Foreign lives matter, especially (but by no means only) when they are our foreigners.

As intimated on 15 March 2019, our foreigners include all non New Zealand citizens in New Zealand, at a given point in time (the ‘present’). And our foreigners include all non New Zealand citizens normally resident in New Zealand (a wider group than persons with ‘permanent residence’ immigration status) but not presently in New Zealand.

Thus, in ‘the present’, many people have two national identities. This of course includes New Zealand citizens not presently in New Zealand. (A few – with multiple citizenships – have more than two ‘present’ national identities.) ‘Our people’ are made up of citizens, denizens, and visitors.

If a major incident happens in New Zealand, then we as a polity have a duty of care to all people presently in New Zealand. If a major global incident happens, we have a duty of care to all New Zealand citizens, all people in New Zealand, and all people with present residential rights in New Zealand; that is, to all of ‘our people’. Our duty of care may include mobility restrictions, including tight quarantines (eg in airport premises) and internal border restrictions.

Realm Citizens

Many countries, including New Zealand, have a ‘realm’. The United Kingdom has a three-tier realm, with the United Kingdom countries themselves being the first tier, the Isle of Man being an example of a second-tier country, with Bermuda as a third-tier country. France has a quite complex realm. The United States has a conceptually simpler realm than France, which includes American Samoa; it even includes a country which drives on the left (Virgin Islands).

In the strictly-legal sense, New Zealand has a two-tier realm. Though I would argue that New Zealand really has a three-tier realm. The Chatham Islands are part of the first tier. The Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau are the second tier. The third tier is Samoa, which has a historical constitutional relationship with New Zealand; a relationship which continues to involve some duty of care from New Zealand.

The rights of Cook Islanders to be New Zealanders are essentially the same as the rights of Manx people to be British. When we treat them as if they have less of a right to be in New Zealand than people who are unambiguously foreigners – people such as Australians who might want to come to New Zealand for a skiing holiday – then we move into the peculiar mercantilist way of thinking which only offers a full set of rights to a core group of citizens.

Even today, we deny the right to vote to citizens in prison. In the nineteenth century (before 1890) we only gave full New Zealander rights to property-owning men; everyone else entitled to be in New Zealand was more denizen than citizen. The current experience – when our political leaders feint from discussion about the access rights of New Zealand realm citizens to New Zealand – shows that, in the mindframe of much of New Zealand’s political class, these people attached to New Zealand are denizens rather than citizens.

The word ‘denizen’ conveys the mercantilist concept of ‘monetary utility’ – denizens are people we embrace when they are ‘making money’ for our country, but whom we feel free to discard as jetsam when they are no longer doing so, or able to do so.

Freeing New Zealanders to visit Cook Islands represents a ‘loss of money’ to core (first tier) New Zealand. Whereas allowing Australians to ski in Queenstown represents a ‘gain of money’ to core New Zealand. (This way of thinking is, of course, one-sided mercantilist nonsense! They gains from economic transactions are mutual.) Reading between the lines, we can see that – at least in some corners of government – an opening to realm countries may jeopardise the more lucrative opening to Australia. (And an opening to Cook Islands could then lead to stronger pressure to open to Samoa.) Indeed, we sense that our relationship to Australia is very much like the relationship of Cook Islands and Samoa to New Zealand; we find ourselves pleading to the bigger (asymmetric) ‘partner’ to do us favours.

Mercantilist Mindframe

As already noted in earlier writing in this space, we think and behave today using mindframes largely set in the European mercantilist era, which is broadly the quarter-millennium from 1500 to 1750. (Indeed, we are now starting to denounce James Cook – who came to New Zealand with a relatively enlightened mercantilist mindset – while continuing, unquestioningly, to retain most of our mercantilist mental baggage.)

The words that most define the mercantilist era are ‘money’, ‘foreign’, and ’empire’. Mercantilist empires were essentially global commercial empires; global political empires were creatures mainly of the century 1850 to 1950.

In the mercantilist mindframe, money (‘real money’) was understood by almost everyone as gold and silver. Money was won from foreigners by the agents of new entities called nation states; money was won ‘for a nation’ through exporting, invading, mining, exploiting, plundering and swindling. If the gold or silver mines that a kingdom coveted were in some distant land, then your cannon-backed navy or army would invade and try to annex that land. Thus, commercial empires – or realms – were created.

Before 1500, most human societies – including New Zealand’s – had histories (often long histories) of slavery, of coerced labour. The concept of slavery had little to do with the colour of a person’s skin, though tended to be associated with the ethnicities of people who had suffered military defeat. Indeed, the word ‘slave’ derives from the ‘Slav’ ethnic group. Thus, slaves were ‘foreigners’, though by no means all foreigners were slaves.

Foreigners were ‘them’; people without rights, but highly valued for their utility (especially but not only monetary utility) to ‘us’. (Further, foreign nations were rivals, much as sporting teams are rivals. Accumulated gold and silver served as scoring points in the game.) At the extreme ‘slavery’ end we imported them, exerted property rights over them, and mainly deployed them in the realm lands rather than the homelands.

Mercantilist mindframes give license to cold calculated cruelty to people who could be labelled as ‘foreign’; cruelty by neglect as well as by overt intent. If we have a narrow conception of citizenship, then we have a broad conception of ‘foreigner’. Our denizens become foreigners – without political rights and open to exploitation – when we adopt this mindset. Australia’s denizens, including those holding New Zealand passports, are ‘without political rights and open to exploitation’.

While citizens of any country should practice kindness towards citizens of all countries, they should be especially kind to their own denizens, practising members of their communities.

Conclusion – he tangata, he tangata, he tangata

New Zealand needs to behave in a principled rather than a mercantilist way. New Zealand should be prioritising its duties of care to its people; including its ‘denizens’, people subject to New Zealand’s duty of care. Duty of care always takes priority over ‘loss of money’ considerations. All people matter. Most of us in New Zealand understand who our people are, who we should not abandon during the pandemic.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Jacinda Ardern has led the way in how she’s responded to the Christchurch terrorist atrocity. The prime minister has emphasised the need to come together and to not allow the actions of a terrorist to divide New Zealand any further. She has laid the blame for Friday’s massacre firmly at the feet of the perpetrator, rejecting the idea that his beliefs are representative of New Zealanders (while at the same time signalling to people in this country that as a society we must question and challenge attitudes and structures that contribute to intolerance and hatred).

Ardern has won praise from across the political spectrum for her measured, compassionate approach. Others have not been so conciliatory, and the search for answers as to why the attack took place will be a difficult process, with many causes being singled out for blame.

My column on Tuesday dealt with the question of whether our political leaders have, in some part, played a role in increasing hate or intolerance – see: Politicians’ words under scrutiny after Christchurch terror attacks. Similarly, Hamish Rutherford addressed this issue in his article, Mainstream political policy may offer a home for racist views. And in Parliament yesterday Green MP Golriz Ghahraman challenged her fellow parliamentarians over having “fanned the flames of division” in the past.

There is a danger in going too carelessly down this path, however. In fact, caution is advisable. If the blame-game becomes too toxic then, not only will it become counterproductive to the search for answers, but it will poison New Zealand politics and society (something the terrorist seemed very keen to do). Knee-jerk levelling of blame has the potential to be divisive, precisely at a time when unity and harmony is required (and mostly being achieved).

In two now notorious examples of finger-pointing internationally, Australian senator Fraser Anning blamed the terrorist attacks on Muslims themselves, while in the US Chelsea Clinton copped the blame due to a recent statement she made opposing antisemitism.

At home, targets for blame have ranged from politicians, intelligence services, rightwing and leftwing commentators (everyone from Mike Hosking to Chris Trotter), free-speech advocates, firearm sellers, social media and the prejudice of the New Zealand public, but rarely is evidence offered to support the contention of culpability for this atrocity.

Debates over all of these issues, and many more, need to be had. We need answers for why this attack took place. And we must address the fact that racism and religious intolerance is a daily reality in New Zealand.

But caution is also needed. It’s worth taking heed of the warning issued by Kenan Malik, one of Britain’s leading leftwing public intellectuals, who wrote immediately in the wake of the Christchurch attacks that “the dead deserve better” than a rush into “name-calling and invective” – see his short Guardian column, Do not let raw anger cloud our judgment after Christchurch.

Malik argues that debate and examination is absolutely necessary: “The issues raised by the barbarous terror are many and urgent – the rise of the far right and how to combat it; how mainstream commentators talk of Muslims and immigration and whiteness; the boundaries of free speech; the regulation of social media. And so on. I will no doubt have my say on these issues in the coming days.”

However, this does not seem to be occurring in a healthy, productive manner: “What has been depressing, though, has been the way that much of the discussion has degenerated into name-calling and invective. The dead of Christchurch have seemingly become a stage on which every contemporary debate from Brexit to the politics of identity is played out. The rawness of anger inevitably clouds judgment.”

He concludes by saying, “To say that the dead deserve better is to say that we should be better in the way we engage with the living, with each other. And we should.”

Another British commentator, Maajid Nawaz, who is a Muslim and a former parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats, writes in even stronger terms that “Radical Islamists and radical leftists have seized on the Christchurch tragedy to push their own hateful agendas” – see his column from The Times newspaper: The New Zealand mosque massacre blame game is out of control.

Nawaz argues that this type of politicisation risks falling into the “trap” that the terrorist set to create division, chaos, and to pit the political left against the political right. He also fears the blame-game will lead to a shutting down of debate.

Nawaz is worth reading at length: “In my youth, as an angry 15-year-old Muslim witnessing the Bosnia genocide, I once succumbed to this temptation and promoted extreme Islamism myself for a few years. I know what giving in to hate feels like, and I know the lasting damage it can cause. But that is exactly the reaction that extremists want, and exactly why it must be resisted with all our might. So it is with no surprise that I noticed, a mere day after 50 of my fellow Muslims were so publicly and tragically killed, while the blood was still wet and the bodies remained unburied, that the ideologues had circled like vultures. Opportunistic Islamist and far-left extremists began calling for a purge of people whose politics they disagree with, and started publishing McCarthyite lists of personae non grata to target.”

In another column, Nawaz argues, “Now is not the time to settle political scores. Now is the time to reflect, reach out and respond with mercy from a position of moral authority” – see: New Zealand shootings: Muslims are fearful and hurting but we must not give in to hate.

Also in Britain, Claire Fox has written that “One of the most distasteful aspects of this was the casual way that within hours of the outrage, various conservative commentators were being openly named as indirectly responsible for the New Zealand massacre” – see her column in The Telegraph: Why I am so disturbed by how the Christchurch massacre is being used for political point-scoring (paywalled).

Fox says that there’s nothing wrong with debate and analysis, but this should not be motivated by pre-existing political agendas: “Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect a moratorium on politics as we mourn. I am political and appreciate that we want to make sense of what seems such a senseless act, especially as the killer himself framed his actions in a rambling ‘political manifesto’. But a rush to use the event to push one’s own political agenda surely displays bad faith.”

After condemning the “white supremacism” behind the terrorism as well as “scaremongering about refugees” and other xenophobic ills, Fox implores that our responses don’t just lead to the suppression of debate and ideas: “I also hate the tendency to use a massacre to slander opponents or demand particular opinions are censored. Whatever comes from the New Zealand atrocity, we should be better than that. After all, the underlying message of the terrorist was that he intended to fracture political debate and divide opinion to cause a toxic virus of hostility. Let’s make sure he doesn’t succeed.”

Similar points are made by Brendan O’Neill at the Spiked-Online website. He himself points the finger at various political commentators and activists: “The blame game they’ve been playing in the aftermath of the racist mass murder in New Zealand has been ghoulish and deeply disturbing. The bodies of the 50 murdered Muslims were barely cold before various observers, activists and leftists were naming and shaming those people who they think ‘laid the ground’ for this atrocity. And it apparently includes everyone from alt-right agitators to any mainstream newspaper columnist who has raised so much as a peep of criticism about radical Islam” – see: New Zealand’s ghoulish opportunists.

Writing for The Australian, columnist Janet Albrechtsen suggested that Fraser Anning was far from the only political actor exploiting the tragedy for their own “narrow-minded, illiberal political agendas” – see: Be wary of blame and let’s not shut down debate (paywalled).

Albrechtsen argued that rightwing voices were being unfairly targeted, and political freedoms threatened: “Those playing blame games with politics are trying to paint as mainstream what happens on the fringes of politics. That attempt to tar the centre-Right with the lunacy of the far-Right is wicked, politically driven and wrong in fact. Working in reverse, the blame-gamers are also trying to present entirely legitimate debates about immigration, integration, the self-evident clash of cultures and the rise of political Islam as fringe discussions that must be shut down. The day after terrorist attacks in Christchurch, an editor at The Saturday Paper called for laws to ‘penalise media outlets, and figures that consistently promote fear and hatred’ and ‘robust laws against the spread of hate speech’.”

Here in New Zealand, Herald columnist Jon Stokes also observes that in the wake of the terrorist atrocity, “There is a move to shut down the voices and ideas of others, to try to homogenise ideas and perspectives” – see: Ideas should be challenged not shut down.

Stokes argues against suppressing too much of the information about the terrorist event and even the terrorist himself, and he also says that we need wider and healthier political debate in general: “The evil unleashed on Friday, March 15 showed me that those silenced or suppressed voices will always find a home, and an outlet to ensure they are heard. The way forward is light, not darkness, it is away with anonymity and facelessness. It is a time of ownership of our ideas and views, and embracing tolerance and understanding.”

Writing today, Karl du Fresne finds it difficult to reconcile two very different narratives that have emerged about New Zealand and the terrorist attacks. On the one hand “New Zealand reacted with a genuine and overwhelming outpouring of shock, grief and anguish”, but according to an “alternative narrative, we are a hateful nation of racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes” – see: Some would paint us as a nation of hateful racists – that’s not the real NZ.

Certainly, there are politicians and activists elsewhere who will attempt to paint a picture of hate in New Zealand for their own ends – something we are seeing in Turkey at the moment.

In this regard, it’s worth reading the views of Massey University’s Rouben Azizian, who is a professor in the Centre of Defence and Security Study: “It is very dangerous when they use this rhetoric of us against them and them against us. They have to be very careful because they can indeed incite the feelings of a clash of civilisations, when this is a clash involving one idiot, a crazy, brainwashed person against innocent Muslim people” – see Rob Mitchell’s Christchurch shooting: Erdogan comments endanger bond built on blood and battle.

Finally, there’s a case to be made that finger-pointing is almost entirely redundant given that there was a sole terrorist involved, and he was “not one of us”, echoing Jacinda Ardern’s “This is not us” refrain. The case is put by Chris Trotter, who says “What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific, but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us” – see: What Happened Here?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written for, and first published by, German magazine Cicero.de (ref. Attentat in Christchurch – Willkommen in der Hölle). Thanks also to Prof David Robie, Pacific Media Centre AsiaPacificReport.nz for providing the featured image for this article.

OUT OF THE BLUE:

It was 1:39pm, Friday March 15. As was usual for a Friday hundreds of people had turned up to pray at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton, Christchurch. All was peaceful, women, children, men, people of all ages young and old, both Sunni and Shia, were in contemplative repose free of worry. It was a mild, late summer, 20 degrees celsius day. Earlier, the touring Bangladesh Cricket Team had briefly visited the mosque, but left early to attend a press conference. By 1:39pm, they had returned and were outside exiting a bus, intending to continue with their prayers inside the mosque.

At 1:40pm, ahead of the team, a man entered the mosque walking quickly up the front steps. He was carrying an assault rifle and dressed in combat uniform. He immediately began shooting people who were kneeling in prayer. The shots rang out and the Bangladesh team members realising they were witnesses to an attack, retreated, and fled on foot to nearby Hagley Park.

Back inside the Al Noor Mosque scores of worshipers were being gunned down, some killed instantly, others bleeding to death. The victims included little Mucaad Ibrahim who was three years of age.

Mucaad was known by his loved ones as a wise “old soul” and possessed an “intelligence beyond his years”.

Eye witnesses said that once the killer began shooting people, little Mucaad became separated from his family. In the chaos, his family could not find him. The next day Police confirmed he too had been shot dead by the killer.

The murders continued at the Al Noor Mosque until the killer’s firearms ran out of bullets. Then, he simply walked out of the mosque, got in his car, and drove six kilometres to the Linwood Mosque. There too were people who had gathered for their regular Friday afternoon prayers.

Mr Aziz picked up an EFTPOS (electronic funds transaction) machine from a table inside the mosque. He ran outside. He saw a man he describes as looking like a soldier. He said to the man: “Who are you”. Mr Aziz then saw three people lying on the ground dead from shotgun blasts. He realised the man was the killer. He approached the attacker, threw the EFTPOS machine hitting the killer, who in turn took from his vehicle a second firearm (a military style semi-automatic assault rifle) and fired four to five shots at Abdul Aziz, missing him. Then, in an attempt to lure the killer away from other people, Mr Aziz shouted at the killer from behind a car: “Come, I’m here. Come I’m here!”

Mr Aziz said he didn’t want the killer to go inside the mosque and kill more people. But the killer remained focussed. He walked directly to the entrance, once inside the mosque he continued his killing spree. Survivors speak of the killer wearing “army clothes”, dressed in “SWAT combat clothing”, helmeted, wearing a vest and a balaclava.

Inside the Linwood Mosque, another witness, Shoaib Gani, was kneeling in prayer. He heard a noise like fireworks but he and others weren’t too concerned and continued with their prayers. Then, as he and his fellow worshipers were kneeling speaking verses from the Koran, the man next to him fell forward with blood pouring from his head. He had been shot and killed instantly, Mr Gani said. Then others too began falling to the floor dead.

Mr Gani crawled under a table. He saw the killer and his firearm. “Written on the rifle were the words, ‘Welcome to hell’,” he said.

Victims, who were wounded and bleeding, were pleading with Mr Gani to help them. But he was frozen to a spot under a table knowing that the killer was walking around the mosque killing as many people as he could. Mr Gani believed he too would also soon be dead, so he reached for his cellphone, he called his parent’s back home in India. But no one answered. He tried to call his father’s number, but the phone kept ringing. He saw people around him bleeding to death. Others with fatal head-wounds “their brains were hanging out. I just couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to do.” Mr Gani phoned 111 (the New Zealand emergency number) and told the authorities people were dead and injured: “The lady on the phone asked me to stay on the line as long as I could.”

Outside, Abdul Aziz picked up one of the killer’s discarded shotguns. Inside the mosque, the killer’s assault rifle ran out of bullets. The killer then “dropped his firearm” and ran back to his vehicle. He got in the driver’s seat. Mr Aziz then ran toward the car. He threw a discarded shotgun at the killer’s vehicle: “I threw it like an arrow. It shattered his window.” Mr Aziz thinks the killer thought someone had shot at him with a loaded gun. The killer turned. He swore at Mr Aziz. When the window burst it covered the inside of the car with glass. Mr Aziz said the killer “then took off” driving in his car. He then turn right away from the mosque driving through a red traffic light and out into Christchurch suburban streets.

Some minutes later, Police and ambulance officers arrived at Linwood Mosque. Anti-Terrorist armed Police entered the mosque. Inside, Mr Gani said the survivors were ordered to put their hands up above their heads. The mass murder scene was covered in blood. The Police then secured the area. Some victims survived because they were under the bodies of the dead. Police told survivors to gather near a grassed area outside. There, people began weeping for their husbands, wives, parents, children, friends.

THE ARREST:

Seventeen minutes later, two Police officers identified the killer, apparently driving his car. They drove the police car into the killer’s vehicle, ramming it against a curb. Immediately, they disarmed the killer, cuffed him, noticed home made bombs in the vehicle – IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They arrested the man and secured the scene.

The rest of Christchurch was in lock-down, children were kept safe inside their classrooms, hospitals began to prepare for casualties, the city’s streets became eerily quiet, people were locked in to libraries, shops, their homes. Police and armed forces helicopters networked the skies. No one knew if the terrorist attacks were committed by a group of people or a lone gunman.

But back inside and entrances to the two mosques, 50 people were dead – one of the dead was discovered the next day by Police, the body was laying beneath others who had been killed. Scores of others were in hospital fighting for their lives, at least another ten were in a critical condition in intensive care. Pathologists from all over New Zealand and Australia were heading to Christchurch to help with documenting the method of murder of the dead.

Within hours of the killings, Australian media named the alleged killer as an Australian born citizen named Brenton Tarrant, 28 years of age. On Saturday morning The Australian newspaper’s front page read “Australia’s evil export”.

Other media in New Zealand followed with details of the man’s background. Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared in court the next day charged with one single count of murder. Other charges will follow. His duty lawyer did not seek name suppression nor bail, the lawyer told the judge: “I’m simply seeking remand and a high court next-available-hearing date.” Tarrant stood cuffed, smiling at those in the courtroom, at one point signaling with his fingers a ‘white supremacist’ sign. He will next appear in the Christchurch High Court on April 5.

THE AFTERMATH:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern later told media: “It was absolutely his [the offender’s) intention to continue with his attack.” PM Ardern said: “Police are working to build a picture of this tragic event. A complex and comprehensive investigation is (now) underway.” To balance the requirement of investigation with the customs of Muslim burials, PM Ardern said liaison officers are with the victims’ loved ones to help “in a way that is consistent with Muslim faith while taking into account these unprecedented circumstances and the obligations to the coroner.”

PM Ardern said, survivors of the massacre had indicated that this attack was not “of the New Zealand that they know”.

One day later, Survivor Shoaib Gani (mentioned above) told media he still could not sleep or eat. The sounds and sights were still vivid in his head: “I still can feel myself lying on the floor waiting for the bullets to hit me.” He said, he will travel back to India to visit family, but he will return to Christchurch: “It’s just a few people, you know. You can’t blame the whole of New Zealand for this… It’s a good country, people are peaceful. Everybody has helped me here. One right wing (person) doesn’t mean everyone is bad. So I can come back here and live and hope nothing like this happens in the future.”

In the hours after the attacks, all around New Zealand, in the cities and in small country areas, Police were stationed and were ready in case others were involved and were preparing further crimes.

Beside the Police officers, people, of all races and religions, began laying flowers at the steps to their local mosques. Messages included read: “Salam Alaikum, Peace be unto you”, and, Aroha nui”, “Peace and love”, “You are one of us”. The outpouring of grief swept the South Pacific nation, and as this piece was written, a mood of support, comfort, reassurance and solidarity with those of Muslim faith was in evidence.

In Australia, Sydney’s landmark Opera House was like a beacon in the night; coloured blue, red, and white – the colours of the New Zealand flag embossed with the silver fern (Ponga) an emblem of Aotearoa New Zealand. Australia’s peoples, like in New Zealand, began laying flowers at the steps of its mosques in a gesture of inclusiveness.

In the aftermath, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to ongoing financial assistance to dependents of those who have died or are injured, and assistance, she said, will be ongoing.

Questions are being leveled as to how a person with hate can enter, live, and purchase weapons in New Zealand while expressing hate toward other cultures and harbouring an intent to kill others.

PM Ardern said: “The guns used in this case appear to have been modified. That is a challenge Police have been facing, and that is a challenge that we will look to address in changing our laws… We need to include the fact that modification of guns which can lead them to become essentially the kinds of weapons we have seen used in this terrorist act.”

When asked how she was coping personally with the tragedy, she said: “I am feeling the exact same emotions that every New Zealander is facing. Yes, I have the additional responsibility and weight of expressing the grief of all New Zealanders and I certainly feel that.”

That responsibility includes ensuring New Zealand’s Police, the nation’s intelligence and security services and “the process around watch-lists, including whether or not our border protections are currently in a status that they should be, and, including our gun laws.”

THE BACKSTORY:

Indeed, New Zealand is part of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network that includes the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Global surveillance is coordinated and prioritised among the Five Eyes member states. While significant resource, technology and sophistication is committed to the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, New Zealanders fear that those who find themselves as targets, or within the scope of intelligence officers, are predominantly of the Muslim faith.

In contrast, the accused killer who allegedly committed the horrific Christchurch mosque attacks, has been active both on social media and the dark web expressing, with an intensifying degree, his ideology of hate and intolerance. It does appear of the highest public interest, certainly from an open source intelligence point of view, to ask questions of why New Zealand’s (and indeed the Five Eyes intelligence network’s) surveillance experts did not detect the expressed evil that had radicalised the heart and mind of the perpetrator of this massacre.

It is also fact, that New Zealand is a comparatively safe and peaceful nation. But within its midst are people and groups fermenting on racially-based hate ideas. Whether it be in isolation or among organised groupings, the threat of racially driven terror crimes exists.

The alleged killer, Brenton Tarrant, has lived among those of New Zealand’s southern city Dunedin for at least two years. It appears he was radicalised around 2010 after his father died and he toured Europe. He wrote about becoming “increasingly disgusted” at immigrant communities. In early 2018, Tarrant joined a Dunedin gun club and began practicing his shooting skills and allegedly planned his attacks.

Regarding Christchurch, while it has a history of overt white racist gangs, at this juncture, it does not appear they were directly involved in this series of crimes.

But this leads to many unanswered questions, including:

• Was the killer a lone mass murderer, a sleeper in a cell of one?
• Were those with whom he communicated and engaged with on the web in extreme white racist ideologies aware of his plans?
• Was Christchurch chosen by the killer for logistical reasons?
• Was it because the city is easier to drive around than Dunedin, Wellington or Auckland?
• Was it because Christchurch has at least two mosques within easy driving distance?
• Were the Bangladesh Cricket team in his scope of attacks?
• Was the killer attempting to incite a violent response from Christchurch’s burgeoning Muslim community, or, expecting a response from the Alt-Right, from white racist groups such as the Right Wing Resistance (RWR), the Fourth Reich, and Christchurch’s skinhead community?

THE FUTURE:

Survivors of Friday 15th’s terrorist attack say they have complained of an increase in racism and expressed hate in recent times. They say, their concerns have not been taken seriously. These are the concerns that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to listen to, has committed to represent, and, as the prime advocate for her country’s peoples, to act on to ensure cracks in New Zealand’s border, security and intelligence apparatus are corrected.

And, what of New Zealand’s social culture? How will it be affected? That will be determined by the actions of each individual person, each community, town and city and how as a nation New Zealand redefines “The Kiwi Way”.

Members of New Zealand’s media will also need to act responsibly. It is fair to say some have a reputation for argument that verges on alt-right intolerance, for example, on Twitter only two days after the mass murders, a prominent radio journalist, who is employed by one of New Zealand’s largest networks, tweeted: “28 years on an [sic] we still haven’t stopped madmen getting guns. #ChChMosque… [Replying to @Politikwebsite] And the neo nationalist right are the result of the virtue signaling exclusionary left.”

Perhaps such examples are out of step with New Zealand’s population. But such attitudes do create a dialogue of justification for those who harbour intolerance. However, if the outpouring of love and compassion continues to bind rather than divide, then perhaps New Zealand has received, as they say, ‘a wake-up call’, where racial intolerance and extreme ideologies have no place among peoples of all kinds, Maori and Pakeha, of all religions, political persuasions and creeds.

One thing is certain; to stamp out the evil of hate extremism, New Zealanders will pay a price that will be charged against the Kiwi lifestyle. Personal liberties of freedom, of expression and privacy will certainly be eroded further as this nation of the South Pacific grapples with how to keep its peoples safe. The means of how to achieve relative safety will be hotly debated, but it is a necessary juncture in this nation’s history, a moment when we all must confront and challenge ourselves so that people of innocence, people like little three year old Mucaad Ibrahim, can go about their days in trust, in peace, in joyful purpose and achieve their deserved potential. Anything less is a second killing for the victims of Friday 15, New Zealand’s darkest hour.

Until late 2018, New Zealand’s immigration statistics have been woefully inadequate. While it has always been possible to keep taps on the total number of people in the country – through births, deaths, and net international passenger movements – ‘official’ net immigration numbers have long been calculated by stated intentions (as on arrival and departure cards) rather than by actual outcomes.

For statistical purposes, immigrants are people who arrive in New Zealand, and stay for at least 12 months without leaving the country.

For recent history, actual outcomes have been ascertained by matching arrivals and departures (through passports, not self-declared passenger data). For 2018 new arrivals, the numbers of people expected to stay in New Zealand for more than a year have been estimated using information associated with their visa. For 2018 recurrent arrivals, their likelihood of staying at least 12 months is estimated from a travel history of at least 16‑months.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/Reports/Defining-migrants-using-travel-histories-and-the-12-16-month-rule/defining-migrants-using-travel-histories-and-12-16-month-rule.pdf

Immigration statistics have been recalculated from 2015, using this new method. The chart shows 2015‑17 annual average long‑term arrivals (total blue), 2015‑17 annual average long‑term departures (light blue), with annual average 2015‑17 net migration in dark blue.

The equivalent 2018 data is shown in red.

The data in the chart is categorised by nationality (country of citizenship), and excludes New Zealand citizens. (For New Zealand citizens net immigration is negative. This is partly because some immigrants acquire New Zealand citizenship, and later depart as New Zealand citizens. It is also because New Zealand has always been a country of emigration as well as a country of immigration.)

The most important feature of the chart is that, while gross immigration has changed little (though with increases from Europe, the Americas, and Africa), departures of immigrants have increased markedly. The result is a significant overall fall in the net immigration of foreign citizens.

The places with the least return migration are Philippines, Pacific countries, and Africa (especially South Africa). These are the most obvious cases of economic migration, where immigrants are largely content with life in New Zealand. These are also the countries from which most immigrants seek New Zealand citizenship; so when they leave they are more likely to leave as New Zealand citizens.

In the middle are countries with high numbers of international students – China, India, South (including Southeast) Asia –  reflecting the ambivalent immigration status of international students. These are also countries whose middle-class residents have aspired to hold alternative national residencies while never quite leaving their countries of origin. Tellingly, however, China is showing substantially more return migration than previously. It is coming to look more like the richer countries of Asia (North-East Asia) and the English‑speaking developed countries, with the highest levels of return migration.

For these economically‑advanced countries, a major driver of return migration will be dissatisfaction – much of that due to inflated initial expectations of life in New Zealand. There will also be a considerable amount of churn associated with a rich anglo middle‑class who see themselves more as citizens of the world than as citizens of a particular country. These are heavily globalised people, for whom traditional concepts of international migration do not apply. Their migration patterns are driven as much by the ever‑cheaper price of air travel, facilitating a transience (eg home‑ownership in multiple countries) and consumerism that imposes a high environmental footprint on the world.

Finally, there is an increasing category of lifestyle refugees – suggested from European and American data. These are people – mainly social liberals – driven by fears of environmental disaster and of political populism; and probably in part unspoken concerns about how immigration in their home countries has changed many of their cities. Europe (excluding the United Kingdom) has bucked the overall trend,  showing easily the biggest increase in net immigration. This is especially true of Germany and France, which showed a near‑doubling of gross immigration in 2018. Time will tell whether these people stay.

It is great to see Statistics New Zealand finally creating some worthwhile immigration statistics; statistics that show high levels of migrant departure as well as of arrivals. What we need also is reliable information about internal migration – changes in the distribution of population within New Zealand. My sense is that Auckland has experienced a disproportionately large amount of departures, to other parts of New Zealand and other parts of the world. Many people have cashed up their capital gains in residential property.