The Herald reports:

While four people were arrested in relation to Christchurch’s mosque massacres, only one man, Brenton Tarrant, has been charged with murder.
What happened to the other three? And why were they suspects?
One woman and two other men were also arrested and held in custody in relation to the attacks.
The woman has been released without charge. The man who was in a vehicle with the woman has been charged with firearms offences and will appear in the Christchurch District Court on Monday.

An 18-year-old man, who was not connected to the couple, will also appear in Christchurch District Court on Monday for possessing a firearm.
Police say they do not believe either men were involved in the attacks.

It’s a bit too early to be certain, but it does look like this was an attack planned and staged by one man – a foreigner. This is no comfort to those mourning dead families and friends, but if no New Zealanders were involved in this attack, that is a small relief.

Of course there will no doubt be a Commission of Inquiry which will look at wider issues such as how he did this, and who assisted him either knowingly or unknowingly.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading the manifesto of the terrorist. I am wary of taking it at face value as it is a propaganda document, and not necessarily what he believes.

The most striking part to me is his belief that those he killed were not innocents. He sees them as invaders. He even explains how he think children will grow up to be and are future enemies. It is stomach churning stuff.

The salient point is he doesn’t see those he targeted as human beings. He sees their group characteristics (migrant and/or Muslim) as defining them. They are not individuals, they are not humans. They are invaders.

This is the same rationale that the Nazis used to kill Jews in The Holocaust. My great grand parents were killed because their bloodline saw them defined as part of a group that were deemed enemies.

Seeing people solely as part of a group, rather than as individual human beings, is what dehumanises people. This is one reason that aspects of identity politics I find problematic.

But it is also why those who lump all Muslims in together, contribute to the problem. One should be able to debate immigration policy and issues of integration.

But the trap some people fall into is lumping 1.1 billion people together on the basis of one group characteristic. That is dehumanising. It is saying that one group characteristic outweighs everything else about that person. We must always treat people as individual human beings.

The same critique applies to those who believe apostates should receive the death penalty. That is also dehumanising. It is saying a human being who changes their religion is no longer a human being worth of living.

The other things that struck me in the manifesto was how the terrorist said that at various times he had been a communist, an anarchist and a fascist. They are all of course extremes. I’m not saying they’re all equal, just that this is a guy who seems attracted to extreme positions.

Extremism isn’t unique to the left or right. In the UK Jo Cox was murdered by a far right extremist. In the US then House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot by a far left extremist.

Extremism is the enemy.

We don’t yet know if the other two people arrested are New Zealanders and how they were involved in this act of terrorism. But it does suggest we need to take home grown extremists more seriously.

I recall back in 2006 I was placed on an enemies list of the local neo-nazis. They even photoshopped “Juden” on my forehead in blood colours. At the time I laughed them off as a bunch of big talking idiots who would never actually do anything. I often mocked them. With the benefit of hindsight that may have been the wrong approach, as we are in an era where those who talk hate sadly sometimes follow through.

Reject hate. Reject extremism. Reject dehumanising people by seeing them only as members of a group rather than as wonderfully precious individual human beings.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says gun laws will change after Friday’s deadly mass shooting in Christchurch.
On Friday, a gunman opened fire at a mosque on Deans Ave in Christchurch killing 41 people.
A further seven people were killed at the Linwood Ave mosque. Another one person has since died in hospital, and a further 48 are injured, two in a critical condition.
A 28-year-old man has been charged with murder and appeared in court on Saturday morning.

On Saturday morning, the prime minister said the main suspect was in possession of a gun licence, obtained in November 2017. Five guns were used in the attack including two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns. A lever action firearm was also found.

On this issue, the PM has my support, and I suspect almost all of Parliament.

Yes terrorists can kill without guns. They use vans and knifes etc. But the death toll we saw in Christchurch would not have been as high as 49 without the access to guns.

Guns are validly needed for farming, hunting, etc. But I’ve never seen semi-automatics in the same light. There should be a massively high threshold for such guns, and the terrorist should not have been able to legally acquire them.

This is not an abstract debate. A gun is not the same as a knife or a van.

Yes I am aware the terrorist said in his manifesto he did this to cause gun laws in the United States to be tightened, so it would lead to a breakdown in US society. But people should be wary of taking his manifesto at face value. It is a propaganda document and at least some of it is trolling.

A good background on the problem with our current law.

The true side of New Zealand shows with 16,590 to date having donated $1.12 million to support the victims of the shooting in Christchurch,

You can donate at Givealittle.

It almost defies belief he is a Federal Senator. He actually only received 19 first preference votes in the 2016 election but thanks to preferential voting he got in.

The fanatics are those who slaughtered 40 Muslims in Christchurch, not the victims.

Senator Anning has previously called for a “final solution” to immigration and restoring a White Australia immigration policy.

The best response to Senator Anning has come from Chris Bishop who may have dented his chances of being Foreign Minister, but was admiorably to the point:

Not going to post on any other topics for a wee while. While issues such as Capital Gains Tax, legalising cannabis, natural gas etc are all important issues, they pale into insignificance with what has happened in Christchurch.

I think it is a time for reflection.

So I’ve postponed all the posts I had scheduled for the weekend. Normal service will return at some point of course.

The death toll in the terrorist attack on two Christchurch mosques has been confirmed at 40, with a further 20 injured.

There are so many victims, it is hard to know where to begin.

• 40 New Zealanders are dead, when they were peacefully at prayer. They were slaughtered because of their religion.
• At least 40 families have a lost fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children etc. The family members will never fully recover. Their lives will never be the same again.
• Every Muslim in New Zealand will be reflecting that this could have been them. This was a slaughter of innocents based on their religion. The main gunman said he considered Dunedin also, and Ashburton if he could make it. He didn’t care where so long as it was a mosque. New Zealand as sadly joined other countries where armed Police now have to protect places of worship
• People in Christchurch are mourning. Their city has been through enough. No place deserved this, but it seems especially unfair Christchurch gets to suffer again. Few people in Christchurch won’t know someone directly affected.
• And of course everyone in NZ is affected also. One of the worst terrorist attacks in the world has happened in New Zealand. It will change us and affect us.

For now we are mourning. There will come a time when the focus will be on how did this happen, and how do we stop it happening again. How did they get guns? Could they have been detected early? How were they radicalised?

But now now we mourn and hopefully reject extremism. Any ideology that doesn’t value human life and justifies the deliberate killing of innocents is simply evil.

UPDATE: 49 now dead

Stuff is reporting that a man entered a mosque in Christchurch and shot people there.

This is terrible. Everywhere should be safe from gun violence, but especially places of worship.

Thoughts go out to everyone affected. One can only hope and pray for those caught up in this.

UPDATE: There are reports that up to 30 people may have been shot. I am feeling physically sick as I type this, that this has happened in New Zealand. Part of our innocence has died today.

Stuff reports:

A Government Minister has said Sir Michael Cullen’s payments as chair of the Tax Working Group after the body has disbanded is “peanuts” and suggested the former Deputy Prime Minister should be paid more.

Willie is touch with the families earning $20 an hour by describing $1,000 a day as peanuts.

I have no problem with Cullen being paid $1,000 a day as TWG Chair when there was a TWG. He was being paid to lead a group of people to design a Capital Gains Tax – a highly expert task.

What I have a problem with is having him paid $1,000 a day to shrill for the Government and attack their opponents. That is outrageous. He shouldn’t be paid even $20 an hour for that, No one should be funded by the taxpayers to be a Government shrill.

Pleased to announce New Zealand’s newest blogger is Sir Bob Jones. He is blogging at nopunchespulled.com.

This is Sir Bob unfiltered with no editor or lawyer in between him and the publish button. I look forward to many amusing reads.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has issued New Zealand First MP Shane Jones a public telling off for appearing to question the integrity of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). 
And not only that: she has given her entire Cabinet a dressing-down. 
“My expectation is [that] ministers focus on doing their jobs and not on National,” the Prime Minister said on Thursday. 

Jones, the Regional Economic Minister, on Wednesday risked breaching the independence of the Serious Fraud Office which is investigating National Party donations. 
“We will study every single step they take to ensure, because it’s the National Party, it’s not whitewashed,” Jones said in Parliament. 
Ardern on Thursday made it clear to the public Jones was in the wrong.
“The SFO absolutely have operational independence and that must be maintained,” she said. 

Okay so Ardern has said Jones was wrong and has “told him off”. Now normally the Minister will apologise, say they were wrong and be penitent but …

But Jones is far from penitent.
“I have every right as a Parliamentarian to have high expectations of the SFO,” he told media on Thursday. 

So he is basically giving the finger to the Prime Minister. And he knows he can do this because …

And New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is not phased. When asked if he reprimanded Jones on Wednesday, he replied: “Why would I need to do that?” 

It is clear that the Prime Minister has no actual control over Ministers not in her party.

Could you imagine that happening with Clark? with Key? Not in 1,000 years.

Politik reported Marama Davidson on Morning Report:

“I’ll be really, really clear. I don’t think it’s appropriate to have surpluses while we have floodings happening in countries, where we’ve got floods happening, where we’ve got homelessness, I don’t think it’s appropriate that we’re holding onto surpluses in that way.”

Just think about this. The Green co-leader says we should be borrowing money and running a deficit because there is flooding in other countries.

This shows that there is no limit to how much the Greens want to tax New Zealand taxpayers. Basically her argument is that if anyone anywhere in the world is struggling, we should tax ourselves more and spend more to fix it.

The Herald reports:

A South Island teacher has admitted sexually assaulting a schoolgirl more than six years ago.
The teacher, in his 60s, touched and forcibly kissed a 9-year-old girl in 2012.
She was scared and when she tried to run away, she noticed the man’s exposed penis, the Greymouth District Court heard today.
The man earlier admitted a charge of doing an indecent act on a 9-year-old child between August 31 and September 30, 2012.

At court this afternoon, he was sentenced to six months of community detention and will be subject to extensive supervision, with special conditions, for two years. …

The man was given credit, and a reduction in sentence, for an early guilty plea, previous “impeccable character”, no history of offending, being assessed a low risk of reoffending, and the offending being deemed at the lower end of the scale of the charge.
He has not been placed on the Child Sex Offender Register.

How is this man not placed on the child sex offender register?

The man claimed he had no intention of exposing his genitals but rather it was “an accident involving clothing”.

Oh so he just got so excited from kissing the nine year old, it just pushed its way out.

He’s in his sixties, he was her teacher and he was sexually attracted to a nine year old, and acted on it. Again how does this not qualify for the child sex offender register?

The Herald reports:

Green Party co-leader James Shaw was punched in an unprovoked attack on his way to Parliament this morning.

Shaw, 45, was attacked by one person; he was grabbed and received a knock to his face.

Police have arrested a 47-year-old man over the attack. The police statement did not identify Shaw as the victim.

The victim was assaulted in Glenmore St, Kelburn at 7.50am outside the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. …

A spokesman for the Green Party said Shaw was punched in the face and suffered a black eye in the attack.

Shaw, who was walking to work from his Kelburn home, was attacked by the man who stepped out.

Luckily, two passersby stepped in after the attack. He continued on to work and attended a meeting before going

The spokesman said he then went to hospital for an assessment given he had received a blow to the head.

Shaw was not robbed and the spokesman said there didn’t appear to be a motive for the attack.

This really disgusts me. Unprovoked attacks are nasty cowardly things. The person responsible should face serious consequences for this.

If the attack on Shaw was because of his role as an MP, it is arguably even more serious. No MP should have to worry about being assaulted because someone disagrees with their politics. It is a form of attack on our democracy.

James is a really nice guy and one of the most inoffensive people in politics. It is unthinkable that he would have done anything to provoke this. It really sounds like a cowardly assault.

I hope his injuries are not serious and he is back at work soon.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: See correction and apology of 26 March regarding Jon Stephenson.

In April 2018 I blogged on the Operation Burnham inquiry:

Will Hager and Stephenson accept the findings of the inquiry, or only if they back their allegations? Will they apologise to NZDF if an inquiry finds their allegations are incorrect?

Of course I knew the answer to my own question. They are already attacking the inquiry and setting themselves up to reject it as the evidence is not backing their version of events.

Andrew Vance reports:

Manning is representing the injured villagers and relatives of the deceased and mounted a powerful defence for proceedings to be held in the open, in front of the inquiry chairs in November.
She argued the process was focused on the reputation of the Defence Force and not the ‘right to life’ obligations New Zealand had towards the victims.
Those international obligations mean states must investigate unresolved killings, especially where their agents may have been involved. But her arguments were dismissed as not relevant to the terms of reference for the inquiry.
On behalf of the villagers, Manning had launched legal proceedings in 2017. Those were put on hold to allow the inquiry to play out.
Manning has called a press conference at her Auckland law offices on Thursday. It’s understood legal action is once again on the table.
That would demonstrate a massive loss of faith in the inquiry.

They’re not interested in evidence.

If the inquiry finds that the allegations are false, it is clear the proponents of the allegations will simply reject the findings. This is the first step in softening us up for that.

So the inquiry is looking to be a huge waste of time and money because one side is never going to accept any result they don’t like.

I don’t think it would be unfair to conclude that the current Government is displaying arguably the most thuggish behaviour we have seen, since Muldoon’s time.

Look at what we have so far:

1. Shane Jones threatening to smear a journalist who reports on his conflicts of interest
2. Ron Mark telling a veterans group they have a responsibility to vote for NZ First as he got them funding
3. Shane Jones pressuring the SFO to go hard on National
4. A NZ First Minister sending a backbencher in to tell an electorate MP to withdraw from involvement in a community project or it won’t get funded
5. Shane Jones attacking the head of Spark for making a statement on the GCSB blocking their use of Huawei, despite the fact Spark was 100% obliged by NZX rules to disclose market sensitive information and hence had no choice

The Prime Minister says that she thinks politics needs to be more kind. Yet she does nothing about Ministers who act like thugs.

Stuff reports:

Former Labour MP Chris Carter is to represent the party which once ousted him, in this year’s local body elections.
Carter will stand as one of eight Labour team members for Auckland Council’s Henderson-Massey Local Board.

I am sure he will get elected.

His parliamentary career ended in controversy, ironically under the Labour Party leadership of Phil Goff, who is now Auckland’s mayor.
Carter and two other MP’s were demoted by Goff in June 2010 after the release of credit card records for ministers in the former Labour government showed personal spending, and Goff criticised the MPs’ travel costs.
The rift deepened a month later over a letter he circulated about fellow MPs questioning Goff’s leadership, and he was expelled in July from caucus and in October, the party.

Presumably his membership has been restored.

I quite like the idea of Goff and Carter as sort of colleagues again, if they are both elected.

Stuff reports:

Several Christchurch city councillors have questioned why Mayor Lianne Dalziel failed to publicly disclose a potential conflict of interest over family connections to water bottler Cloud Ocean Water.
Dalziel held talks with elected members on Tuesday to explain her situation after Stuff revealed a law firm run by her husband, Rob Davidson, is representing the China-owned firm and offered to use long-standing political connections to lobby politicians on its behalf.

Now it is important to note that it appears no lobbying actually happened, and both Dalziel and her husband seemed to be unaware that a staffer at Davidson’s firm made this offer.

But it is still of concern that someone at Davidson’s law firm thought it was appropriate to boast of their political connections (married to the Mayor and father of a Councillor) to a client.

Scoop reports:

MPs in UK’s House of Commons this morning have rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May’s amended Brexit deal.
Mrs May managed to secure “legally binding” changes to the deal during a meeting with the EU yesterday that were intended to soothe UK Brexiteers in parliament.
However, many pro-Brexit Tories and the Irish DUP – which props up the coalition government – said the changes did not go far enough and that they would vote against the deal.
MPs have now done so, voting 391 to 242 against the deal in the House. It’s not as large a defeat as when they shot it down in January by a margin of 230.
Following the latest rejection today, a further vote is slated for tomorrow on whether the UK should leave the EU without a deal.
If that no-deal option is rejected, MPs could get a vote on Friday on whether to request a delay to Brexit from the EU.

Sadly I now think Brexit may never happen, which will cripple the Tories and bring a Brexit party into Parliament.

There is little doubt Parliament will reject a no deal Brexit and go for a delay. But I can’t see there being a much different deal in a couple of months.

Newshub reports:

Newshub has obtained a video of Ron Mark seemingly pitching for votes at an event he attended as a minister. National’s accusing him of threatening to pull government funding if his party didn’t get votes.

Mr Mark is both Defence and Veterans Affairs Minister and a NZ First MP – and it seems the lines are bit blurry.
In December he gave a speech to No Duff – a charitable trust that offers support to veterans. The Minister slipped on his NZ First hat talking about his party’s polling and calling attendees out for their lack of support.
“To be perfectly honest, when I look at the polling results of my political party New Zealand First, then the veterans, the Defence base, you guys haven’t supported us. At all,” he said.

This should be a sackable offence as the Minister also told the attendees that the $25,000 grant they got from the Government was due to him personally and that they should recognise that and the responsibility that comes with it – ie to vote for them.

If he was a Minister in any other Government, he would be sacked for those comments.

This is not far off stand over tactics. Ministers should not be going to events to complain that not enough people there voted for their party and that the grant they got was due to him personally and imply it obliges them to vote for his party.