Abstract:
Counter-terrorism is a growing field in New Zealand. This is highlighted by the introduction of new legislation in 2014, aimed at preventing New Zealanders from financing or joining terrorist organisations and strengthening existing legislation. This claim is also supported by the government's decision to raise the budget for the security and intelligence agencies in consecutive years. However, space remains to examine public opinion in relation to counter-terrorism measures. Primary analysis of public perception has largely been neglected in counter-terrorist policy studies. This research aims to address this gap through analysis of public perception of government, terrorism and surveillance as represented in three focus groups of University of Auckland students. These data are analysed to answer the question: "In what ways could public perception influence future counter-terrorist policy in New Zealand?" The research is designed around Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach, which provides a synthesising method to analyse policy problems and solutions through discourse. As such, interpretation of language was central to developing conclusions from the focus group data. The findings of this study directly relate to the fact that participants implicitly contextualised terrorism as a problem of 'them' versus 'us'. As a key element of the 'them' versus 'us' dichotomy, participants reject the idea of domestic terrorism in New Zealand. They show no fear of being attacked by anyone within New Zealand due to a consensus that everyone in New Zealand is part of the 'us' category. Two solutions to the problem of terrorism are dominant in all three focus groups: surveillance, and social cohesion. However, even supporters of surveillance demonstrated deep mistrust of politicians, intelligence analysts and methods of data storage. Two implications for future policymaking are therefore evident. Firstly, participants argue that greater transparency is needed around what can be monitored in state surveillance and how data are stored. Secondly, terrorism is seen as a foreign threat, to be managed by foreign policy rather than a domestic issue that justifies any policy that could be damaging to social cohesion or infringe on personal liberty.