Nau mai haere mai — welcome to your weekly newsletter.

As anticipated, the public release of the report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attacks has begun a long process of improving New Zealand’s counter-terrorism and firearms licensing operations. Despite finding police and intelligence agencies made serious errors, the commission maintained the atrocity could probably still not have been prevented.

But, as Waikato University law expert Alexander Gillespie argues, the deeper problems lie in the absence of what the commission calls a “see something, say something” culture, and in a lack of social cohesion in general. Those things will be harder to fix.

Also this week, The Conversation launched the Oceans 21 series with profiles of each of the world’s ocean basins. Collectively, the global ocean takes up more than 90% of the excess heat from burning fossil fuels and a third of the additional carbon dioxide. It produces much of our oxygen, helps shape the winds that influence our weather, and provides food and income for millions.

Of course, that includes the Southern Ocean – those wild waters between New Zealand and Antarctica that are our planet’s primary storage of heat and carbon and home to wildlife found nowhere else.

There’s a lot more here and on our homepage, and thanks as ever for your support. Until next time, mā te wā and all the best.