Inquest or inquisition – seeking to understand the Christchurch terrorist attacks

Tuesday, 7 November 2023

A scene from the coronial hearing into the Christchurch mosque shootings, with David Boldt, counsel assisting the coroner, cross-examining witness Dean Brown of the St John ambulance service.

Mike Ardagh is professor of emergency medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch.

OPINION: A coronial inquest into the terrible terrorist attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, is an important way to determine the facts, to learn, and to better plan to prevent and manage potential future events. These, of course, are worthy and important objectives.

Inquest and inquisition are words that appear to mean largely similar things although, at least in my mind, the former implies a collaborative exploration and the latter a confrontational interrogation.

Which best describes this coronial inquest? While many folk are taking the stand and being interrogated, the only criminal associated with this event isn’t one of them.

Instead, those on the stand seem to be good people, who did a great job under difficult circumstances. Indeed, their actions were often heroic. In addition, their experiences are already causing many of them significant mental distress.

Is it right, or even useful, to put them in front of the world and suggest they were too slow, too confused, otherwise deficient, or even biased, in their decision making?

I concede that I, like most people observing the inquest, am doing so through a media filter, which might not be a balanced representation. However, what I am seeing emphasises two fundamental problems with this process.

First, a retrospective consideration undertaken in the cold light of day, is very different to decision making in a prospective and rapidly evolving context, confounded by considerable uncertainty.

Coroner Brigitte Windley, who is presiding over the inquest.

Understanding the contrast between deliberations based on appreciating the prospective and evolving context, and those based on the retrospective certainty of what happened and how, is vitally important so that undue criticism is avoided.

Second, the adversarial and confrontational nature of the inquest does not appear to be well suited to examining events of this sort.

First, it is based on winning an argument, rather than finding the facts. Second, it is unfair and, frankly, mean.

The good people subjected to this approach are not criminals nor accused of criminal acts, and many are already significantly distressed by the events they experienced. A more collaborative exploration might not only be more user-friendly but would probably gather more useful information.

I was in the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital that day and I remember it well. Most of all I remember good people doing excellent things under very, very unusual circumstances.

However, I wasn’t out there amid the danger and the uncertainty. I wasn’t trying to make sense of the unfathomable, control the overwhelming, nor build a plan on a foundation of uncertainty, rumour, and conjecture. What a hell of a job faced many people, including our front-line emergency services.

And, under the circumstances, they did a hell of a job. Let’s not forget that.