Fyota. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a bonus episode of The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A dark day in Australia as two gunmen open fire at a Bondai Beach Jewish event marking the first day of Hunaker. Sixteen people are dead, including one of the assailants. Police have confirmed there were two offenders and they aren't looking for anyone else. One of them, a fifty year old man, is dead and a second, a twenty four year old man, is in a critical
but stable condition. They were father and son. There were dozens of people in New South Wales hospitals overnight from the ages of ten to eighty seven. New South Wales Premier Chris Mens has said anti Semitism is toxic. It is cancerous and leads to devastating implications. Prime Minister Anthony Arberesi said we as a nation are stronger than the
cowards who did this. Today on the Front Page, University of Waikato International law professor Al Gillespie is with us to discuss this tragic attack and what it might mean for New Zealand. Our major question here will be whether the terrorists were already known by authorities. That's not unusual. Apparently one was known to police, but under what circumstances we don't really know yet. We do have that kind of thing here. Don't we a terror watch.
List, but we do, and both countries have quite good security services. But we can expect that there will be a review almost immediately about what was known and what was missed. Inevitably, there's always the questions about whether they should have been able to go deeper and had a greater profile of the people involved in this attackchallenges that often toroists are largely invisible, but they always leave fingerprints.
To question how deep you're willing to dig to find those fingerprints before the attank.
And I know that there will also be questions about what types of firearms they used and where they got them. Australia banned semi automatics in the nineties, of course, after the country's worst mass shooting at Port Arthur. The fifty year old man was apparently licensed, he had been for at least ten years, and had six firearms in his possession. They reckon. They've found all six at the scene, but determining kind of what firearms they were will be a major part of this investigation.
Hey, terroists, when they use firearms tend to go for particular types, and the way it normally works is that there will be a prohibition on the type of firearm that was used in the at tank. The challenge for Australia is that they have some of the strongest firearms laws in the world. This shows you that even with very strong laws, people can still get through the gaps.
I imagine they will be focusing not just on the type of platform that was utilized, but also on the licensing procedure of the alleged terrorist, because there will be a series of interviews and intelligence gathering and they will now be looking at whether that was adequate, whether any
mistakes were made. Importantly, there's often a connection with firearms in Australia and whether they're a member of a club, whether they've been to a range, whether there were warning signs of something that should have just put up a red flag, and all of that will be looked at quite closely now.
And I can imagine New Zealand authorities will be looking quite closely as well what Australia discovers also well, given that they are now rewriting our gun laws here.
Hey, well that's right, and obviously without terror attack and christ Church there were mistakes over the licensing and there was a gap through which the terrorists progressed to get a firearms platform that was highly lethal. And so the way it works is that you always wait for an attack and then you revise your laws and policy afterwards.
But for Australia, which already has some of the best laws in the world, it will be a hard point to be too, because Australia has taken pride in its very good record of very few terror attacks in recent years or mass shootings because of its arms laws, but now that will become questionable.
Well, anti Semitism has grown rampant in Australia over recent years. We've actually spoken about it on this podcast before. What do you make of this?
I think it Anti Semitism is a plague. It's a terrible thing. But it should have been greater security at this event. It was foreseeable that there was a place where there was a high density of a particular population. The date was foreseeable, like it was an event, and often terrorists will be focused on holidays or points of national significance for the community that they target, and so I think that the anti Semitism with the hatred has all come together at one particular point, and it should
have been more foreseeable than it has been. I think the rise of anti Semitism is a global problem. It's not just in Australia, it's also in New Zealand, and it's also in Europe as well.
And of course Benjamin Natanya who has come out pretty quickly and said that Australia quote poured oil on the flames of anti Semitism through its silence on anti Jewish sentiment. That's not exactly the case, though, was it.
I think that's unfair. I think in part this is a relationship to the wider debate about the war and Gaza and the recognition of Palestine. And there has been assertions made that if you were not fully behind what mister Nettni who was trying to do, you were further in anti Semitism. But the to it are very distinct, and people may still be concerned about the position of Israel,
but that doesn't necessarily make them anti Semitic. But there are definitely a lot of anti Semitic feelings in the terrorist community which have now been acted upon, and it means that we've all got to double down with our protection of all of these communities because they are vulnerable. And from here you have a risk which is twofold. One you have a risk of a copycat or two you have a risk of a reprisal against opposing communities.
And so there's always a period attention after an attack where you have to have extra vigilance and you will see it on the streets of Australia and potentially in New Zealand as well, because terrorists are often inspired by the acts of others.
Yeah, there has been a report of an ISIS flag being draped over the offender's car. We haven't got that confirmed yet, but what we do know about those terror groups is that they just feed off of this discontent, whatever it might be. So we don't really need to make a link between ISIS and anti Semitism, do we.
You will often find when there is a terror attack more than one terror group will actually try to claim it for their own publicity purposes. But for some groups they don't look for an active affiliation, but they do look to encourage people to do acts individually. And try to give them enthusiasm for that. What you may see here at some point is a manifesto may become apparent of why they did the acts in question, and often the manifesto will give you the clear link that you
need for it to be terrorism. Although I think it's a fairly safe bet that this is an active terrorism that will tarketed a particular population, but the manifesto will often flesh that out.
Do you think New Zealand should be on high alert and perhaps change our alert level alongside Australia's.
I think we should be extra vigilant around the time of the year that we're in and have an increased awareness of the risk to both the Jewish community and the Muslim community as well, because people tend to follow these instances and they can see the notoriety that the Kilns can do. So partly, it's not just about an awareness, it's also about an awareness on the part of the media not to glamorize or show the terror that these acts can do because it can incentivize copycat performances.
Will New Zealand's sis be stepping up and monitoring in light of what happened yesterday? I can imagine teams will be working throughout the night to just see what kind of reaction online this has gotten.
Yeah, I think it would be reactions online. And often these terror communities are international as well, and even tho they may not have actual formal linkages, they'll all be on the darker side of the Internet communicating and so I imagine that the New Zealand SIS and the police and their associated security agencies will all be taking extra effort over the coming weeks.
And amongst those horrors, though, we saw images of a hero Ahmed al Ahmed, a forty three year old root shop owner. He confronted one of the attackers and wrestled a gun from him. Apparently he has been shot a couple of times, but it is in a stable condition. What do you think that that means for the wider community seeing those images as opposed to the ones of devastation.
I think that's a remarkable act of heroism and I think he will become the Australian of the year and it's encouraging to see that the response against terrorism comes from Australian citizens of all flavors, and that you can't just paint a community as good or bad because of the membership of that group.
Thanks so much for joining us OL.
You're welcome, Chelsea.
That's it for this bonus episode of the Front Page. For more on this story, you can visit enzadherld dot co dot nz