At least 16 people are dead and 38 others injured in a terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney.
Hundreds of people had gathered at Bondi for an event to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, when gunmen opened fire.
Massey University Centre for Defence and Security Studies Senior Fellow John Battersby told Kerre Woodham that police responded as quick as they could, but it can be difficult to predict these attacks.
"Law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies are pretty good at what they do, but they do not have a crystal ball."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the carry Wood and Morning's podcast from
News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He'd be so.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
At least sixteen people are dead, as I mentioned, thirty
eight others inched, five critical and a terrorist attack at
Bondai Beach in Sydney last night. Hundreds of people had
gathered at Bondei for a family event to celebrate the
first day of Haneker when two gunmen opened fire Massy
University Center for Defense and Security Studies, John Battersby joins me. Now,
(00:33):
a very good morning to you, John, Good morning. It
must be so hard, and I guess this is the
thing that intelligence agencies always struggle with. You have to
have all the ducks in a row. It's all very
well knowing when and who, but you have to know where.
Or you might know where, but you need to know when.
(00:54):
So how is there any point in knowing? I mean,
with Harneker the first day of Haneker coming up, intelligence
agencies would have been on high alert. But you can't
really prevent these things happening, can you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well you can, it's just that in order to and
that's why a law enforcement and intelligence agencies are very
watchful when if they suspect that somebody might target something
like this, and on multiple occasions there are interventions, plots
are detected before they occur. I think there's a recent
(01:31):
story about one in Germany that was intercepted attack proposed
on a Christmas market. So yes, these things can be stopped.
I think getting all of the nests three information, who, what, when, where,
that's the key. And law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies
are pretty good at what they do, but they do
not have a crystal ball. And when we have sole
(01:54):
actors or individual perpetrators or very small groups, these people
leave very small planning footprints and they are very difficult
to detect.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
A bit like the containers that come into New Zealand
with drugs. You can pick up a few, but you
know that there are others still getting through.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I suppose you could use that analogy, although I think
with the container one I suspect there's an awful lot
more coming in than is actually being picked up. What
we're dealing with in the case of a mess killing
like this, we don't live in America, so it is
not a weekly or monthly event. We live way down
(02:37):
here in the South Pacific where these things don't happen
very often, so it's a very very remote chance that
anything like this is ever going to happen, just tremendously
devastating when it does. And yeah, a very very difficult
thing to intercept because it is so rare, because it
targets wide open spaces where people simply don't expect anything
(02:59):
like this to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And I guess once you start saying, right, we're not
going together together to celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas or Ramadan
or whatever happens to be your particular festival, once you
start putting a stop to those kind of community gatherings,
and the terrorists don't they.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Oh, you given, and there's no need to stop doing
this again. If somebody is going to target one of
these things, it is very rare that they actually do.
And I think we go about our daily lives not
thinking that that is going to happen. And yes, we're
given to a very very very small minority of violent individuals.
(03:45):
So I agree we life needs to stay as normal.
We need to stand up and just be ourselves, but
we also need to be aware that we do need
to be concerned about our security. I think in New
Zealand in particular, we need to have a deeper conversation,
a deeper understanding of just the normal security risks that
(04:06):
we might actually have to bring to mind. I don't
think we do that enough here are we?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I mean, since the mask attacks, are we taking security
seriously enough at an organizational level, at a level you know,
the ordinary man and woman doesn't get to see. Is
there enough funding? Are there enough people? Is there enough surveillance?
Are we in the loop with the rest of the
Western world.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That would depend on where you're sitting in relation to
that question. If you were in those organizations, that would
probably say no, if you're out and about and thinking, well,
nothing really ever happens too bad in New Zealand and
we've had a couple of occasions, but pretty much the
rare maybe people think yees sufficient is being done. Security
is a combination of the resources we have available, the
(04:58):
risks that we perceive, and how we manage to mitigate
those risks with the resource we have. There's always possible
a need for more resourcing, but again it's got to
come from somewhere. We can't have what we can't afford,
and so basically we've got to manage that risk with
the resources we have. Available. That's that is security. It's
(05:19):
not it's not something we can guarantee. It's something that
we have to mitigate the risks we have with the
resources that are available. So look, I don't think I
can answer that question. Is is there enough? I suppose
isn't it exactly exactly where are.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The hostile actors going to come from within this country?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
They could come from anywhere. The historical pattern for New
Zealand is there's completely unconnected. We could have individuals that
emerge from their own particular motivation and ideology, or we
might have somebody like parent that's emerging from some overseas
location and overseas ideology. They are usually very rarely disconnected
(06:04):
from each other. In general, they haven't been terribly impactful
except for Terrant. He's the exception. So again, they could
have moved from anywhere, and that again adds to the
difficulty of trying to work out where the next one
is going to come from.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
It must be really difficult when you are part of
a group an organization that can be othered, and especially
when you know the international rhetoric is claiming the moral
superiority on one side, and you must feel like a
target every day.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You can do. And for periods in the twenty tens,
while you know, the global War on terror, ANISIS was
ascendant and all that. That was something that was definitely
coming out of Muslim communities, but easily it could happen
in any community. I was concerned during the gun buy
back after the MOSC attacks whether we might other our
gun owning.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
They certainly felt like it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, yeah, and some of them did. And I think
probably right now, if I was a memory of Jewish community,
I'd be other than perhaps a completely different way. You know,
how safe am I? So? Look? Yeah, the difficulty for again,
intelligence and law enforcement is that they look and police behavior.
(07:30):
They don't look for people. They don't look for ethnicities.
They look for particular dangerous I theologies and particularly dangerous behavior,
and that's how they try and focus in on the
dangerous individuals. That's the key to the way they approach it. So, yes,
I understand the other thing. I understand that you could
sit back and make that generalization, but we don't have
(07:54):
the resources to other a whole group of people in
New Zealand. We would need to be very careful about
isolating exactly who it is that we're looking at.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And when it comes to the online radicalization, I suppose
when you've got the resources looking at all sorts of
online crime like the child pornography, the international networks that
spring up, that would be an intelligence job rather than police,
(08:27):
and they would be looking at at the dark web,
trying to find pockets of people who are trying to
radicalize others here.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Ye, yes, so it would be I think a range
of agencies could particularly be involved in that. And again
the dark web, the lightweb, they are massive. There are
all sorts of people posting all sorts of illegal, extremist
odd stuff there. And it's again it comes down to
(09:01):
the amount of resource that agencies can apply to look
them to tech for that stuff. We've got to be
careful about that. That term radicalization, we seem to use
that quite freely. Now people are capable of posting all
sorts of nonsense while they are incapable of ever doing it.
So and get their ads to the problem to the
(09:23):
vast majority of these individuals that are posting extremist content
are not actually dangerous. But how do we how do
we know? And when it comes to you know, online
child material, again, that's that's a massive problem that agencies
have to deal with, and there's never enough resource to
(09:46):
deal with it.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And just finally, John, like, if you're a mum and
dad looking at your university educated son or daughter, or
your son or daughter who's still living at home spending
a lot of time on the net seems to satisfied
and disgruntled. Is there any way of packing up that
they're spending too much time the kind of unhealthy material
(10:08):
online that can lead.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
To I think you're probably asking me to give advice
on parenting, and I don't. Look, I've got kids. I've
got kids that know an awful lot more about the
Internet than I do. So yeah, Look, I don't know
how effective I can I can be there other than
if there is really concerning material, let someone know. You can,
(10:35):
you can let agencies know and they can start looking
and they can provide advice. I don't think the New
Zealand police are definitely looking for prosecutions if they can
cope people away from these things. So yet, Look, if
you need help, ask for it. I would be the only
thing I could possibly suggest.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Very helpful, John, Thank you so much. John Bettersby, Messy
University Center for Defense and security studies and dard with
helpful advice.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
For more from carry Wood and Mornings, listen Live News
Talks A B from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the carry Wood and Morning's podcast from
News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He'd be so.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
At least sixteen people are dead, as I mentioned, thirty
eight others inched, five critical and a terrorist attack at
Bondai Beach in Sydney last night. Hundreds of people had
gathered at Bondei for a family event to celebrate the
first day of Haneker when two gunmen opened fire Massy
University Center for Defense and Security Studies, John Battersby joins me. Now,
(00:33):
a very good morning to you, John, Good morning. It
must be so hard, and I guess this is the
thing that intelligence agencies always struggle with. You have to
have all the ducks in a row. It's all very
well knowing when and who, but you have to know where.
Or you might know where, but you need to know when.
(00:54):
So how is there any point in knowing? I mean,
with Harneker the first day of Haneker coming up, intelligence
agencies would have been on high alert. But you can't
really prevent these things happening, can you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well you can, it's just that in order to and
that's why a law enforcement and intelligence agencies are very
watchful when if they suspect that somebody might target something
like this, and on multiple occasions there are interventions, plots
are detected before they occur. I think there's a recent
(01:31):
story about one in Germany that was intercepted attack proposed
on a Christmas market. So yes, these things can be stopped.
I think getting all of the nests three information, who, what, when, where,
that's the key. And law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies
are pretty good at what they do, but they do
not have a crystal ball. And when we have sole
(01:54):
actors or individual perpetrators or very small groups, these people
leave very small planning footprints and they are very difficult
to detect.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
A bit like the containers that come into New Zealand
with drugs. You can pick up a few, but you
know that there are others still getting through.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I suppose you could use that analogy, although I think
with the container one I suspect there's an awful lot
more coming in than is actually being picked up. What
we're dealing with in the case of a mess killing
like this, we don't live in America, so it is
not a weekly or monthly event. We live way down
(02:37):
here in the South Pacific where these things don't happen
very often, so it's a very very remote chance that
anything like this is ever going to happen, just tremendously
devastating when it does. And yeah, a very very difficult
thing to intercept because it is so rare, because it
targets wide open spaces where people simply don't expect anything
(02:59):
like this to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And I guess once you start saying, right, we're not
going together together to celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas or Ramadan
or whatever happens to be your particular festival, once you
start putting a stop to those kind of community gatherings,
and the terrorists don't they.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Oh, you given, and there's no need to stop doing
this again. If somebody is going to target one of
these things, it is very rare that they actually do.
And I think we go about our daily lives not
thinking that that is going to happen. And yes, we're
given to a very very very small minority of violent individuals.
(03:45):
So I agree we life needs to stay as normal.
We need to stand up and just be ourselves, but
we also need to be aware that we do need
to be concerned about our security. I think in New
Zealand in particular, we need to have a deeper conversation,
a deeper understanding of just the normal security risks that
(04:06):
we might actually have to bring to mind. I don't
think we do that enough here are we?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I mean, since the mask attacks, are we taking security
seriously enough at an organizational level, at a level you know,
the ordinary man and woman doesn't get to see. Is
there enough funding? Are there enough people? Is there enough surveillance?
Are we in the loop with the rest of the
Western world.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That would depend on where you're sitting in relation to
that question. If you were in those organizations, that would
probably say no, if you're out and about and thinking, well,
nothing really ever happens too bad in New Zealand and
we've had a couple of occasions, but pretty much the
rare maybe people think yees sufficient is being done. Security
is a combination of the resources we have available, the
(04:58):
risks that we perceive, and how we manage to mitigate
those risks with the resource we have. There's always possible
a need for more resourcing, but again it's got to
come from somewhere. We can't have what we can't afford,
and so basically we've got to manage that risk with
the resources we have. Available. That's that is security. It's
(05:19):
not it's not something we can guarantee. It's something that
we have to mitigate the risks we have with the
resources that are available. So look, I don't think I
can answer that question. Is is there enough? I suppose
isn't it exactly exactly where are.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The hostile actors going to come from within this country?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
They could come from anywhere. The historical pattern for New
Zealand is there's completely unconnected. We could have individuals that
emerge from their own particular motivation and ideology, or we
might have somebody like parent that's emerging from some overseas
location and overseas ideology. They are usually very rarely disconnected
(06:04):
from each other. In general, they haven't been terribly impactful
except for Terrant. He's the exception. So again, they could
have moved from anywhere, and that again adds to the
difficulty of trying to work out where the next one
is going to come from.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
It must be really difficult when you are part of
a group an organization that can be othered, and especially
when you know the international rhetoric is claiming the moral
superiority on one side, and you must feel like a
target every day.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You can do. And for periods in the twenty tens,
while you know, the global War on terror, ANISIS was
ascendant and all that. That was something that was definitely
coming out of Muslim communities, but easily it could happen
in any community. I was concerned during the gun buy
back after the MOSC attacks whether we might other our
gun owning.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
They certainly felt like it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, yeah, and some of them did. And I think
probably right now, if I was a memory of Jewish community,
I'd be other than perhaps a completely different way. You know,
how safe am I? So? Look? Yeah, the difficulty for again,
intelligence and law enforcement is that they look and police behavior.
(07:30):
They don't look for people. They don't look for ethnicities.
They look for particular dangerous I theologies and particularly dangerous behavior,
and that's how they try and focus in on the
dangerous individuals. That's the key to the way they approach it. So, yes,
I understand the other thing. I understand that you could
sit back and make that generalization, but we don't have
(07:54):
the resources to other a whole group of people in
New Zealand. We would need to be very careful about
isolating exactly who it is that we're looking at.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And when it comes to the online radicalization, I suppose
when you've got the resources looking at all sorts of
online crime like the child pornography, the international networks that
spring up, that would be an intelligence job rather than police,
(08:27):
and they would be looking at at the dark web,
trying to find pockets of people who are trying to
radicalize others here.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Ye, yes, so it would be I think a range
of agencies could particularly be involved in that. And again
the dark web, the lightweb, they are massive. There are
all sorts of people posting all sorts of illegal, extremist
odd stuff there. And it's again it comes down to
(09:01):
the amount of resource that agencies can apply to look
them to tech for that stuff. We've got to be
careful about that. That term radicalization, we seem to use
that quite freely. Now people are capable of posting all
sorts of nonsense while they are incapable of ever doing it.
So and get their ads to the problem to the
(09:23):
vast majority of these individuals that are posting extremist content
are not actually dangerous. But how do we how do
we know? And when it comes to you know, online
child material, again, that's that's a massive problem that agencies
have to deal with, and there's never enough resource to
(09:46):
deal with it.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And just finally, John, like, if you're a mum and
dad looking at your university educated son or daughter, or
your son or daughter who's still living at home spending
a lot of time on the net seems to satisfied
and disgruntled. Is there any way of packing up that
they're spending too much time the kind of unhealthy material
(10:08):
online that can lead.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
To I think you're probably asking me to give advice
on parenting, and I don't. Look, I've got kids. I've
got kids that know an awful lot more about the
Internet than I do. So yeah, Look, I don't know
how effective I can I can be there other than
if there is really concerning material, let someone know. You can,
(10:35):
you can let agencies know and they can start looking
and they can provide advice. I don't think the New
Zealand police are definitely looking for prosecutions if they can
cope people away from these things. So yet, Look, if
you need help, ask for it. I would be the only
thing I could possibly suggest.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Very helpful, John, Thank you so much. John Bettersby, Messy
University Center for Defense and security studies and dard with
helpful advice.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
For more from carry Wood and Mornings, listen Live News
Talks A B from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio
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