Three months ago New Zealand changed.

You remember that morning after the massacre? I don’t think many of us had enjoyed a great sleep on that Friday night. That Saturday morning, the people of Christchurch lay flowers at the Police cordon of the Al-Noor Mosque. We weren’t sure then about a lot of things. How many people had died, how many were injured, if there were maybe still some ongoing security concerns, or what would happen next. 

Three months ago New Zealand changed.

And it’s actually the anniversary of another less-documented change in New Zealand.

Since 2009, New Zealand has had a policy which explicitly singles out refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Unless refugees from those parts of the World already have family members in Aotearoa, they’re not welcome here.

The National government introduced the law because of what officials called additional security concerns. That’s despite the fact they couldn’t tell us explicetly what those concerns were and despite the fact that all refugees, regardless of where they come from, go through a strict vetting process before they’re allowed into the country. The same standards don’t apply to refugees coming here from Asia and the Pacific. They don’t apply to refugees from Latin America.

I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know this was our policy until recently. There have been a few scattered reports on it over the years, but my colleagues at Sunday highlighted it a few weeks ago and challenged the Government as to why, 18 months into their time in charge, the family link policy still hasn’t been dropped.

I should point out that in 2016, official advice to scrap it was ignored. I interviewed the immigration minister this week and for the first time, he admitted he hasn’t received any advice suggesting people from the Middle East and Africa pose more of a security risk than other refugees. Again, all refugees go through a huge vetting process. 

Is the policy racist? I asked Iain Lees Galloway. ‘I have a view’, he replied. But he wouldn’t share it. 

What’s interesting to me is that Kiwis don’t appear all that upset by this. For all the talk after Christchurch – You Are Us – there aren’t many people kicking up much of a fuss. Why is that? Why don’t we care that we’re blocking some of the World’s most vulnerable people from setting up a life in New Zealand, even when there are no security concerns at play?

I’ll just say it, shall I? We don’t care because a lot of refugees coming from Africa and the Middle East have the wrong coloured skin, or come from Muslim majority countries? What other reason could there possibly be?

I find hypocrisy maybe the least attractive of all human qualities. We’re all guilty of it, of course.  

I’m as much of a hypocrite as the next person.

But it’s for the big stuff, the really big questions, these moments of collective reckoning, where we should step back and check our collective hypocrisy. We should forget our words. You Are Us. And we should reflect upon our actions, instead.

Actions reveal true character. We’re happy to claim the victims of the Christchurch attacks. You Are Us.

But we’re not happy to claim many of their fellow Muslims. 

Three months ago New Zealand changed. Or maybe it didn’t.