Public inquiries on counterterrorism: New Zealand’s experience

ABSTRACT

In the aftermath of major terrorist attacks, governments create public inquiries to establish the facts of the matter, expose those facts to public scrutiny, find fault, allocate blame, ensure accountability, and restore public confidence. Yet few studies pay close attention to these responses as a practice of remedial intervention into official counterterrorism efforts. Based on our examination of New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019, we argue that two contending approaches to national security shaped the inquiry’s design and informed its conduct. On the one hand, an established whole-of-government approach produced design features that led the inquiry to reproduce the orthodox logic of security professionals and entrench existing security policy and practices. On the other hand, a revisionist approach sought to use the inquiry as a means of furthering the Government’s social cohesion policy agenda and to strengthen democratic protections for minority groups. However, the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendations reveals a deep commitment to the whole-of-government approach to national security, which appears to co-opt civil society representatives and marginalise dissenting voices. This, in our view, leaves New Zealand society little better off when it comes to understanding the nature and scale of the threat posed by terrorism or responding to a diverse array of other security challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Public inquiries
• Counterterrorism
• New Zealand national security
• Social cohesion
• Public accountability

Introduction

Governments respond to major terrorist attacks within their jurisdictions or on their populations by, inter alia, establishing public inquiries. The 9/11 Commission is an exemplar of this phenomenon, offering a model for public inquiries following attacks in London (2005), Norway (2011), Brussels (2016), Manchester (2017), and Christchurch (2019), though not all terrorist acts prompt this response. Attacks in Bali (2002), Madrid (2004), Mumbai (2008), and Paris (2015) did not generate public inquiries, for instance. When public inquiries follow terrorist attacks, individuals of esteem are usually appointed to lead them. They tend to forensically examine an attack, identify operational or strategic deficiencies in security agencies, and recommend more counterterrorism powers and resources that elected representatives are hard pressed to ignore. Unlike those operational and strategic practices of countering terrorism that remain concealed beneath a veil of official secrecy, these inquiries on counterterrorism deliver reports that can be subjected to rigorous academic analysis (see, for instance, Kean & Hamilton 2004; Hallett 2011; Gjorv 2012; Saunders 2021).

While there are important studies on public inquiries into decisions to wage war (Thomas 2020), the use of torture and rendition (Guild, Bigo, and Gibney 2018), intelligence failures (Jervis 2006) and scandals (Johnston 2015 [1985]; Miller and Miller 2008); Townley 2021), and national security more generally (Farson and Phythian 2011), few pay close attention to those commissioned in the wake of a terrorist attack. When public inquiries on counterterrorism are examined, these inquiries are understood as a rich archive of knowledge (De Goede 2014; Wallace and Stuchell 2011), a device of disclosure (Walters 2021; Fenster 2008) a tool to rewrite history (Fenster 2008; Pillar 2006), as a vehicle of policy advocacy (Falkenrath 2004; Torok 2011), proposer for organisational change (Rena and Christensen 2020; Rovner and Long 2005), and shaper of public opinion (Pillar 2006). Claudia Hillebrand (2019) examines four parliamentary inquiries into a German far-right terrorist group, builds a useful framework for evaluating the quality of parliamentary investigations, and warns that special inquiries can offer something of a placebo effect creating the illusion of accountability when routine public accountability arrangements perform poorly. But she is alone in systematically analysing public inquiries on counterterrorism that provide important, albeit temporary, inquisitory oversight within formal public accountability arrangements for security activities. The lacuna surrounding these remedial interventions into official counterterrorism efforts is noteworthy in a growing corpus of scholarly work that understands the politics of security to be something greater than the conduct of those professionals of politics elected to high office (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010; Ben Jaffel 2020; Ben Jaffel et al. 2022; Beerli 2018; Berling 2015; Bigo 2016), but also appreciates the practices of security include oversight measures and public accountability arrangements (Neal 2019; Bakir 2018; Defty 2022, 2019; Blakeley 2011), and warrants further treatment.

In what follows, we examine New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019, including its final report which was delivered to the Governor-General of New Zealand on 26 November 2020 and publicly released twelve days later. Almost 800 pages in length, that report is divided into ten parts, spread over four volumes, and has 73 chapters. Part 1 declares the inquiry’s purpose, provides a detailed account of Tarrant’s attack and describes the process establishing the inquiry and how it conducted its investigation. Part 2 provides a brief overview of New Zealand’s history, constitutional framework and demography as well as New Zealand’s human rights framework and its national security system. It introduces and explains key terms and concepts relating to extremism. Part 3 summarises what New Zealanders told the inquiry about the impact of Tarrant’s attack and their impressions of New Zealand’s counterterrorism efforts. Part 4 provides a biography of Tarrant through the conceptual lens of right-wing extremism and Part 5 explains how he acquired a firearms licence, weapons and ammunition within New Zealand. Part 6 describes what New Zealand public sector agencies knew about Tarrant prior to his attack and Part 7 points to three ways in which those agencies might have detected him. Spanning 250 pages, Part 8 is by far the Report’s largest and offers a detailed assessment of New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort to date. Part 9 introduces and advocates for notions of social cohesion and diversity as policy principles that the report asserts will help prevent future terrorist acts in New Zealand. Part 10 contains 44 recommendations to improve New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, strengthen New Zealand’s firearms licencing system, better support the ongoing recovery needs of affected whanau [family], survivors, and witnesses of the 15 March terrorist attack, and further develop New Zealand’s response to its increasingly diverse population, as well as how to implement their recommendations. We selected this case not only because it produced the most significant public report into New Zealand’s counterterrorism efforts to date and offered a raft of recommendations that involve civil society representatives, but also because the materials made public by it provide a useful pool of evidence to help understand the relationship between the inquiry and its wider politico-social context.¹

Drawing inspiration from a rich tradition of critical social inquiry, we adopt a perspective used to critique types and forms of state power, particularly over society, and follow in the footsteps of Michel Foucault who wrote:

A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest … . Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it; to show that things are not self-evident as one believed, to see what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult

(in Kritzman Foucault 1988, 154–5)

We do so because we want to move beyond evaluating the quality of public inquiries on counterterrorism towards better understanding the political stakes involved in creating them and how these inquiries might be used to maintain existing security policies and entrench counterterrorism practices. We focus our analysis on the ways in which the Royal Commission of Inquiry establishes facts or develops policy, learns from events, provides an opportunity for reconciliation and resolution, and holds people and organisations to account because these purposes are consistent with New Zealand’s longstanding policy on public inquiries (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2017, s 4.101), though the New Zealand Law Commission (2007) notes tension can arise among contending purposes when the desire to establish facts and hold people and organisations to account might not be desired by ministers, especially if they hold a relevant portfolio and are supposed to be publicly accountable. Moreover, we are unaware of any other scholarly treatments of this inquiry and wish to bring new empirically based observations to the existing debates on the democratic control of security agencies (See Roach 2007, 2016; Blackbourn, De Londras, and Morgan 2019; Walsh 2022) in a way that might enable other researchers examining different inquiries to compare features, such as remit, rigour, and reception (Hillebrand 2019). To be clear, our purpose here is not to mimic public policy advice by offering recommendations or to advance a normative argument about the way public inquiries should be managed. Rather, it is to highlight and discuss the problematic aspects of the inquiry under consideration.

Based on our examination of New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019, we argue that two contending approaches to national security shaped the inquiry’s design and informed its conduct. On the one hand, an established whole-of-government approach produced design features that led the inquiry to reproduce the orthodox logic of security professionals and entrench existing security policy and practices. On the other hand, a revisionist approach sought to use the inquiry as a means of furthering the Government’s social cohesion policy agenda and to strengthen democratic protections for minority groups. Notwithstanding this revisionist approach, the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendations reveals a deep commitment to the whole-of-government approach to national security, which appears to co-opt civil society representatives and marginalise dissenting voices. This, in our view, leaves New Zealand society little better off when it comes to understanding the nature and scale of the threat posed by terrorism or responding to a diverse array of other security challenges.

Following the inquiry’s life cycle, our argument unfolds in five sections. The first section argues that the successful targeting of a religious minority and large-scale loss of life spurred an expectation from a fearful public that the Government explain why the security agencies could not protect New Zealanders from a terrorist attack. We maintain that, under the pressure of this expectation, the government decided to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry, among its other security responses, because that is the type of public inquiry reserved for the most serious matters of public concern, but one which can be used to deflect public attention away from any bureaucratic culpability and ministerial accountability. The second section argues that an established whole-of-government approach to national security – which is embedded within the existing national security system led by the National Security Group of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) – shaped the inquiry’s design to preserve the status-quo arrangements by enabling an unduly narrow terms of reference and the appointment of the two individuals of esteem lacking subject-matter expertise as Royal Commissioners. The third section demonstrates how these inhibiting design features led the inquiry to reproduce the orthodox security logics and to entrench existing policies and practices by recommending adjustments to operational and governance practices and the creation of a new intelligence and security agency. The fourth section argues that the inquiry’s revisionist approach to national security embraced an all-of-society perspective to advance the Government’s social cohesion policy agenda that sought to strengthen the democratic protection of minority groups. We maintain that this shift not only compromised the inquiry’s political independence, but also undermined its value as a remedial counterterrorism intervention. We argue in the fifth section that the way in which the inquiry’s recommendations are being implemented leaves New Zealand society little better off when it comes to understanding the nature and scale of the threat posed by terrorism or responding to a diverse array of other security challenges. This is because the government’s current public engagement practices around countering terrorism and preventing violent extremism instrumentalises civil society representatives, and others, to bolster the whole-of-government approach to national security.

Decision to establish an inquiry

The decision to establish a public inquiry in the immediate aftermath of Brenton Tarrant’s terrorist attack on two Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 was somewhat unsurprising because these inquiries are a reasonably common way to deal with serious matters of public concern, which usually involve multiple fatalities resulting from human error or deliberate acts of political violence. Public inquiries are normally undertaken to restore public confidence in specific institutions following mass loss of life, by establishing the facts of the matter (Boudes and Laroche 2009; Kenny and Ó Dochartaigh 2021) and then exposing those facts to public scrutiny (Ireton 2018; Howe 1999; Hutter 1992), as well as by finding fault, allocating blame, and ensuring accountability (Sulitzeanu-Kenan 2010; Elliott and McGuinness 2002). Public inquiries can capture certain experiences and institutionalise lessons learned by developing policy and legislation that could prevent a similar large-scale loss of life from happening in the future (Stark and Yates 2021; Elliott and McGuinness 2002). This is not to suggest, however, that public inquiries always establish a complete set of relevant facts, or always hold to account every individual or group who are blameworthy, or always capture and convey the most useful lessons learned. Nor is this to imply these inquiries fully restore the public’s trust and confidence in certain institutions.

In addition to fulfilling those laudable functions, public inquiries are sometimes used for Machiavellian purposes. Far from an effective check on executive action, office holders use these inquiries to eschew allegations of blame if a crisis emerged under their watch (Murphy 2019). By acknowledging the public’s concern while refocusing their attention on ad-hoc institutions designed to be credible sources of information on those issues, elected representatives use inquiries as “a continuation of politics by other means” (Sulitzeanu-Kenan 2010, 632). These inquiries can become objects of political expedience, which depoliticise the matter of concern and legitimise the responsible institutions (Brown 2000, 2003; Sedley 1989) or become evidence of the seriousness with which elected representatives are responding to the tragedy or disaster. Even when so-called rogue inquiries slip the bounds of their creator’s control and venture into territory unwelcomed by their political masters, ministerial discretion allows a report’s findings to be publicly welcomed and its recommendations “accepted in principle” before the minister’s department triages those recommendations and, in some cases, reinterprets them. When that happens, public inquiries become the “tall grass into which issues can be punted and lost forever” (Stark and Yates 2021, 348).

Although we do not know for certain why governments establish public inquiries in some cases but not in others, the politico-social context in which public inquiries are established, including the extent to which the underlying tragedy has salience as a public issue (Thomas and Cooper 2020), the proximity of those responsible to the tragedy, and the timing of election year cycles, plays an important role in decision-making (Sulitzeanu-Kenan 2010). In the case at hand, the significance of these factors stems, in part, from the public’s expectation for the government to account for its inability to protect New Zealanders from an act of terrorism.

Firstly, the seriousness of the underlying act of terrorism had salience as a public issue. While it was not the first time New Zealand had experienced terrorism (Battersby 2018; Battersby and Ball 2019), Brenton Tarrant’s attack on the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 was the first time that a lone actor deliberately targeted a religious minority marginalised within New Zealand society. Moreover, New Zealand has experienced mass shooters in the past, but Tarrant’s killing of fifty-one individuals and the injuring of another forty was on an unprecedented scale. Tarrant’s use of military-style assault weapons was also new in New Zealand, as was his online promotion of the propaganda of the deed. Tarrant live-streamed the massacre on Facebook, after having sent an email warning of his imminent attack to a security team based at New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington (Young and Caine 2020a, especially pp.40–47). Tarrant’s reference to vituperative right-wing ideology as a justification for his attack and his manifesto’s praise of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 individuals on 22 July 2011, also demonstrated that New Zealand is closely connected to the circuits of political violence animating world affairs and is not immune to the harms caused by terrorism. Tarrant’s targeting of a minority group based on their religion and the large number of victims as well as his access to military-style weapons and use of social media to live stream the attack suddenly and brutally disturbed the complacency of many New Zealanders. This tragedy demanded explanation.

Secondly, by exposing the raw extent of New Zealand’s vulnerability to lone actor terrorism, Tarrant’s attack revealed strategic flaws and policy weaknesses in New Zealand’s approach to counterterrorism (Battersby, Ball, and Nelson 2020; O’Farrell 2022). In fact, the successful attack raised important questions about whether New Zealand’s approach to national security was fit for purpose at a time when its intelligence and security agencies were actively seeking to restore public trust and confidence in their work, following a succession of scandals (Rogers and Mawdsley 2021). Since the early 2000s, both of New Zealand’s intelligence and security agencies, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), have continuously used their annual reports to the House of Representatives to showcase their counterterrorism credentials, presumably in part to highlight their competency and in part to attract more resources and staff (Rogers and Mawdsley 2022). Since security professionals had long been targeting Muslims in New Zealand as “communities of suspicion”, rather than as vulnerable persons, their proximity to the victims of the attack also demanded explanation.

Thirdly, the decision to establish a public inquiry into Tarrant’s attack was taken on 8 April 2019, with an expectation that it would complete its work by 10 December 2019 (Ardern 8 April 2019). This was unusual as Royal Commissioners usually determine their own timeframes in New Zealand. The imposed deadline would mean the final report could be made available to the public before the 2020 General Election, held on 17 October, so that the public could debate it and the government could act on it and show its progress in addressing the public’s concerns. However, the inquiry took longer than expected – for reasons related to the sheer volume of material collected and analysed by the inquiry team and because of various disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (Young and Caine 2020a, 48) – and the delivery of the final report was delayed until late November 2020, only weeks after the Ardern-led government was returned by the 2020 General Election.

Under the Inquiries Act 2013, the government could have chosen to establish a “standard” public inquiry, which typically investigates a particularly significant, or wide-reaching, issue causing a high level of concern to the public and to ministers.² Or, it could have chosen to establish a government inquiry, which typically deals with smaller and more immediate issues where a quick and authoritative answer is required from an independent inquirer and there is no requirement that the report of a government inquiry be tabled in parliament. Alternatively, the government could have chosen to establish a Select Committee Inquiry or a Ministerial Committee. But the government decided to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry, which “are typically reserved for the most serious matters of public importance” and, once established, are to be independent of the Government (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2017, s. 4.91).

Given the gravity of the matter, the decision to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry was taken alongside the government’s other responses to Tarrant’s attack. Those responses included the New Zealand Police immediately increasing their presence at public events, especially those with nationalist, ethnic or religious dimensions. Having arrested Tarrant as he fled in his vehicle and remanded him in custody, the Police began investigating the attack and brought a single charge of murder against Tarrant on 16 March, though by 20 May the charge sheet included 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder, and one charge of engaging in a terrorist act. On 26 March 2020, Tarrant pleaded guilty to all charges and is the first person convicted for terrorist offences under New Zealand law (R v Tarrant [2020] NHC 2192, as cited in Young and Caine 2020a, 47). These responses also included Parliament’s reform of private gun ownership, including a ban on military-style semi-automatic assault rifles and a weapons buy-back scheme which, lasting six months, commenced in the second half of 2019. New Zealand’s Chief Censor classified both the live-streamed video and Tarrant’s manifesto as objectionable, thereby prohibiting the possession and distribution of both within New Zealand. Furthermore, two months after the attack, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron announced the Christchurch Call, pledging to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online to prevent the internet from being used as a tool for terrorists (Ardern 2019a).

The decision to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry was presented as the centrepiece of the government’s multipronged response (Ardern 2019b) because it had the potential to prompt a major reform of New Zealand’s security arrangements. By examining what New Zealand’s public service agencies knew about Tarrant’s activities prior to his attack, what actions those agencies took in light of that knowledge, and what additional measures should be taken by those agencies to prevent future attacks, the Royal Commission of Inquiry had the potential to profoundly reconfigure New Zealand’s security capabilities and reshape the future role played by security agencies in New Zealand’s political, economic and social life. Yet, even as the inquiry was positioned as a remedial intervention into New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, the government was already expressing its intent to use the resulting report – perhaps irrespective of what it might find or recommend – “to reassure the New Zealand public, including its Muslim communities, that all appropriate measures are being taken by relevant State sector agencies to ensure their safety and protection” (S.1(3) of Terms of Reference).

Design of the inquiry

Since 2011, New Zealand has adopted a whole-of-government approach to national security. Senior officials at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) codified longstanding institutional arrangements as a national security system and placed themselves at the apex of that system by chairing the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination and its auxiliary Security and Intelligence Board and Hazard Risk Boards (DPMC 2016). Those officials defined national security as “the condition which permits the citizens of a state to go about their daily business confidently free from fear and able to make the most of opportunities to advance their way of life” (DPMC 2011, 3). This expansive definition of national security enables those senior officials to exert varying degrees of influence and at times control over other government agencies whenever they determine the circumstance demands (DPMC 2016). In turn, the machinery of government now reaches into society to an unprecedented degree. According to officials at DPMC, “[t]he broader definition of national security means that government agencies today have to monitor and assess a widening range of security risks. There is a greater need for improved assessment practices based on common principles, language, and methodologies, and to coordinate strategic planning and response activities across government agencies and wider network” (DPMC 2011, 11)

This established approach to national security shaped the inquiry’s terms of reference in a way that reflects and preserves the status quo arrangements. The Order in Council issued on 8 April 2019 (Parliamentary Counsel Office, 2019) sets out the inquiry’s terms of reference and directs the inquiry to examine four specific issues:

(a) what relevant State sector agencies knew about the activities of the individual who has been charged with offences in relation to the 15 March 2019 terrorist attack on the Al-Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, before that terrorist attack; and

(b) what actions (if any) relevant State sector agencies took in light of that knowledge; and

(c) whether there were any additional measures that relevant State sector agencies could have taken to prevent the terrorist attack; and

(d) what additional measures should be taken by relevant State sector agencies to prevent such terrorist attacks in the future.

The Order articulates the purpose of the inquiry, the scope, matters upon which findings are sought and the matters upon which recommendations are sought. Within the scope of the inquiry, there are essentially two matters of public concern. The first relates to how Tarrant planned and prepared for his attack. The second matter of concern relates to any information held by the relevant government agencies on Tarrant and his plans and preparations before the attack, as well as to any actions they took, or could have taken, to prevent that attack. By framing the first matter as Tarrant’s movements and actions leading up to, and including, 15 March 2019, the terms of reference decontextualise the terrorist attack and depoliticise Tarrant’s motives, guiding the inquiry to focus its efforts on understanding how the attack took place, but not on explaining the reasons why it took place. Moreover, by framing the second matter as the information-sharing practices and the broader systems, processes and procedures of New Zealand security agencies, the terms of reference similarly decontextualise, depoliticise and naturalise the national security system, guiding the inquiry to focus its efforts on describing how New Zealand’s counterterrorism efforts are undertaken, but not on the reasons why it occurs in this way.

The Order in Council directed the inquiry to recommend improvements to the relevant information gathering, sharing, and analysis systems and processes, including policies, rules and standards of the New Zealand Police, the NZSIS, and the GCSB. These were deemed the State sector agencies most relevant to the inquiry as each has specific responsibilities for countering terrorism in New Zealand. The Order did not mention DPMC even though its National Security Group leads the national security system and coordinates whole-of-government responses to an array of security challenges, including acts of terrorism. The Order also expressly prohibited the inquiry from investigating possible changes to New Zealand’s firearms legislation, how New Zealand counterterrorism agencies reacted to Tarrant’s attack once it had begun, or the activities of any organisation beyond the State sector. By restricting the inquiry’s focus in this way, the terms of reference closed off avenues of investigation that could discover important facts of the matter that surround the context and causes of Tarrant’s attack or help provide a meaningful account of the rise of New Zealand’s national security system. Without a full explanation of the terrorist attack and a comprehensive account of New Zealand’s security arrangements, including the impact that any actions, or inactions, of the senior officials and ministers responsible for New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort may have had, the inquiry’s limited fact-finding efforts would likely only lead to recommendations that reinforce or enhance the status quo, rather than challenge any problematic practices within New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort.

This established approach to national security also likely shaped the appointment of Royal Commissioners who were, in our view, likely to preserve the status-quo arrangements. The government selected two individuals of esteem to lead this public inquiry; it made the Honorable Sir William Young KNZM chairperson and Jacqueline Caine a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry. Young and Caine are well respected members of the judiciary and the diplomatic corps, respectively. Shaped by the professional practices, values and interests constituting the wider political establishment to which they belong, they were unlikely to challenge the status quo arrangements.³ Even though it is not uncommon for a public inquiry to be led by a senior judge, selected for their professional skills in dealing with complex evidence, their impartiality, and their ability to offer a seal of credibility in addressing issues that are often controversial (Sedley 1989), appointing judges without relevant independent subject-matter expertise can undermine the credibility of a public inquiry’s findings (Stark and Yates 2021). When public inquiries are led exclusively by legal experts who are unable to test the conventional thinking and orthodox approach that circulates within some public institutions, they tend to collect and analyse large amounts of information and offer a range of findings that, while rarely flawed, are somewhat narrow, and focussed predominantly on procedural issues (Rena and Christensen 2020). While there is no doubting Young and Caine’s professional experiences provide a deep appreciation of complex criminal justice matters and pressing global issues respectively, there is nothing to indicate that either has any significant expertise in counterterrorism matters. Without a strong understanding of terrorism, the Royal Commissioners were limited in resources to compensate for their unduly narrow terms of reference.

Conduct of the inquiry

The design of the Royal Commission of Inquiry proved effective in preserving the status quo arrangements by enacting strict limits to the inquiry’s conduct. As the Order in Council deemed the New Zealand Police, NZSIS and GCSB as New Zealand counterterrorism agencies, the inquiry embraced the established approach to national security and went beyond the agencies named in its terms of reference by including DPMC’s National Security Group within its investigatory remit (Young and Caine 2020a, 50). In order to probe the information held by these security agencies and their related activities, the inquiry wrote to the 217 agencies that comprise New Zealand’s public sector, requesting information from each of them. In return it received over 73,500 pages of material. The inquiry also “summonsed current and former chief executives of public sector agencies and interviewed many other current and former [p]ublic sector employees who work in these agencies” and met with various integrity assurance offices (Young and Caine 2020a, 55).

The inquiry’s lack of expertise on counterterrorism matters, illustrated by the absence of a working definition of terrorism in their report and their uncritical acceptance of the official definition of national security (Young and Caine 2020a, 87), must surely have hampered its ability to critically assess and, if needed, challenge an orthodoxy that sustains the prevailing sectorial arrangements. Further, previous research (Stark and Yates 2021) suggests this lack of expertise risked diminishing the quality of their findings and undermining the authority of their report. Notwithstanding the opportunity to appoint one or more independent subject matter experts to assist them in what Stark and Yates call the “inquiry room” (Stark and Yates 2021, 353), the Royal Commissioners chose instead to rely on a former Secretary of the New Zealand Ministry of Defence (and who had previously served as Director of the External Assessments Bureau within DPMC and as a professional diplomat), who is neither independent of the national security system nor a subject matter expert on terrorism for “independent expertise and insights” (Young and Caine 2020a, 8). That decision compounded, rather than mitigated, the inhibiting features in the inquiry’s design. Although the inquiry consulted four subject-matter experts within New Zealand, their expertise was in: steroid and testosterone use; online radicalisation and the far right; tribal affairs; and firearms (Young and Caine 2020a, 56). The selection of their interlocutors was, in our view, far too circumscribed.

Having collected an extraordinary amount of official information, the inquiry exposed facts to public scrutiny by crafting a somewhat narrow account of Tarrant’s attack, New Zealand’s national security system and its counterterrorism efforts. The inquiry’s minute-by-minute account of Tarrant’s attack (Young and Caine 2020a, 40–47), and detailed description of Tarrant’s life up until his attack (Young and Caine 2020a, 165–244), stopped well short of explaining any contributing political, social, and economic factors that are important in understanding the complexity that surrounds acts of terrorism. The inquiry’s detailed assessment of New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort sought to explain its key deficiencies by referring to the lack of social licence to operate enjoyed by the security agencies – a claim repeatedly made by those agencies – but without testing the assumption of whether it is possible for agencies cloaked in secrecy to obtain such licence. In other words, the inquiry merely described how Tarrant’s attack occurred without explaining why it occurred, and merely described the institutional features of New Zealand’s national security system without explaining the conditions that gave rise to the current arrangements or whether these conditions remain relevant. This deficiency matters because the inquiry’s limited understanding of terrorism and its uncritical acceptance of the established whole-of-government approach to national security appears to have informed its recommendations to improve New Zealand’s counterterrorism efforts by largely preserving the status quo arrangements, but without stating how and why these recommendations will enhance New Zealand’s capability to address this, and other, forms of political violence.

Notwithstanding the limitations in its information gathering and strategic analysis practices, the inquiry asserted that it found no-one was to blame for failing to detect the attack before it took place by focusing on the extent to which officials adhered to existing policies and procedures. It stated:

The inappropriate concentration of resources on the threat of Islamic extremism did not contribute to the individual’s planning and preparations for his terrorist attack not being detected. And for that reason, the [p]ublic sector agencies involved in the counter-terrorism effort did not fail to anticipate or plan for the terrorist attack due to an inappropriate concentration of counterterrorism resources.

No Public sector agency involved in the counter-terrorism effort failed to meet required standards or was otherwise at fault in respects that were material to the individual’s planning and preparation for his terrorist attack not being detected Young and Caine (2020a, 20).

The inquiry also found that the email Tarrant sent immediately before his attack was the only information held by New Zealand Public sector agencies that could have indicated his attack. It further found that the email was dealt with appropriately and within a reasonable period (Young and Caine 2020a, 19). By finding that there was no failure to meet required standards by any public sector agency, and in doing so suggesting the standards were at fault but without explaining how, the inquiry not only absolved everyone in the public sector from blame but set the scene for an enhancement of security agency powers. The inquiry did, however, find serious shortcomings in the way that the New Zealand Police administer the firearms licencing system (Young and Caine 2020a, 20). The inquiry recommended ways in which the government could remedy these deficiencies but stopped short of criticising a succession of Ministers of Police who declined to address these longstanding issues following the Thorp (1997) Report.

Notwithstanding its central finding, the inquiry still institutionalised lessons it learned by making eighteen recommendations to improve New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort. It recommended the Government create a new ministerial responsibility for leading and coordinating New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort and establish a new national intelligence and security agency responsible for strategic intelligence and security leadership within the national security system. It also recommended several existing processes be modified, such as the (currently voluntary) interdepartmental executive board becoming permanent; existing legislation be amended to bring the intelligence and security agencies’ use of finances under the purview of the Auditor-General; and the existing Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee be strengthened. Moreover, the inquiry recommended that the Government ensure that security agencies improve their information-sharing processes and undertake work on the use of the need-to-know principle, establish processes around the direct access authority granted under the Intelligence and Security Act 2017, and assess the clearance requirements of agency staff. The inquiry further recommended that the intelligence and security agencies should enhance their existing service delivery and create a public-facing counterterrorism strategy, provide more reporting on the evolving threat scape, and improve the ways in which they collect information reported to them by the public.

While the range of these recommendations might seem impressively broad, there is very little systemic or substantive change among these recommendations. For example, while recommendation 2 advocates the establishment of a new agency, the inquiry’s report does not explain how or why adding more institutions will enhance existing systems and processes for collaboration and cooperation among New Zealand security agencies, nor how it is likely to prevent a non-New Zealand lone-actor terrorist targeting a minority group within New Zealand. Nor does it describe how, or explain why, its recommendations will fix the leadership and procedural deficiencies it identified in New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort. Within a year of the inquiry completing its work, Ahamed Samsudeen – a Sri Lankan national inspired by ISIS and the type of individual the Commissioners believe had been the subject of disproportionate attention by New Zealand security professionals – attacked shoppers with a knife in an Auckland supermarket (NZSIS 2021). By making recommendations aimed at enabling the existing arrangements to operate more effectively and efficiently, the inquiry did not seriously question whether the conditions that gave rise to New Zealand’s national security system, and its institutions and processes in the first place are still relevant today, or in what ways and why that system and the broader politico-social environment might be changing, or how the phenomenon of terrorism might continue to evolve. In fact, it mimicked (rather than tested) the practices and reproduced the logics of the security professionals it was investigating.

Significantly, the inquiry interviewed parliamentarians who held ministerial responsibilities for national security, as well as for the intelligence and security agencies. However, the inquiry’s powers exercised in relation to parliamentarians did not cut through parliamentary privilege. Perhaps that explains why the inquiry’s final report did not consider the role played by the Prime Minister, or any other minister, in the national security system, or identify what they could have done to prevent this tragedy. Despite their numerous recommendations to improve New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, the inquiry stopped short of making any findings that directly implicate successive ministers who have the greatest responsibilities for protecting New Zealanders from the harms associated with terrorism, or their parliamentary colleagues who produced counterterrorism legislation without ensuring it was enforceable (Cheng 2007). Given this inquiry constitutes an important, albeit temporary, opportunity for conducting inquisitorial oversight over operational and governance practices, this exclusion of ministers shields key political decision makers from public scrutiny and grants them impunity. The inquiry’s independence from the government was, in this sense, illusory and its omissions in this area preclude New Zealand from developing a complete understanding of its approach to counterterrorism. Instead of examining and evaluating the extent to which relevant ministers provided leadership and direction to New Zealand security agencies, the inquiry seized upon other matters of opportunity to strengthen the democratic protections of minority groups.

Matters of opportunity

At some indeterminable point during its work, the inquiry moved beyond the established whole-of-government approach to national security by embracing an all-of-society perspective. Such a perspective opens space for hitherto excluded communities and groups to inform and shape official security thinking and practice in new ways, by testing conventional thinking, challenging received wisdom, and participating in the practices of security in ways that transform state practice into something more democratic. It opens space, for example, for new thinking about security practices as something undertaken for the people, by the people, of the people, rather than as something done to the people. This more inclusive and participatory approach to national security reflected the Royal Commissioners’ strong commitment to the government’s social cohesion agenda. Young and Caine explained that:

[s]ocial cohesion, inclusion and diversity were not on our original work plan. But as our inquiry progressed and our engagement with communities deepened, it become clear that these issues warranted consideration. Social cohesion has many direct benefits for individuals and communities. In contrast, societies that are polarized around political, social, cultural, environmental, economic ethnic or religious differences will likely see radicalising ideologies develop and flourish. Efforts to build social cohesion, inclusion and diversity can contribute to preventing or countering extremism. In addition, having a society that is cohesive, inclusive and embraces diversity is a good in itself (2020, p.16).

Adopting this revisionist all-of-society approach to national security compromised the Inquiry’s political independence, the lack of which was also illustrated in the Report’s executive summary that follows the Prime Minister’s lead by naming Tarrant once before referring to him thereafter as “the individual” (Young and Caine 2020a, 10). This commitment to the government’s agenda informed the inquiry’s conduct when it moved beyond its terms of references to inquire into what might be best described as matters of opportunity to strengthen New Zealand’s democratic protections for minority rights.

As part of its effort to establish the facts of the matter, the inquiry engaged with representatives of New Zealand’s Muslim community, including victims of Tarrant’s attack. It established a Muslim Reference Group to provide “access to a diverse range of opinions from Muslim communities” and met with them on nine occasions (Young and Caine 2020a, 54). It collected information from its meetings with over 130 families who were affected whanau [family], survivors and witnesses of the attacks, some of which took place privately in people’s homes. The inquiry also received over 1,000 responses to its call for submissions from interested members of the public: the inquiry asked: “what worries you most about the safety of your community; what should government agencies be doing to keep us safe; what could be done differently to help prevent something like this happening again?” (pp. 54–55).

The inquiry exposed information gathered through this consultation to the public in Part 3 of its final report and through various chapters that convey questions asked by the community. It reported on its meetings with the Muslim Reference Group on six occasions and provided a record of their engagement with the victims of Tarrant’s attack through a booklet (See Young and Caine 2020c). The inquiry produced a summary of all public submissions (See Young and Caine 2020b). The facts established here, however, were not facts pertaining to the matters of concern described in the terms of reference, but rather, were facts only in the sense that these constituted what various members of the public told the inquiry and are a compilation of opinions and views held by those who responded to the inquiry’s call for submissions. This public engagement was not public, however, as the inquiry treated all submissions as private information. Even the demographic background of those who responded to the call for submission was not collected. The process by which public submissions were collated and analysed, which involved extracting individual points made by submitters into an abstracted framework, paid little regard for any substantive arguments sustained within an individual submission. There is no way of knowing the full spectrum of views submitted to the inquiry, or the relationship between those voices and society-at-large. There is no possibility for the public to evaluate, and thus have confidence in, the inquiry’s analysis of that information.

While the inquiry found that no New Zealand security agencies were at fault for failing to detect Tarrant’s planning and preparation for his attack, it used statements from the Muslim community criticising those agencies’ methods of engagement when dealing with marginalised and minority communities. The inquiry’s report states that “Muslim communities talked candidly about racism, discrimination and experiences of suspected of being, or treated as, terrorists, as well as their fear at being the target of hate speech, hate crime and terrorism” (Young and Caine 2020a, 11). From the information it gathered from its engagement with victims, the inquiry found the physical and non-physical harm produced by Tarrant’s attack changed the lives of affected whanau, survivors and witnesses in immediate and lasting ways, and the systems of support provided by public sector agencies was not only insufficient, but also exacerbates their trauma and grief (Young and Caine 2020a, 123).

In order to institutionalise these lessons learned, the inquiry used its engagement with New Zealand’s Muslim communities to inform a large section of its report devoted to diversity and social cohesion and as the basis for 15 recommendations to improve social cohesion and New Zealand’s response to its increasingly diverse population. The inquiry also recommended the Government better support the ongoing recovery needs of the affected whanau [family], survivors and witnesses by establishing a single point of contact through which they can access coordinated support from various public sector agencies, consider establishing a mechanism to determine a specific work programme to enable victim support efforts, and explore opportunities for restorative justice processes (Young and Caine 2020a, 30). The inquiry recommended the Government take steps to enhance public understanding of counterterrorism by releasing threat and risk indicators of terrorism, hosting annual hui [meeting], and establishing an Advisory Group on Counterterrorism to forge a new pathway for public input into counterterrorism policymaking processes (Young and Caine 2020a, 23–28).

Unlike the recommendations to improve New Zealand’s approach to countering terrorism mentioned earlier in this article, these novel recommendations were potentially transformative of the status quo arrangements because they could normalise the inclusion of a “public voice” within the national security system. The inquiry ventured beyond what its terms of reference required by using its engagement with representatives of New Zealand’s Muslim community, victims of Tarrant’s attack and the public-at-large as the basis for establishing facts and exposing those facts to public scrutiny, searching for fault to allocate blame and ensure accountability, and capturing certain experiences and institutionalising lessons learned. But rather than focus on the matters of concern that were at the heart of its terms of reference, the inquiry seized upon matters of opportunity to make recommendations to strengthen the democratic protection of minority groups and their rights. In making these recommendations, the inquiry shifted its inquisitorial gaze away from an act of terrorism and a set of counterterrorism practices towards an aspirational vision for an inclusive and multicultural New Zealand society. This departure from its mandate appeared to be welcomed by those individuals and groups who already had a stake in advancing the government’s policy agenda on social cohesion, though this bold and far-reaching social vision has not yet been democratically endorsed by New Zealand voters. Any public debate on it is likely to be a prolonged one as the inquiry provided no evidence that policies which encourage social cohesion and respect for diversity prevent acts of terrorism. Nowhere in the report is it made clear how these recommendations would prevent, or reduce the likelihood of, another lone-actor foreign terrorist from attacking members of a New Zealand minority. Although the recommendations strengthening democratic protections for minorities create pathways for public voice to reach into the national security system, they did not reconfigure New Zealand’s security arrangements.

Significantly, the inquiry team wrote to New Zealand-based academics to elicit submissions but stopped short of establishing a formal process to engage with those academics with expertise on terrorism. Sections of the report dealing with New Zealand’s national security system and its counterterrorism efforts eschewed a nascent New Zealand security studies literature (Hoverd, Nelson, and Bradley 2017; Hoverd 2019; see also Azizian 2019), citing only a master’s thesis (Young and Caine 2020a, p.92, footnotes 56 and 57). In so doing, the inquiry missed an opportunity to engage with the subject-matter expertise of academics who could test their conventional thinking and challenge received wisdom, a distinguishing feature of academic work protected under New Zealand law (s. 267(4)(a) of the Education and Training Act 2020). Where academic experts on terrorism were consulted, they were based in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Norway. Without a robust engagement with New Zealand academics with expertise in terrorism and security studies, as well as a deep understanding of the New Zealand context, the inquiry nevertheless recommended the Government establish a programme to fund independent New Zealand-specific research on the causes of, and measures to prevent, violent extremism and terrorism.

Implementing recommendations

Once its final report was delivered to the Governor-General of New Zealand, the Royal Commission of Inquiry ceased to exist as an ad-hoc inquisitorial oversight measure within the formal public accountability arrangements governing New Zealand’s security agencies. While the inquiry recommended that the government appoint a minister to lead the implementation of its recommendation, the government appointed to that role the minister who was responsible for New Zealand’s security and intelligence agencies leading up to, and during, the terrorist attack (Ardern). In fact, that minister leading the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendations still holds those intelligence and security portfolios as well as the defence portfolio, and is now supported by the National Security Group, which was, of course, a subject of the inquiry, the target of some of its criticism, and the object of reform. This allocation of ministerial portfolios all but ensures the minister responsible for the conduct of New Zealand’s security professionals leading up to the attack is immune from further scrutiny. Given the National Security Group’s involvement, it is unsurprising that the Minister’s implementation plan is shaped not by the inquiry’s revisionist all-of-society perspective, but by the existing whole-of-government approach to national security.

This established approach to national security has led to some of the inquiry’s recommendations being instrumentalized to preserve the status quo arrangements. Recommendations to improve the national security system by creating a new ministerial portfolio for counterterrorism and a new national intelligence and security agency – which, if implemented as the inquiry intended, would mean the DPMC’s National Security Group no longer had a mandate to exist – have become “part of the strategic review of New Zealand’s national security policy settings” (Little 2021). Recommendations to deepen public participation with the national security system by creating an advisory group on counterterrorism comprising “representative membership from communities, civil society, local government and the private sector” (Young & Caine 2020a, p.738) and hosting an annual hui [meeting] of public servants, civil society representatives, community leaders, private sector and researchers, are based on the expectation of “winning coalitions” which form when the policy goals of disparate actors occasionally converge, though few such coalitions endure over the longer-term (Rogers 2009, 181–182).

Furthermore, recommendations to better inform public policy on counterterrorism, as well as the wider public, by generating independent research into New Zealand’s experience of terrorism and violent extremism through a new programme of funds has been replaced with a National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism. This is precisely what the inquiry recommended against as it would be “both expensive and perhaps ineffective … would take time to establish and build capability. It is likely to be more effective to draw on existing researchers who may have an interest in counter-terrorism issues” (Young and Caine 2020a, 743). Terrorism does not appear in the Centre’s name and its new co-directors, both of whom served on the panel that appointed them, have no expertise on terrorism (Fisher 2022), suggesting that research conducted under the centre’s auspices will be less concerned with terrorism and more with the general phenomenon of violent extremism, hate speech, hate crime, and social cohesion. Rather than assisting in the development of evidence-led policy that challenges accepted orthodoxies through a programme of funds, the co-directors of the Centre are more likely to deliver policy-led evidence that support the government’s existing approach (Jackson and Rogers 2023).

The Government’s public engagement around implementing these recommendations appears perfunctory as the senior officials assisting the minister responsible for leading their implementation entrench themselves at the apex of the national security system. Further, the rhetorical gestures of increasing civil society participation in counterterrorism practices do not appear to be supported by substantive efforts to strengthen civil society. Rather than fostering an informed citizenry, the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendation to co-design a public-facing counterterrorism strategy seeks to create an informing society (cf. the UK PREVENT Duty; see Kaleem 2022; Jusué 2022). In addition, eschewing the means by which ministers can be held accountable by the public, the implementation of the inquiry’s recommendations seriously diminishes the contribution this investigatory oversight measure can make to the broader public accountability arrangement for New Zealand’s intelligence and security activities. It also means that New Zealand society is no better off when it comes to understanding the threat posed by terrorism or its ability to respond to a diverse array of other security challenges. We concur with Hillebrand’s (2019) warning that special parliamentary inquiries can produce a placebo effect that offers an illusion of accountability, but at a time when public accountability was most needed.

Conclusion

Our examination of New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 demonstrates that this public inquiry is more exemplary than it is exceptional. Like public inquiries on counterterrorism undertaken in other jurisdictions that appoint individuals of esteem to lead them, undertake a forensic examination of an attack before identifying operational or strategic deficiencies in security agencies, and recommend more counterterrorism powers, the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry was established not only to find and expose relevant facts to public scrutiny, search for fault and allocate blame to ensure public accountability, and capture certain experiences and institutionalised lessons learned that might prevent a similar terrorist attack from occurring in the future, but also for the more Machiavellian purposes of protecting those who authorise inquiries into matters for which they are accountable. In this important regard, the Royal Commission of Inquiry was exemplary.

Yet our examination of this New Zealand case, over the course of its life cycle, reveals something novel too. In the inquiry’s design, conduct of its investigation and analysis, and implementation of its recommendations we discerned an established whole-of-government approach to national security underpinned by an expansive definition of national security embedded in a system invented and led by the National Security Group within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. We also detected a more inclusive and participatory all-of-society perspective. Evident in the inquiry’s engagement with matters of opportunities, this perspective informed an array of recommendations that have less to do with preventing Tarrant-like attacks from occurring in the future and more to do with protecting and advancing the rights of minority groups in New Zealand. By embracing the government’s social cohesion policy agenda, the Royal Commission not only compromised its own political independence, but also opened the door for ministers and their bureaucrats to use the inquiry’s recommendations for their own advantage.

Taking inspiration from a rich tradition of critical social theory, we illuminated the political stakes involved in creating public inquiries on counterterrorism and how these inquiries are used to maintain existing security policy and entrench counterterrorism practices. We argued that those who are fully invested in the established whole-of-government approach to national security prevail over those who entertain a revisionist all-of-society perspective because they hold power and influence in a democracy where the public remains poorly informed about security issues. Security professionals, whose practices are often shrouded in secrecy, almost certainly do not want greater public participation in their work. This means the prevailing configurations of executive power that underscore New Zealand’s security professionals remain beyond challenge, even by Royal Commissioners tasked with inquiring into the most serious of public crises and remedying any defects to the government’s ability to respond to such crises.

Our argument tells us something important about how public inquiries established in the aftermath of major terrorist attacks function as inquisitorial oversight measures within the formal accountability arrangements that govern security agencies. While constituting an important temporary remedial intervention into a state’s counterterrorism efforts, the Royal Commission of Inquiry was just as limited as the ongoing public accountability arrangements and oversight measures which operate under the shadow of ministerial authority as both eschew the vexing task of scrutinising ministerial conduct. These public accountability arrangements and oversight measures, which do not cover all relevant activities performed as part of a whole-of-government approach to national security, are less checks on state power and more performative gestures of scrutiny. By casting new light on how public inquiries into counterterrorism work, we have sought to make these facile gestures difficult to sustain in the face of scrutiny and hard to justify to the wider public.

Our argument also has important implications for how the New Zealand Government approaches terrorism and delivers security more generally. Despite official assurances to the contrary, the current transformation of New Zealand’s approach to national security is not about bringing representatives of civil society into state’s security apparatus so that New Zealand’s approach to countering terrorism is transformed. It appears to be about coopting them, and marginalising those voices who radically dissent, so that the current approach can continue. Security is understood here as a practice performed upon parts of the New Zealand population, rather than undertaken on its behalf. This leaves New Zealand society little better off when it comes to understanding the threat posed by terrorism or responding to a diverse array of other security challenges.

As we have shown, public inquiries on counterterrorism are rich empirical sites for investigating the relationship between security and politics, as well as between the politics of security and wider society. A politics of security, which continues to shape and inform security practices that merely entrench existing arrangements without challenging the assumptions that underpin these practices, is deeply troubling and ought to be of interest to those scholars who adopt critical approaches to the study of terrorism. We think these inquiries, transformed beyond remedial counterterrorism interventions into political instruments, deserve to be studied alongside other intelligence and security oversight practices too. Helpfully, the academic literature on public inquiries is well developed. It advances our understanding of how and why these inquiries become objects of political expediency that eschew allegations of blame targeted at responsible ministers, their recommendations can be reinterpreted after they are “accepted in principle,” and their final reports can be punted into the tall grass and forever lost (Stark and Yates 2021). But few scholars pay close attention to public inquiries on counterterrorism and, when they do, the entanglement of the public inquiry with the prevailing configurations of power can easily go unremarked. We hope to have started, in a very modest way, to remedy this situation.

Acknowledgements

We thank those colleagues and students who attended our “Panel Discussion: Reflections on the Royal Commission’s Report” for their questions and comments, as well as Dr Rhys Ball for chairing that session as part of Massey University’s Social and Cultural Studies Seminar Series in Auckland on 26 May 2021. We also wish to thank participants at the Symposium for Transdisciplinary Dialogue on New Zealand’s Counterterrorism Approach, held in February 2022, for their critical yet constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper, and, especially, Richard Jackson for his detailed and insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Damien Rogers

Damien Rogers teaches international relations and security studies at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. Damien’s research concerns the ways in which political actors – intelligence and security professionals, governments, and the wider international community – respond to various forms of political violence, including armed conflict, terrorism and mass atrocity. ORCID 0000-0002-6312-4524.

Nick Nelson

Nick Nelson is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Auckland, New Zealand. Nick teaches in a diverse range of subject areas including terrorism, cyber security, and the psychology of security. His main research interest is in how the online environment impacts issues of national security. ORCID 0000-0001-6844-9611.

John Battersby

John Battersby is a Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. John has published on New Zealand wars, New Zealand security and the United Nations, as well as leading research in terrorism in New Zealand over the last five years. He is Managing Editor of the National Security Journal launched in 2019. ORCID 0000-0002-3355-1146.

Notes

1. For the terms of reference, minutes of decisions, summaries of hui [public meetings], summaries of public submissions, victim statements, public statements, and other miscellaneous material, see: https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz

2. This is how the government chose to respond to allegations that New Zealand Defence Force personnel committed war crimes in Afghanistan. See Terrence Arnold and Geoffrey Palmer, Report of the Government Inquiry into Operation Burnham and Related Matters, 2020.

3. Ireton (2016) draws attention to a case where two individuals of esteem resigned as chair of an inquiry after their independence from the establishment was questioned in public. Walters (2021) reminds us that Henry Kissinger resigned from the 9/11 Commission after being asked by family members of the 9/11 attack victims if his consultancy has Saudi clients named bin Laden.