Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd On New Zealand’s Attacks

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well it is. It’s sad, it’s tragic, it’s a massive crime that has taken place. And I wonder what you say on a human level to the people of New Zealand, you neighbors, who have been attacked, we believe, by at least one of them who is an Australian citizen.

KEVIN RUDD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA: I think our first response as human beings is to — mine certainly is to reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters. You were a people innocently in prayer before having this wanton act of violence meted against them for no reason. So, that is the first response. I think also a sense of shock that in a peaceful country like New Zealand, this could have happened. But I think in that sense that we reflect on how Norwegians felt back in 2011 when we had a white supremacist go on the rampage there. But also I think it’s a sense of collective outrage. How could this have come about. What factors have fit in to the formation of such a mind that could perpetrate such a terrorist attack against innocent citizens of New Zealand. And I think that’s where much of the debate must now go.

AMANPOUR: So, again, I said that one of these perpetrators is apparently Australian. The current prime minister, Scott Morrison, today tweeted, “I condemn the violent extremist right wing terrorist attack that have stolen the lives of so many innocent New Zealanders as they went about their peaceful practice of worship at their mosque in Christchurch today.” So, very similar obviously to what you as a prime minister have said. And he uses these words violent, extremist, right wing terrorist attack. As a former prime minister, what should Australians be feeling? What is it about the connection with Australia that needs to be addressed?

RUDD: I think what we’re looking at here, Christiane, is this, frankly, global white supremacist movement which anchors around this belief in something called white genocide. It’s a complete fiction, but it’s perpetrated in the alt-right media. And if you look at the reported writings of the alleged suspect in the Christchurch terrorist attack, there are terrible resonances of what we’ve seen elsewhere from Brevik in Norway. And what we seen perpetrated by the alt-right type of racist, religiously intolerant movement around the world. And this is something which we, as mainstream political leaders in all countries, need to address directly this fomenting of this hatred within the closed ecosystem of this social media community of white genocide believing, white supremacists is where this hatred appears to come from.