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The government will seek to create a new counterterrorism agency and strengthen hate speech laws in response to the Royal Commission investigation into the March 15 terrorist attacks.
It will also immediately establish a new Ministry of Ethnic Communities, strengthen anti-terrorism laws, and instruct the police to establish new programs to respond to hate crimes and stop radicalization.
The measures respond to 44 specific recommendations in the gigantic report of the Royal Commission in the 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch, when a gunman killed 51 Muslim worshipers in two mosques.
The government has accepted the 44 recommendations “in principle”, but is still working on the full implementation of some of the more far-reaching changes, such as the new counter-terrorism agency.
READ MORE:
* The royal commission recommends a new security agency for New Zealand following the March 15 shootings.
* Despite promises, there is still no official record of hate crimes committed in New Zealand.
* Attacks on the Christchurch Mosque: Where are we now?
The report found no specific flaws in government action that could have led authorities to detect the terrorist attack early, but it is critical of many areas of public service: particularly the police process for firearms verification and the approach of security agencies being “almost exclusively” in Islamic Terrorism.
It suggests that if a “see something, say something” counter-terrorism strategy had been applied, “the counter-terrorism agencies may have been informed of aspects of the person’s planning and preparation.”
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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the government would act on each recommendation.
The recommendations range from changes in the laws to new agencies to support victims.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern apologized to the Muslim community and promised to act.
“For many years, the Muslim community has expressed concern about disproportionate scrutiny from security and intelligence agencies. As one person recently told me: ‘We can only assume that the same level of scrutiny is being applied to those who may represent a threat to their community. ‘
“Going forward, we must ensure a proper focus of resources on the range of threats New Zealand faces and improve our security and intelligence, and social cohesion works accordingly,” Ardern said.
Homeland Security Minister Andrew Little will oversee the implementation of the recommendations.
A NEW AGENCY AGAINST TERRORISM IS RECOMMENDED
The Royal Commission recommended the establishment of a new counter-terrorism agency and a minister specifically responsible for the fight against terrorism.
The new agency would have to have “sufficient resources” and be responsible for establishing a broader counterterrorism strategy throughout the government, with greater powers to access information from other agencies and the local government.
This recommendation came despite the fact that the Commission saw no failures in the exchange of information that led to the attack not being detected.
Simon O’Connor / Stuff
Andrew Little will lead the implementation work on the recommendations.
Public confidence in this new agency is seen as key to early detection of terrorist attacks, so it is recommended that much more intelligence work be made public and that annual “threat landscape” reports be released.
The Government has accepted this recommendation “in principle”, although the exact implementation has been kicked in the future.
Ardern said the government intended to go ahead with this recommendation and create a new agency, but some questions remained about its full role.
The agency is likely to replicate at some level the functions currently found in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, the Government Office of Security and Communications and the Office of National Assessments within the Prime Minister’s Department and Cabinet. All of these agencies have a broad national security mandate.
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The Beehive in Wellington.
The National Evaluation Office is likely to see the biggest change. The report identified that the Office was not a full-time terrorism analyst until 2018, when a position was established and given the responsibility of analyzing “all terrorist ideologies.”
The Government will immediately proceed to make changes to the Law for the Suppression of Terrorism that will make it a crime to plan terrorist activities and to travel abroad to plan terrorist acts.
A new control order will be created for those convicted of acts of terrorism when their sentences expire, if they are considered to still present a risk.
“Such a significant restructuring will take time to execute,” Ardern said.
He said that there had been a lack of clarity on who exactly was responsible for the fight against terrorism and that this must change.
It found that prior to a reboot in 2018, agencies had not adequately assessed their counter-terrorism priorities to account for non-Islamic threats.
In fact, no full-time analyst from either agency focused solely on right-wing terrorist threats, and spy agencies were not directly tasked with monitoring right-wing extremism.
However, between 30 and 40 Muslims in New Zealand had been on a watch list in recent years.
ROBERT KITCHEN
Security Intelligence Service security director Rebecca Kitteridge acknowledged that security agencies had focused too exclusively on the threat of Islamic terrorism.
HATE CRIME CHANGES
Changes to hate crimes are recommended as part of a broader package to improve social cohesion.
The Commission recommends that some of the provisions on hate speech currently included in the Human Rights Law be repealed, slightly reduced and included in the Crimes Law.
This new offense would make it a crime to “incite racial or religious discord” based on a specific intention to normalize or incite hatred against various groups of people, including racial and religious groups.
The Royal Commission concluded that the current provisions against hate speech in the Human Rights Law were in fact too broad and unacceptably violated the right to freedom of expression, and therefore recommended reducing the crime to include intent and then reinforce the consequences by putting it in the Law of crimes.
Scott Hammond / Stuff
Justice Minister Kris Faafoi will promote changes in hate speech.
Recommends that other crimes, such as assault or threats, be modified to take into account hateful intent and carry more serious sentences.
Ardern and Little confirmed that the Government intended to act on these two recommendations.
It will also seize the opportunity of the reform to expand protected people’s groups to include trans, gay and intersex people along with racial and religious groups.
Ardern said the government wanted to consult widely on this matter, including with other political parties, as it was a difficult area to legislate.
The report found that the police did not adequately record hate crimes and recommended changes to give the government better visibility of hate crimes.
Ardern said that too many New Zealanders did not feel safe due to a variety of everyday threats that most community members did not face.
“New Zealanders deserve a system that does everything possible to keep them safe and that is what we are committed to building,” he said.
The Government is acting immediately to create a new Ethnic Communities Graduate Program and a National Center of Excellence to focus on diversity, social cohesion and the fight against extremism, with the aim of increasing the Government’s capacity to detect and counter future attacks.
The Commission found that no government could guarantee that such an attack would never occur again.
The Government will also act immediately to create a Ministry of Ethnic Communities to replace the current Office for Ethnic Communities.
