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Summarised by Centrist
Speaking to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, NZSIS Director-General Andrew Hampton said many individuals under investigation are young males who have been drawn into violent extremist narratives through online activity.
“If you look at our current active investigations… it looks like a year 13 boys school,” Hampton told MPs, referring to the age profile of suspects. “There’s not a single ideology, there’s not a single ethnicity. But what’s common is that these are largely people who are spending a lot of time online engaging with quite violent content.”
Hampton said many of the individuals being monitored were first identified in their mid-teens and were typically in their late teens or early twenties by the time investigations intensified. Some were motivated by racial or religious ideologies, while others appeared driven primarily by a desire for violence rather than a coherent belief system.
“We also have several people who have quite unclear motivations,” he said. “Probably what’s motivating them is violence. They’re looking for some sort of ideology to justify it.”
The intelligence chiefs warned that individuals can go “a long way down the radicalisation path by just engaging with a computer”.
“At a very pragmatic level, I am keen for parents to take a stronger interest in what their kids are looking at online,” he said.
Despite these concerns, Hampton said New Zealand’s official terrorism threat level remains unchanged at “possible”, the second-lowest category.
He cautioned that attacks are still conceivable, particularly from lone actors with limited capability. Referring to the deadly attack in Bondi during Hanukkah celebrations, Hampton said he was “shocked, but not surprised”, describing it as the type of “low-capability-without-warning attack the NZSIS frequently warns could happen here”.
