Labour Party members gathered on Parliament's steps today to release red balloons in memory of their counterparts and other victims who died in Norway's mass shooting and bombing at the weekend.
Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik has admitted shooting dead 68 men, women and children at a summer camp for the youth wing of Norway's ruling Labour party, on Utoya Island near Oslo, and killing a further eight people with a car bomb in Oslo's central government district.
Members of New Zealand's Young Labour and the Labour caucus today met on the steps of Parliament at midday to honour the victims.
Labour MP Jacinda Ardern, who was on the board of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) for six years and had friends caught in the tragedy, said one did not need to know the individual victims to understand the scale of what happened.
"We gather today to condemn what has occurred in Norway but also to honour the memory of what those young people stood for," she said.
"They stood for the same ideals that we do, they were a fraternal organisation, they were our friends."
The crowd stood with heads bowed for a moment's silence before releasing about 50 red balloons into the sky.
