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Masjid An-Nur (Al Noor Mosque) imam Gamal Fouda. (Image: Supplied)
Masjid An-Nur (Al Noor Mosque) imam Gamal Fouda. (Image: Supplied)

The BulletinOctober 25, 2023

Largest coronial inquest in New Zealand history begins

Masjid An-Nur (Al Noor Mosque) imam Gamal Fouda. (Image: Supplied)
Masjid An-Nur (Al Noor Mosque) imam Gamal Fouda. (Image: Supplied)

As the coronial inquest into the 2019 terrorist attacks gets underway, a promised national security overhaul remains incomplete, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

‘Transition from darkness to light’

As today’s editorial in the Herald (paywalled) surmises, the world is a very different place “from the autumn afternoon in 2019 when 51 people were massacred and 40 others wounded at two Christchurch mosques.” It has been over four years since the terrorist attacks of March 2019. For members of the victim’s families, the injured, others who were at the mosques on the day and the community at large, the process of getting answers to crucial questions only began yesterday, as the largest coronial inquest in New Zealand history began. Stewart Sowman-Lund explains its significance, the long road to the inquest and what will be investigated. As deputy chief coroner Brigitte Windley said yesterday as proceedings opened, people were “often surprised to learn that there are matters related to March 15 still under inquiry” and explained that “a coronial inquiry is a dual focus on the past and on the future”. “I ask that we bring the memories of the 51 lives that were lost to this court so that we may give them a voice, so that we can transition from darkness to light, so that we may emerge with a better understanding of the facts and the truth is revealed by the evidence that we get,” she said.

Second inquest to investigate firearms licensing and role of online platforms

This is the first of two inquests and as Sowman-Lund explains, will investigate ten key issues. Yesterday afternoon segments of footage from the terrorist’s live stream were played. Footage from the day of the attacks continues to resurface on Twitter. The second inquest will consider any outstanding issues, including whether the firearms licensing process that allowed the terrorist to access his weapon can be “causally connected” to the attacks and whether social media and online platforms played a material role in his radicalisation.

Andrew Little’s one regret

In an interview with The Post, departing MP Andrew Little cites not completing the overhaul of New Zealand’s national security system as his one regret. That overhaul included the creation of a new national security agency that was promised after the terror attacks. Little was minister responsible for responding to the Royal Commission to the mosque attacks, and he says he did the “spade work”, but his bosses responsible for the national security system, Dame Jacinda Ardern and then Chris Hipkins, were justifiably tied up with issues of greater priority. The Muslim community has repeatedly expressed frustration about the delays and a lack of the promised communication and transparency.

Overhaul of national security and 52 other laws in limbo

The future of the national security system overhaul now lies in the hands of the incoming government. By convention, the prime minister holds the National Security and Intelligence portfolio. There are also 52 laws currently in a state of limbo following the election. The Labour government set a fast pace in trying to get new laws through parliament in its last months in power, but not everything has made it through. Natasha Wilson, a public law specialist at Buddle Findlay, outlines the bills in question and what may happen to them once the business of government starts up again.

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The BulletinOctober 24, 2023

Where it all went wrong for Labour – and how the Greens could be partly to blame

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Did the government allow itself to be too easily outflanked on the left, asks Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

Is Parker readying a leadership bid?

The gossip about Chris Hipkins messaging with new partner Toni Grace was the most shared tidbit from Andrea Vance’s merciless dissection of Labour’s loss (paywalled), but the real issues identified by a series of anonymous insiders ran much deeper. Blame is cast in all directions: from the “sluggish” response to the cost-of-living crisis in 2022, to the parliament occupation, to Jacinda Ardern’s “selfish” decision to quit. Among the more likely culprits is the abandonment of a wealth tax, which had been championed by then revenue minister David Parker. Now he’s gunning for Hipkins’ job, reports the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan (paywalled), who says Parker’s potential challenge is “far more advanced than Labour is publicly letting on”.

Labour has a Green Party problem – and vice versa

Another issue identified by Vance’s Labour sources is a perceived capitulation to the Green Party, particularly in the central Wellington seats (there’s an inside look at how the Greens won Wellington this morning in The Post, paywalled). “The Labour Party are acting like the handmaiden of the Greens,” one insider tells Vance. “We have not even attempted to give the Green-curious demographic – Gen Z, urban, younger voters – a reason to vote Labour over Green.” It’s an argument expanded on this morning in a must-read column by Ollie Neas. While the Greens are rightly celebrating their increased haul of MPs, the veneer of success is actually a mirage, he argues. The Greens and Labour are each caught in a catch 22: “Unless and until Labour veers left, the Greens have little hope of winning the radical changes that are central to their vision. But the diversion of left wing organising energy into the Greens prevents that shift from happening, leaving Labour hostage to the conservative, poll-obsessed factions that the Greens decry as sell-outs.”

The ‘Belgian waffle’ makes an unexpected return

On Sunday Vance was back with part two, this time looking at how National achieved victory. The party capitalised on the widespread mood for change with a “formidable, old-fashioned, ground game” and a disciplined approach to messaging, she reports. The campaign wasn’t without its stumbles, of course, including the controversy over its foreign buyers tax policy. Some spoken to by Vance blame former minister Todd McClay, “who they say was given responsibility to check for loopholes” in the policy. The man nicknamed the “Belgian waffle” (a reference to McClay’s years as a diplomat in Brussels) was demoted by Luxon but has since “relentlessly worked his way back in” – potentially all the way back into Cabinet. A Toddnaissance would be a surprise, but not half as big a shock as James Shaw joining a National government. That’s the prospect raised by Dileepa Foneska in BusinessDesk (paywalled), who thinks National will try to reach a “creative accommodation” with the Greens to make up for its lack of expertise in the climate change arena.

David Seymour and race relations: a shifting perspective

When a policy is as central to a party’s current identity as opposition to co-governance is to Act, it’s easy to assume it’s always been the case. Not so, says Eugene Bingham for the Sunday Star-Times (paywalled), in a story tracing David Seymour’s apparent change of heart on the Treaty and race relations. The David Seymour of 2014 sounded like “someone who is optimistic about the direction of Crown-Māori relations”, and “seeking to take Act in a different direction” from the racially divisive positions of former party leader Jamie Whyte, Bingham writes. Today, Seymour denies it’s him who’s changed; instead he says he’s responding to the troubling direction taken by state institutions, particularly the courts, over recent years. It’s an issue that Seymour passionately believes in, says commentator Ben Thomas, but that doesn’t mean the Treaty referendum is a non-negotiable: “There are always compromises to be made, that’s what politics is.”

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