CHRISTCHURCH
Explainer: How a Royal Commission will investigate Christchurch shootings Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law at Auckland University of Technology, explains how the Royal Commission into the Christchurch mosque attacks will work, and what it will – and will not – look into. The trial of the man accused of the murders and attempted murders in the Christchurch mosque attacks is one small but important legal process.
Another one has now started. A Royal commission of inquiry, to be led by the senior judge, Justice William Young, and an as yet unannounced second person [announced as former diplomat Jacqui Caine subsequent to writing], will look into the specific circumstances leading up to the shootings on March 15 that left, as of now, 51 people dead. The commission will investigate whether police or intelligence services could have done more to prevent the atrocity, but its terms of reference do not allow it to look into the role of social media. Duty to protect life Coroners exist to investigate the circumstances of a death and to make recommendations designed to reduce the risk of further deaths. However, mass deaths, whether in a disaster or atrocity, may call for a different process. The investigation then needs to have a focus on systematic matters. The Inquiries Act 2013 refers to three different types of wider inquiry: a Royal commission (which is formally a matter of the Royal Prerogative), a public inquiry (established by the Governor-General) and a government inquiry (established by a minister). There is a hierarchy, with royal commissions at the top.
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Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law at Auckland University of Technology
Recent examples of incidents that involved significant loss of life and merited a Royal commission include the Pike River coal mine explosion and the failures of buildings during the Canterbury earthquakes. There is an important international human rights dimension. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OHCHR) 1966, binding on New Zealand since 1978, obliges the New Zealand government not to take life arbitrarily and to protect life. This duty to protect is in focus here. The question that requires a Royal commission is whether officers of the state, most obviously in the
police and intelligence services, failed in their duty to protect the victims by preventing the atrocity from occurring in the first place. Answering this question is part of an implied further duty on the state to investigate possible fault on its part. As duties are by definition owed to someone, fixing this as part of the right to life reveals that it is owed to the families of the deceased victims, and those whose right to life was put at risk, and their families. They must be at the centre of the investigation. They have the clearest stake in needing to know whether more could and should have been done to prevent the atrocity.
June/July 2019
