Our institutions passed the toughest of tests with credit
Ispent most of the week covering the sentencing of 29-year-old Australian national Brenton Harrison Tarrant. At the same time as the sentencing, tragic events were unfolding in the small American city of Kenosha in Wisconsin. On August 23, African-American man Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a police officer as Blake entered a car that contained his three children.
The incident was filmed by a bystander and posted online, after which protests erupted in several cities. Two protesters were shot dead, apparently by a young civilian protecting shops.
I listened to updates on the car radio and you could hear gunshots, shouts and sirens. Thank God that’s not us, I thought.
Because that is what the Christchurch gunman was hoping for when he attacked the two mosques, inflicting injuries from which 51 died, some instantly, some later in hospital or on the way there.
He was hoping his attack would start some sort of ethnic-religious civil war, if not here then in other parts of the world. That did not happen, although some murderous misfits later claimed he had influenced them in the same way the Christchurch shooter had hatched his plan inspired by another lethal deviant, Anders Breivik. The Norwegian killer murdered 77 people in July 2011.
In many countries, the gunman would not have survived even if arrested alive by the authorities. He is lucky he committed his crime against humanity in a civil country. In some countries his mass murder would have sparked other mass killings.
While I hate to tempt fate, we should applaud, I think, the way our institutions handled the tests flowing from a mass murder motivated by race hatred.
One of the best tests of an institution is how it reacts to an event never seriously contemplated by its planners or policymakers. Like Norway, New Zealand is by and large a beautiful and peaceful country. Most would have thought Christchurch was one of the most unlikely places for an atrocity of the nature and scale perpetrated by the mosque shooter. That sort of thing happened in other places.
Could the system cope? Much has been written about the failure of the authorities to detect the gunman while he was planning the attacks. Lone wolf killers, especially clever ones, are difficult to find and stop before anyone dies. The royal commission will no doubt find some shortcomings in our intelligence services but, putting that to one side, the way the police and the courts have handled the matter has done us proud.
Many victims would have been frustrated by the court process, especially at the shooter’s ability to initially plead not guilty when the evidence was so overwhelming.
His subsequent guilty plea and silence helped, but it could still have been a very messy process, with victims feeling even more traumatised and unsupported. From my vantage point, the victims, once they understood what was happening, felt the sentencing and result were confidencebuilding and accommodating.
Much credit for this must go to Justice Cameron Mander, who oversaw the proceedings. He showed sensitivity, wisdom and patience for what can only have been an onerous and distressing job, not made easier by having the world watching. But this was a machine with many moving parts, and the result showed everyone involved served their institutions with credit.
Although I had some initial reservations, the hounds of the media were handled with attentiveness, respect and intelligence.
After applying our careful process, NZ First leader Winston Peters now wants to send the gunman back to Australia to serve his sentence, purely, it seems, to save the New Zealand taxpayer money. It’s hard to take this seriously. Shipping a criminal off to their home country to serve a sentence imposed by another jurisdiction is ripe with problems. Not even Australia does that. It is tantamount to dodging responsibility and sets a terrible precedent.
Another idea bandied about after the sentencing is the notion of reintroducing the death penalty in New Zealand for the very worst of offences. It’s an understandable reaction. I remember Margaret Thatcher, then British prime minister, calling for its reintroduction in 1984 after a bomb attack that killed four people in the hotel where her Conservative Party was holding its conference. Some people forfeited their right to life, she said.
However, the strength of our institutions is their moral authority. Anybody who thinks the death penalty is a good idea should think about how it would affect the moral fibre of the very pillars which hold up our civil society. By withholding the ability to deliver the ultimate penalty, the system shows a humanity and restraint that is the hallmark of a morally sound system.
In addition, death penalties don’t work as a deterrence. And think of it this way.
Imagine the state deciding to kill the mosque gunman in a premeditated and ceremonious way. Just the platform every zealot dreams about.