New Zealand, then led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, garnered international acclaim for our response to the terrorist’s attack.
This response included swift action to reform our gun laws to ban semi-automatic rifles of the type used by the gunman unless they were being used for pest control or kept by gun collectors in an inoperable state.
Revisiting gun laws is being proposed by the coalition government this term and it is possible changes might include allowing competitive shooters to use centrefire semi-automatic rifles for sport.
There is understandably some unease within the Muslim community about any suggestion of relaxing of criteria, but Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has not provided much reassurance about what might happen with the gun reforms.
He has been at pains to point out the rewriting of the Arms Act has not yet involved the production of papers, discussion, or debate. Saying there would be "no new guns added into New Zealand" was conveniently cute. That might be the case but extending the use of ones already allowed for pest control, if that happens, may be just as concerning for the Muslim community.
There has been concern about the time it is taking to address all the recommendations from the royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attack, although it was presented to the Labour-led government in December 2020.
So far 23 of the 44 recommendations have been completed, another eight are being worked on and the government has yet to make ministerial decisions about the other 15.
We would be surprised if the controversial can of worms, the hate speech law, put in the too-hard basket by Labour, makes the cut with the coalition.
The Islamic Women’s Council is one group which considers the government has largely failed in meeting its promise to make New Zealand safer for Muslims.
It says police data shows Muslim women experience slightly more than a third of the daily hate in the country even though they make up less than 1% of the population.
Whether the Christchurch Call to Action has gone far towards its aim of eliminating terrorist and extremist online content is also questionable. This international initiative was launched by Dame Jacinda and French President Emmanuel Macron two months after the shootings, prompted by the 17 minutes of livestreaming of the mosque shootings, which proved difficult to shut down.
That’s progress, but sorting out the algorithms to design online safety measures to prevent radicalisation is proving more difficult.
Dame Jacinda understands there will be some cynicism about the co-operation between companies, government officials, academic and civil society and suspicion that working together weakens accountabilities for all.
She disagrees with that, saying, among other things, technology partners have been expected to improve content moderation and terms of service to address violent extremism and terrorist content.
That may have been the expectation, but we are not convinced it has been realised, particularly when we read reports of reductions in the number of content moderators employed by some of the big players in the interests of "efficiency".
By the time we mark this miserable anniversary next year, the Muslim community will be hoping there will be more progress to report on the issues still of concern to them.
As Mr Luxon said last week, the community could have chosen to respond to the shootings with anger, hate and withdrawal.
Instead community members had modelled, to all of us, their wonderful faith, love, compassion, engagement, peace and hope, he said.
All the more reason not to let them down.
