Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern talked about her response to March 15 - as well as Donald Trump's - during a question and answer session in Melbourne.
Ms Ardern has been in Australia speaking with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and also fit in a sold-out public address at the Melbourne Town Hall.
After speaking about the importance of good governance, Ms Ardern participated in a session where she responded to questions submitted by the audience.
Ms Ardern spoke of how the world has increasingly been influenced by fear, even before March 15, and how politicians now have a choice of whether to use that fear to further their own political careers, or not.
"We have choices, as politicians," she said, "in a political environment, you can either choose to capitalise on that fear, stoke it, and politically benefit from it, or you can run a counter narrative.
"You can talk about hope, you can talk about solutions to the problems that we have to admit that many of us - political beings - have been a part of.
"We have to acknowledge where we've failed and demonstrate how we can rectify the institutions that may underlie that."
It was pointed out that US President Donald Trump has this week been accused of racism against four women of colour, with that kind of rhetoric bearing similarities to World War II.
In the face of rhetoric like that coming from US President Donald Trump - who this week was accused of racially attacking four women of colour who criticised him - Ms Ardern said she remains hopeful.
"If you spend ten years in opposition, you have to dig deep, you have to dig really deep for that optimism," she laughed.
"But it's there."
Ms Ardern said in the wake of March 15, she had expected New Zealand's Muslim community to be resentful and angry, but they instead showed great love and compassion, which led her to think that, if they can do that, anyone can.
Asked whether she thought Donald Trump had shown compassion to the US Muslim community after March 15, Ms Ardern shied away from directly criticising Mr Trump, saying "You'd be best to ask the Muslim community in the United States if he's done that - I'm not the one to judge that".
"I'm not the one having those experiences in that context - it would be for them to answer - I'm never one to answer on anyone else's behalf," Ms Ardern said.
She was then asked if, considering New Zealand has the Treaty of Waitangi, if she had any advice for Australia in terms of recognising First Nation peoples constitutionally.
Ms Ardern said she didn't feel New Zealand could offer a lot of advice in that regard, because it has an "imperfect record" in that area.
"Loathe be it for us to ever tell any other country how to conduct itself, because we have not been a picture of perfection by any stretch," Ms Ardern said.
"We're not ones to lecture, we're just ones to focus on some self improvement - we've got a lot of work to do."
On climate change, she said she believes it's now important for New Zealand to humanise the problem, and that the debate needs to completely shift from whether or not it's real to what we are actually doing about it.
Ms Ardern was also asked what she is reading at the moment, and laughed that she had a "book case of shame", but also revealed that her current read is Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, which she laughed was "reinforcing the views I already believe, of course".
Finally, she spoke about how long she intends to be Prime Minister, saying that "I want my family to tell me when actually it's time for someone else to do this job.
"I'm certainly of the view that we've been blessed in New Zealand with a long list of amazing politicians, not all of which have held the top job, but we are all replaceable," Ms Ardern said.
Ms Ardern said she thinks that one day, her name will only be remembered by "some nerd of politics" and that it was more important for her to have done things and made changes which would be remembered.
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