A crime that makes us recoil

Australia’s most shameful and shameless expatriate, Grafton-born terrorist Brenton Tarrant, 29, has received the toughest punishment in the New Zealand justice system — life in prison without parole. A rampant exhibitionist who live-streamed his 17-minute rampage on his Facebook page, from where it was shared across the internet, he will die in obscurity. But the punishment pales alongside the suffering of those who will always love and grieve for the 51 worshippers — defenceless men, women and children — shot dead by Tarrant in a massacre at two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers on March 15 last year. He also injured 49 people. Those left behind have shown “extraordinary resilience”, as Justice Cameron Mander said. Tarrant murdered some of his victims as they lay wounded, pleading for mercy. His actions, as the judge said, were “beyond callous”; they were “inhuman”.

Scott Morrison spoke for Australians on Thursday when he paid tribute to the Muslim communities on both sides of the Tasman Sea. They have supported each other since that fateful day, reflecting the goodness of faith. “You have been a light answering the darkness,” Mr Morrison said. And New Zealand is family. Our two nations are fierce but good-natured sporting rivals. Our deepest relationship was forged on a blood-soaked peninsula at Gallipoli in 1915. Since then, any atrocity inflicted on our Anzac cousins is a wound inflicted on Australia. That one of our citizens perpetrated this appalling act of terror makes us recoil in revulsion. So did Tarrant’s apparent lack of remorse.

While driven by primeval brutality and warped ideology, Tarrant’s killing spree was also a crime of the cyber age. It makes sense that wide-ranging cyber security measures announced by the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton earlier this month will assist security services and law enforcement agencies in pursuing other fanatics, similar to Tarrant, who congregate in the recesses of the dark web, where rancid ideologies thrive and terrorist attacks are sometimes plotted. In Tarrant’s case, as crown prosecutor Mark Zarifeh said in court, the atrocity was motivated by an entrenched racist and xenophobic ideology.

Investigations by The Australian after the massacre revealed a dark online world of vile ideas, in which extremists do not have to join an organisation, meet each other or sit at the feet of a leader. Like Tarrant, they trawl the internet, and mix and match their beliefs. Censoring the internet is a tricky area for liberal democracies that value free speech. But time and again regulators and policing authorities have discovered red flags that should help to prevent extremist acts. The trauma of March 15 last year is not easily healed, as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says. But Tarrant’s sentencing marks the end of another difficult stage in the lives of those whose families he tore apart.