Terrorism Where Terror Is Not: Australian and New Zealand Terrorism Compared

From Hijackings to Right-Wing Extremism: The Drivers of New Zealand’s Counter-terrorism Legislation 1977 – 2020

“…10 Post 9/11, New Zealand managed to avoid the rise in transnational and home-grown jihadi plots that emerged in Australia. 11 However, contemporary domestic cases of potential terrorism such as Operation Eight (in which a range of activists were involved in apparent training camps) and the 2014 threat by a lone actor to contaminate baby formula unless the use of 1080 ceased, have, according to Battersby, been effectively granted "invisibility in law" due to the inability to charge what were arguably terrorist acts under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. 12 Through being prosecuted under existing criminal law, potential terrorist events have resonated less with the public.…”

Security sector practitioner perceptions of the terror threat environment before the Christchurch attacks

“…For all other agencies involved in law enforcement, border security, customs and corrections, terrorism risk was only a small part of their much broader responsibilities and most, prior to 15 March 2019, had only a handful of staff assigned to CT roles. The New Zealand Police (the lead agency for terrorism), were severely constrained under the Key Government by an extended period of 'flat' budgets for years following the Global Financial Crisis, and resources committed to its Special Investigations Group (reformed in 2016 to the National Security Group) were minimal (Battersby 2018).…”

“…Drawing from Sam Mullins' (2016) work looking at Australian CT practitioner perspectives, this study set out to discover the nature of New Zealand practitioner perspectives across the various government agencies for which CT was a concern, and consider the impact on them of the 'low threat' environment they operated in. While there are several studies concerning general aspects of New Zealand's national security, counter terrorism has attracted much less attention (Greener-Barcham 2002;Ip 2016;Battersby 2017Battersby , 2018Battersby and Ball 2019) and nothing yet has focused on practitioner's perspectives of the work they do. This article seeks to address that gap.…”

Law’s response to New Zealand’s ‘darkest of days’

“…Even in the post-9/11 era, when various cities around the world suffered attacks linked to transnational terrorist networks, New Zealand seemed to be protected by a combination of remoteness and innocuousness. Small-scale domestic terrorist incidents occurred sporadically, 1 but mass casualty attacks were unknown. This changed on 15 March 2019, when a 28-year-old Australian living in New Zealand attacked worshippers at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, killing 51 men, women and children and injuring scores more.…”