Peter Kocan

Peter Raymond Kocan (born 4 May 1947) is an Australian author and poet. He was convicted for his attempt to assassinate federal Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell in 1966.

Kocan was born Peter Raymond Douglas in Newcastle, New South Wales, and raised in Melbourne. His father, an engineer, was killed in a car accident three months before his birth. Kocan's mother moved to Melbourne and remarried, but the marriage failed so Peter, his mother and younger brother moved to Sydney. Kocan left school at fourteen to work in New South Wales as a labourer and station-hand, before returning to Sydney, where he gained work as a factory-hand in a dye factory.

On the evening of 21 June 1966, while campaigning for the 1966 federal election, Arthur Calwell addressed an anti-conscription rally at Mosman Town Hall in Sydney. After Calwell left the meeting, just as his car was about to drive off, Kocan approached the passenger side of the vehicle, aimed a sawn-off rifle at Calwell's head and fired at point-blank range. The closed window deflected the bullet, which lodged harmlessly in Calwell's coat lapel. Calwell sustained only minor facial injuries from broken glass.

Kocan was tried and found guilty of attempted murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and was detained first at Long Bay jail in Sydney. In late December 1966, Kocan was transferred to Ward 6 for the Criminally Insane in Morisset Mental Hospital, at Morisset, south of Newcastle. Calwell visited Kocan there, and forgave him for the incident.

During his years in prison and hospital, Kocan immersed himself in history, literature and poetry after a chance remark by another inmate led him to discover the writing of Rupert Brooke. Between 1967 and 1969, the poet Michael Dransfield corresponded and exchanged poems with Kocan. These letters, which comprise drafts of poems by Dransfield, quotes of poems by other poets, and recommendations for books Kocan should read, are now held in the collection of the Academy Library of the University of New South Wales.

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