Authorities across the Tasman have discovered video of the Christchurch terror attack continues to be downloaded by dozens of Australians.
A counter-terrorism probe by the Australian Federal Police found that almost three quarters of the most popular extremist content being shared online was classified as extreme right-wing, and most of it was linked to the 2019 attack on mosques in New Zealand.
The findings have been reported by Australian newspaper The Age, which together with The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, published this week the first part of an investigation into white supremacy and neo-Nazism in Australia.
It was found that Australia's largest white supremacist group, the National Socialist Network, idolise the Australian man who carried out the Christchurch terror attack, for which he is imprisoned for life without parole.
It's reminiscent of findings published by Dunedin student magazine writer Elliot Weir, who spent six months as a member of Action Zealandia, a far-right extremist group in New Zealand with 30 active members.
The student's investigation uncovered plots to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccination and plans to influence political parties.
The Christchurch terror attack brought white supremacist extremism into the spotlight in New Zealand, with the Security Intelligence Service spy agency found to have been focussing too much on Islamic terrorism.
Newshub revealed in June that seven people were prosecuted for sharing the footage in March 2019, followed by four more that year and five people in 2020. That's despite the original video being shared more than a million times internationally.
Efforts have been made to clamp down on the proliferation of terrorist content. Newshub revealed last month that more than 85 links containing violent extremist material had been taken down following Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) investigations.
The Government gave the Department of Internal Affairs a $17 million boost in 2019 to support keeping Kiwis safe from online harm.
The funding was provided in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack. The terrorist's livestream led Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to establish the global Christchurch Call to combat online harm.
But two years after the video was made, efforts to stop its spread did not appear to be working, after RNZ revealed a simple search using an alternative search engine to Google led straight to the footage.
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While sharing or even viewing the video could land people in prison in New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs doesn't have the formal power to request takedowns of harmful content overseas.
But there is a law change currently being considered that would give it the ability to issue take down notices to online platforms for objectionable material.
Because the majority of harmful content is hosted offshore, documents Newshub has seen show the DIA has developed relationships with social media platforms and law enforcement agencies overseas to seek collaboration on removing harmful content.
The DIA can request content be removed if it has been classified as objectionable by the Chief Censor. It can also request takedowns of content modified from something originally deemed objectionable, or content that breaches a platform's terms and conditions relating to terrorist or child exploitation material.
The Government is also proposing a new criminal offence of hate speech protecting religion, gender, sexual identity and possibly political opinion, in response to the Christchurch terror attack.
Despite these efforts, violent extremist content motivated by racism is still flourishing on the internet, demonstrated by recent threats made to Māori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
The MPs complained to the Independent Police Conduct Authority earlier this year after accusing the police of failing to properly investigate racist threats made against them in a video.
The footage featured a masked man who at various times said Māori would be slaughtered in a "civil war", bragged about his killing skills and of training other white supremacists, and made threats on marae and homes of Māori.
A man was charged last month for allegedly publishing the material. He could face 14 years in prison, on top of three months and a $7000 fine, for breaching the Human Rights Act 1993's rules against inciting racial disharmony.
