Auckland exercise echoes hostage drama

Police and other agencies are prepared to deal with any threats in this country. Photo / Natalie Slade

Aucklanders can be confident the measures Sydney has in place to deal with hostage or terrorism emergencies would be available here - but on a smaller scale, a senior police source says.

Speaking to the Herald last night as the hostage crisis in Sydney continued, the source said it "wouldn't be unexpected to think both countries train and plan together" for such incidents.

The military might be called in to bolster police efforts if there was an incident in the city, he said.

"Each nation's SAS will work closely with police special tactics groups," the source said.

"But the thing to remember is that as a constitutional principle, the military should not generally be used against a nation's own citizens, they are for combating external threats but would team up with police specialists if there was something like a hijacking as the threat has probably arrived from overseas."

He said the government would have to declare a state of emergency before the military could be deployed internally.

"This is why this sort of thing must be left up to the police who undergo similar training and selection criteria.

"Some differences might include police having a negotiation capacity, whereas the military are generally deployed in circumstances where negotiation isn't usually a common option."

New Zealand's emergency response to an incident similar to Sydney's played out two weeks ago with a large-scale counter-terrorism exercise beginning with a hostage siege in Auckland.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which co-ordinates the response to national security threats, said the exercise began with "something suspicious happening" in our biggest city.

It then devolved into a hostage situation, kicking off a response involving staff nationwide.

"There was in fact a hostage situation that was a fictional one ... and the police and military actually went ... to resolve that part of it," said chief Howard Broad, the department's chief executive security and intelligence.

The operation was co-ordinated from the National Crisis Management Centre in a bunker below the Beehive.