Anzac Day services have been cancelled in Auckland and the Queenstown parade has been cancelled though other events in the south will go ahead.
The RSA in Christchurch is determined that services will continue as normal.
The cancellations have come on police advice although there don’t appear to be any specific threats.
The attack on the Christchurch mosques showed us that New Zealand is no more safe from terror attacks than anywhere else, but are the decisions to cancel some Anzac Day services and a parade prudence or panic?
I was in London in 1982 when IRA bombs in Hyde and Regents Park killed eight people and injured many more.
Life went on as normal afterwards just as it had after all the other IRA bombing campaigns.
If there are known threats in the wake of the March 15 atrocities we should be told, if there are not we ought to carry on as we would normally do.
. . . If the only reason the police are still carrying highly visible firearms at public events, and curtailing Anzac Day observances, is to provide “reassurance” for the community, it might be time for them to think again. Terrorism succeeds when a community is afraid to go about its normal life. There is no sign of that sort of fear among the general public and no reason there would be. One man stands accused of the murders in Christchurch and police are confident he acted alone. . . .
Life will never be the same for those directly affected by the mosque attacks.
It will never be quite the same for the rest of us either but if there are no known threats, the terrorist wins if we live in fear.
Homepaddock 
That is just not so
New Zealand was and is one of the safest places on the planet but nowhere is completely immune from the random success of a psychopath.
The danger right now arises from a copycat but it is unlikely that there is another psycho with the will and means to pull it off in New Zealand at this time.
I personally believe that Tarrant chose his victims and put a narrative around his slaughter that would have the most emotional impact on us but that at heart he is just another misfit mass killer lashing out at society that up until now had not noticed him
I think the best strategy might be summed up with the WW2 slogan
“Keep Calm and Carry On”
Dissappointed we haven’t
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You’re right, Andrei, I ought to have been clearer. Many places are at far greater risk of terror than NZ. The mosque attacks show they can happen here, but the risk of more is still much lower than in many, probably most, other countries.
Like you, I think the keep calm and carry on strategy is the better one.
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Refreshing indeed, Christchurch RSA chair Pete Dawson stepping up to reinstate the services at Little River and Akaroa that some clipboard toting “crat” at CCC had cancelled without any consultation or in modern parlance even had a conversation about apart from some distant dot joining from the constabulary and his “feelz”!
Any connection the CCC has in the Akaroa effort is at best peripheral and when stacked up against the local RSA, The Area School, and emergency services is minimal to be fair. I assume it is a similar case at The River as both monuments are on Highway 75 and its extension into Akaroa on Rue Lavaud.
Pete is a good bugger BTW.
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