Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government will now overhaul terrorism laws by the end of the month, in the wake of a knife attack committed by a terrorist who was under police surveillance.

Ardern fronted a press conference on Saturday afternoon with further details about the man behind the attack, including the efforts taken by police to keep the man in custody or GPS monitored in the community, as concern about the risk he posed grew.

She also said the Government had sought to hurry changes to the terrorism laws in the months after the man was released into the community. The justice minister made a phone call to make this happen the day the attack happened.

“We must be willing to make the changes that we know may not necessarily have changed history, but could change the future,” she said.

The 32-year-old man, who cannot be named due to court suppressions, entered a Countdown supermarket in New Lynn, Auckland on Friday afternoon and stabbed seven people, leaving three in a critical condition, with a knife picked up from the store’s shelf.

The man had been under 24/7 surveillance by police, and officers within minutes shot the man dead. He was a supporter of the extremist ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), a designated terror group.

"When you have a highly motivated lone actor, like this individual, it is incredibly tough,” Ardern said.

How the terrorist was handled

Ardern on Saturday gave more details about the terrorist’s criminal history, having been liberated from a court suppression that Crown lawyers sought to remove late on Friday evening.

But particular details about the man’s immigration status remained suppressed, with the courts allowing his family 24 hours to contest information being released.

The man’s name continued to be suppressed.

“This is not something I had intended to share regardless,” Ardern said.

Ardern said the man came to New Zealand in 2011 as a 22-year-old, travelling on a student visa. Whether he held extremist views at the time was unknown.

He first came to the attention of the police in 2016 after posting extremist material and reposting videos on Facebook. The videos were about war and violence, including a terror bombing in Europe. He was spoken to twice by police that year, in April and May.

He was then arrested at Auckland International Airport in May 2017, as police believed he was travelling to Syria to join Isis.

A search of his home found a hunting knife and “restricted publications”. He was charged with possession, pled guilty to knowingly distributing restricted publications, fraud, and failing to assist police with a search and was released on bail.

After two days on bail, he bought another knife. He was arrested again, more extremist, objectionable material was found, and he was placed in custody.

He was in custody for years while facing these charges. And attempt to prosecute him under the Terrorism Suppression Act, in July 2020, failed.

He remained in custody awaiting sentencing for other charges, and during this time he assaulted corrections officers – leading to further charges.

He was convicted of charged of possession of objectionable material in May 2021, and on July 6, having spent three years in custody, he was sentenced to 12 months supervision.

“GPS monitoring was sought by the Crown, but this was not imposed by the courts ... given all legal avenues to continue his detention had been exhausted, officials prepared for his release,” Ardern said.

READ MORE

• LynnMall terror attack: Family of terrorist 'grieving', 'weren't aware of what he was doing'
• LynnMall terror attack timeline: Jacinda Ardern reveals how Government tried to stop terrorist
• LynnMall terror attack, Crown trying to lift suppression orders, 3 victims still critical
• New Lynn terror attack: Witness who was face-to-face with terrorist 'just froze', sorry she couldn't stop him

Surveillance began immediately, Ardern said, and at times there were up to 30 police officers working on monitoring the man.

Ardern repeatedly said that government agencies had exhausted every legal avenue to kept the man out of the community.

She, at one point, took advice on whether it was possible to have him sectioned as a mental health patient. But the man had refused to take psychological assessments.

"When it was no longer possible to legally have this person detained, that is when the police came in with that constant monitoring.”

Insights into the attack

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, also at the press conference, provided a revised account of how quickly police acted. He had said on Friday that it took 60 seconds for police to shoot the man, after hearing the commotion of the attack.

However, CCTV footage showed the first stabbing occurred 60 to 90 seconds prior to police realising an attack was underway.

Coster said the police surveillance officers were not able to be nearer to the man, in the supermarket, as there were fewer people present in the store due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

“The risk of compromise is greatly increased.”

The terrorist had been highly paranoid that he was being monitored. Coster said the man had previously accused other people, not police officers, of surveilling him.

He had been under 24/7 surveillance for 53 days.

“I remain of the view that our police staff acted exactly the way we would have expected them to,” Coster said.

CCTV footage also showed the terrorist removing a kitchen knife from the supermarket shelves, before the attack. A similar knife was found next to his body after he was shot, indicating no other weapons were used.

“Nothing suggests to me anything other than the knife was taken from the store.”

The man spent ten minutes shopping at the store prior to the attack. Ardern said the man, earlier in the day, had done “bits and pieces” which suggested he intended to be around in the following weeks.

Coster said it may never be known whether he planned to carry out the attack at the supermarket, or it was “opportunistic”.

A seventh victim had been located overnight, Coster said. This victim had been injured by the knife but was not stabbed, and cared for the injury at their home.

New terrorism laws

After nearly a decade of warnings from officials the terror laws might not be sufficient, the Royal Commission into the March 15 terror attack in December recommended the Government provide the police and intelligence agencies “with the means to disrupt planning and preparation terrorist attacks”.

Such a provision does not exist in the Terror Suppression Act 2002, and attempts by police to prosecute possible terror planning – including the actions of the supermarket terrorist – had failed.

Ardern on Saturday mapped out the Government’s work to reform the law, which she said began in September 2018, and carried on throughout 2019.

The Government in April 2021 released details of its proposed law changes, which would broaden the scope of what has been considered terrorist activity, allowing law enforcement agencies to consider the planning or training for an attack as a terrorist activity, and provide warrantless search and entry powers to do so.

The bill had been in the select committee process in recent months, and a group of MPs had been hearing public submissions on how it should be written.

After receiving a written update on the man’s case in July, Ardern said she met with officials on August 9 to discuss what more could be done to mitigate the risk posed by the man.

Earlier this week, Coster suggested expediting the proposed law changes. Within 48 hours of this discussion, Ardern said, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi called the chair of the justice select committee to hurry it along.

“That was yesterday, the same day the attack happened,” Ardern said.

“The public have had their say, and now Parliament must act.”

But the bill has raised concerns for how it may damage civil liberties. The privacy commissioner, who supported the intent of the law change, does not support control orders and said the warrantless search powers pose a “grave” risk to the public’s privacy rights.

The Islamic Women’s Council has opposed the law changes. Last month, the council’s national co-ordinator Aliya Danzeisen told the select committee scrutinising the bill the organisation feared how the laws might be used on her community.

“We have lived the life of counter-terrorism laws for 20 years. We have been the focus of those laws for the last two decades,” she said.

“The proposed legislation as drafted is going to erode fundamental human rights.”

National Party leader Judith Collins has already offered to support the urgent passing of the counter-terror laws.

Collins said she sent a text message to Ardern on Friday evening, offering the National Party’s support if the Government wanted to pursue its changes to terrorism laws with urgency.

“It seems to us that is a very good thing to move faster on ... Obviously she can push things through anyway, but it's obviously more helpful to her if she has the Opposition agreeing with her,” she said.

Collins herself had made a decision to remove a review of the Terrorism Suppression Act from the Law Commission’s work programme, when she was justice minister in 2013. At the time, she said there did “not appear to be any substantial or urgent concerns arising from the operation of the Act”.

“You can't expect me to remember exactly every decision from eight years ago without any documentation. But it's also really important to consider that the threat situation was entirely different eight years ago to what it is now,” she said on Saturday.

Collins said she also wanted the Government to consider harsher, Australian-style immigration laws that would create powers to deport dual citizens and permanent residents for committing violent crimes.

It was not clear that such laws would have assisted the authorities in the case of the supermarket terrorist.

“Legislation by itself doesn't necessarily stop someone doing something that they want to do, if it did than nobody would ever be murdered,” Collins said.

“It helps to eventually make the country safer, but at the same time, it recognises that the vast majority of people who come to choose to New Zealand to be their home ... should not be unduly punished by other people's behaviours.”