Warning: This article discusses the Christchurch mosque attack.
The Islamic Women's Council is hoping a report into the Christchurch terror attack will reveal failings the Government made with the community.
On March 15, 2019 Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people and injured over 50 more when he opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch.
On Tuesday, the Royal Commission of Inquiry's findings - an 800-page report - into what enabled the tragedy to happen will be released.
Islamic Women's Council spokesperson Anjum Rahman says she has her fingers crossed for meaningful change.
"We want to see some meaningful change. For me that systemic bias, those blind spots, that reluctance to believe communities - that needs to change.
"The way that the Government engages with communities and the way that they empower communities - that needs to change. The way that the resourcing is allocated also needs to change," she told the AM Show.
But Rahman said she is disappointed that the report won't include social media's influence, which was a concern of the Muslim community before the attack.
"In terms of social media, this report will not cover that because they are specifically barred from doing so and that is a major failing here. "
Before the attacks, Rahman met with several Government ministers to address concerns about Islamapbhia, an increase in alt-right activity in New Zealand and hostility towards Muslim people online.
She said the concerns didn't result in any tangible change or an increase in resourcing and instead she was dragged into "meeting after meeting" to discuss her concerns.
"We weren't treated as if we had knowledge and expertise of our communities… and that was a huge concern."
She said she hopes the report highlights some of the failings in the way the Government engages with the community, and a lack of resourcing towards combating right-wing extremism.
"All the money that we put into our intelligence services and agencies should mean that they are catching people like this. I think they just didn't have the resources and tools and weren't looking."
Counter-terrorism expert Greg Barton said hopefully the report will address those failings.
"Why were warnings not heard from the Muslim community? Why were they not acted upon? What are we doing about hate crimes and hate incidents? What's happening with social media, why isn't there more control over that hateful material on social media? Those are the tough and difficult things to answer."
He said the key thing to be taken from the report needs to be how to prevent further attacks and deal with extremism in the future.
"Whatever happens today we have to take out of this report, not just ways to prevent further attacks, but to fix this problem of hateful extremism in society and make sure that the community knows that they are being listened to and respected."
International law expert Al Gillespie told Newshub he is expecting the report to find a threat that was "hard to detect but not completely invisible".
Gillespie said a law change will be necessary to "make sure this sort of atrocity is not repeated in the future".
He said the report should also address the loss of trust in our Government agencies as a result of the attack.
"The big question is whether this will be a kind of Cave Creek situation, where people will expect either the head of the agency or agencies or a minister to resign their portfolio?
"It's no longer sufficient for us to say just trust the agencies, they've lost that trust. So we have to rebuild that.
"I want to see what that change looks like in concrete terms. Whether there will be a new person appointed, change in legislation, whether change in reporting."
He said the finding around whether the terrorist should have been given a gun license, and the gun reform as a result of the attack will also be key parts of the report.
"The other thing that will be interesting to watch is what they find out with regard to the gun laws, and whether [the terrorist] shouldn't have got his license.
"Maybe the law was correct. Some people will argue if the law was correct and implemented wrongly then what has happened after, when those firearms were removed was not the correct process.
"So we'll have to look very carefully at what that process was, whether it was done correctly, and if it was done incorrectly, what that will mean for future vetting and looking backwards of whether this was just one failure or systemic."
He said there could be a third tranche of gun reforms as a result of the report.
The Christchurch mosque terrorist was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in August. He is the first person in New Zealand history to receive the sentence.
