ABSTRACT

New Zealand is fortunate that terrorism represents more of a latent threat than a lived reality. Its government currently assesses the risk of a terrorist incident as ‘low’, with that assessment only changing from ‘very low’ in 2014. And while New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) maintains a ‘counter terrorism risk register’ of some 30 to 40 individuals who are ‘assessed to represent a potential threat to New Zealand, related to terrorism’, the number on this list remains relatively static. In the immediate wake of 9/11, New Zealand enacted the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. The challenge of terrorism primarily has been managed within New Zealand’s existing legal framework. Where the global community has called for its members to take action to combat terrorism the government responded quickly by amending the law. A key element of the review was its analysis of the concept of ‘national security’ in the modern globalized environment.