Prime Minister John Key says current anti-terrorism laws are inadequate and Cabinet will today consider ways to strengthen them, Radio New Zealand reports.
Key has said there is a risk that New Zealanders who have joined Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East will return home, and there is nothing to stop that happening.
While it was a criminal act to participate in a terrorist group under the Terrorism Suppression Act, that law was hard to enforce, Key said.
“There's a lot deficiencies in that law, at least there's a lot of debate about how applicable the law is, how easy it is to get a conviction under the law,” he said.
University of Auckland law professor Bill Hodge questioned whether a person who said they were going on the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj, would be told they could not fulfill their religious obligation, if there was suspicion they were going for other purposes.
“There's an extra dimension of difficulty because there are legitimate reasons for people who may be Muslim to go to the Middle East,” he said.
“They may be on a Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, they may be offering humanitarian support to families (or) they may be offering logistical support.
“It's going to be hard to prove that they were committing a crime against humanity.”