Illustration / Guy Body
COMMENT:
In the two weeks since the Christchurch mosques massacre, it has often been said that the atrocity has changed New Zealand forever.
Forever is a long time. Some change will be short term, some long term and some of it lasting.
For many ordinary New Zealanders, with no previous connection to Islam, that change will undoubtedly be lasting. The suffering has connected many of us to a world we had little to do with.
We may not understand the Islamic faith any more deeply, but there is now an emotional and empathetic association with its followers.
The biggest wake-up call, after the security failures, has been the revelation of how marginalised Muslims in New Zealand have previously felt.
That is evident from the surprise and gratitude they have expressed at the support they have felt from ordinary Kiwis delivering flowers from their gardens to the simply magnificent ceremony in Parliament last week.
Whether the new sense of inclusion at community, local government and national level is short term or lasting will vary from area to area.
Certainly there will be a generation of children for whom the events of the past two weeks will leave an indelible impression.
More immediately, a change in New Zealand's consciousness means a finer filter will be applied to discussions about Muslims at the political level.
Inevitably there will be less tolerance of xenophobic and nationalistic policies which have been common fare in New Zealand First over 25 years and more recently emerged in Labour when it was in Opposition.
While the massacre has undoubtedly changed the way New Zealanders sees the Muslim world, it has probably changed the way the world sees New Zealand.
Whether that translates into changing the way New Zealand deals with the world may depend on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and what she does with her new international profile.
She has won plaudits in the United States for the swift response to gun laws.
She has already been thrust onto the global stage to pressure change in social media giants as enablers of extremism.
Japan, as host of the next G20, at which Australia has put the issue on the agenda, could consider inviting Ardern to Osaka in June to help galvanise collective global action.
Ardern continues to hit the right notes at the right time, knowing instinctively when to offer comfort and when to promise action.
In an impressive speech at the national remembrance service yesterday, she called for a collective response to end the vicious cycle in which extremism has bred extremism.
If she wants to pursue that cause more widely, there is an international stage with lights on just waiting.
Diplomatically it is difficult to see any substantial change in New Zealand's relationships because of the massacre, mainly because it already has a global reputation for tolerance and independence.
The line New Zealand has taken on Palestine has often been out of step with friends in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Ardern has reinforced a reputation that already existed.
As Ardern has grown in stature in the past two weeks, National leader Simon Bridges has diminished.
The shutters have come down on National just at a time when it was making inroads into the issue of a capital gains tax.
National is not part of the immediate story and, at a time of crisis, people don't want to hear from politicians unless they are contributing something constructive, such as supporting a reform of gun laws.
There is a fine line between asking the hard questions about what happened and being seen to use the terrorist attack for political advantage.
Bridges has some fine judgements to make in the coming weeks because attempting to insert himself and or National into picture when he is not wanted could be damaging.
If he makes bad judgment calls, it could damage his party - and his leadership if his colleagues consider he is making the wrong calls.
Labour had to accept irrelevancy during the devastating Christchurch earthquakes in National's first term.
Bridges has to accept that, too, and use the time constructively, to prepare for when the pall lifts, as it will. Otherwise he will look desperate.
Bridges began the week issuing a press statement saying National supported a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the lead-up to the attacks – the day before the commission was announced.
Who cares? It was completely unnecessary. If he had opposed a Royal Commission there may have been some point to issuing it, otherwise it was irrelevant.
In his Monday morning broadcast interviews, however, Bridges did raise some relevant comments.
He talked about decisions that had been made under the last National Government and suggested it had leaned too far in favour or privacy over security.
The security debate is one that Bridges is only too willing to have because he knows that Labour is on the wrong side of it.
Any ambition by National to upgrade surveillance techniques were stymied in Government by Labour's vociferous opposition to even the most basic and justifiable changes to the GCSB legislation in 2013.
Labour among others fuelled the falsehood that National was passing laws to conduct mass surveillance on New Zealanders.
Bridges, however, is in too much of a hurry to have the debate, as he showed by leaping into social media this week and drawing out the unseemly trolls from under the bridge.
Politicians who are seen to be nakedly using the terrorist attack for their own ambitions will be punished.
The debate will come, as the evidence before the Royal Commission unfolds.
It will necessarily look at decisions of the last government and the current Government, which set its own security priorities in March last year and, until the attacks anyway, had not signed a single warrant to undertake surveillance of a right-wing extremist in New Zealand.
Everyone should face scrutiny, including the watchdogs of the security agencies.
The security agencies themselves will need to consider whether the increased focus on cyber security threats from abroad in recent years has been at the expense of neglecting domestic threats.
One thing is certain: change may not last forever but there will forever be change.
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