Talk:Peter Kocan

Assassination attempt
Most assassination attempts have some kind of premeditated motivation behind them. Hence the use of the word 'assassination' and not 'murder'. I'm surprised to find not even a hint of what Kocan's motivation might have been in this (or any other) article. It's what I came to the article for. I can find his birth name and info about his childhood and where he was imprisoned, but not the info I (and you can assume others) came for.--Jeff79 (talk) 15:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My understanding was that Kocan was mentally disturbed, and that this was the background to the attempt. The shooting is called assassination because Arthur Calwell was a political leader - the Opposition Leader and the alternative Prime Minister.  I have not heard if there were any overtly political motivations behind Kocan's actions, other than mental disturbance and shooting a prominent member of the community.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.161.78.193 (talk) 01:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Kocan was colloquially deemed 'criminally insane', after the attempted murder. Also, the crime is termed an assassination plausibly, because at the time Arthur Calwell was the ALP's leader of the Federal Opposition. Since 'assassination' is defined as the killing of a prominent person, either for political or religious reasons or for payment, the range of possible motivations is as broad as any other murder's. The Monthly article by writer and crime author Shane Maloney includes - '..[after capture, Kocan] says he wants to be remembered by history for killing somebody important. He chose his target "because I don't like his politics".', and 'Peter Kocan was a casebook disturbed loner. Fatherless, disadvantaged and victimised, he left school at 14 and drifted though a series of menial jobs.' Importantly, in the 19 year-old's mind, it seems as if a sensational copy-cat crime was in play - 'Kocan later reflected, "the shooting logic was in the air at the time", pointing to the assassinations of Ngô Đình Diệm, John F. Kennedy, Hendrik Verwoerd and Malcolm X. "Unfortunately, we are creatures who pick up on what's around", he said.' - see Attempted assassination of Arthur Calwell. The pre-election Town Hall meeting was stimulating, and Kocan was inside, before his street-side attempted murder.


 * See also in Attempted assassination of Arthur Calwell, which is now formally linked to this more-detailed biographical item about Kocan. Related to one's searching for information about Kocan's premeditated "Motivation", to my reading, he seems (from both the post-Arrest, and the Sentencing texts, as quoted there), to have been a fairly wooly-headed 19 year-old, with at best, a vague and confused motivation. His rehabilitation, and his tertiary self-education and becoming an author of some note, is salutary.  Calwell's going to see him, and his forgiving him, is notable, too, in Kocan's redemption, whatever his juvenile motivation may have been. For serious research into such questions, one would need to read each of the footnoted sources in both Wiki articles, especially Kocan's own autobiographical books, etc..220.235.50.75 (talk) 06:38, 10 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The explanation of the motivation gels completely with what my father (who was a Psychiatric Nurse at Morisset for all but the last year of Kocan's interment, that "he wanted to make a name for himself"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBustopher (talk • contribs) 03:36, 18 January 2022 (UTC)