for the record. I brought the move issue up, seemed like it had some potential value, but I don't have a dog of my own in the fight. Good comments for and against above though, which is what the process is for. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 02:35, 28 April 2023 (UTC)