"I have no idea whether we're going to get anything like that, but we've got to be prepared for it. We can't be caught in a way that we've been caught now by an extreme, white supremacist who was able to access firearms"
Australian man Brandon Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder and is accused of the worst massacre in New Zealand history.
Spoonley said there was a tendency in New Zealand in the last 10 to 15 years to see Muslim terrorism "as the primary and perhaps the only threat that we should consider".
But attacks on Friday "does end our innocence on these sorts of things", he said.
Tarrant was originally from Grafton in New South Wales but moved to Dunedin about two years ago.
He allegedly shot and killed 50 people in two mosques in a rampage that he filmed and livestreamed on Facebook.
"I'd be very surprised personally if he came across and spent two years in New Zealand without talking to some of the white supremacists either in Christchurch or in Dunedin," Spoonley said.
He said white supremacists have been around in New Zealand "for a very long time".
Spoonley looked at more than 70 extreme right-wing groups in the 1980s, and Christchurch was the epicentre at the time.
"Those groups and those individuals haven't gone away," he said.
They were a mixture of skinheads, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups - some traditional in their ideology with strong underpinning of anti-Semitism and a belief in the supremacy of the "British race", Spoonley said, and others wanting separatism to keep "white race pure".
"Last year there was a series of incidents, one involved a pig's head in a mosque by the neo-Nazis," he said.
"From time to time there are incidents involving these white-supremacist groups in Christchurch which are effectively an attack on religious and ethnic minorities."
There had also been violence and killings, Spoonley noted.
In 1989, an innocent bystander, Wayne Motz, was shot by a skinhead in Christchurch, who then walked to a local police kiosk and shot himself. When he was buried, pictures showed his friends giving Nazi salutes by the graveside.
A Korean backpacker and a gay man have also been killed for ideological reasons.
"They are in Christchurch, but they are also in Invercargill, Dunedin, Westport and Nelson," he said.
Spoonley said white supremacists posed a "huge threat" to New Zealand societies and destabilised community relations.
Friday's mosque attacks had completely changed the way "in which we see ourselves" and "the way being seen internationally", he said.
"People are hearing about white supremacy, extreme right, terrorist attacks in New Zealand that they would never have associated New Zealand with," Spoonley said.
"We shouldn't ignore it, we should talk about the consequences and how we put life back on track for ourselves and our communities."
Spoonley said public and political opinion "are focused elsewhere" and did not think enough resources had been put into monitoring the white supremacist groups.
"Over many years, I have said publicly through the media, I have talked to officials, I have talked about these things in public speeches," he said.
"I'm listened to, but I'm listened to politely and I wonder whether or not people go away and say 'I'm not aware of these groups in my community' and 'I don't think they're an issue'."
Spoonley said he had been told by Muslim communities that they had talked to government agencies about their concerns, but hadn't had a satisfactory response.
"We've got to end that now," he said.
"Whatever the circumstances, we have got to act as a community to make sure these people are not being targeted and their lives made difficult."
