The grief for those injured and killed, including children, remains palpable as Australians come to grips with the fact that a native of our country was the alleged perpetrator of such a callous, inhuman level of violence. 

In the days that followed, politicians and police in Australia grappled to find the right words.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told her people they were "united in their grief" and assured them the true character of their nation was the response rather than the attack itself. 

The border between our two nations has temporarily been replaced with an empathy and a shared horror at what has reached our relatively isolated corner of the world. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said perpetrators of this type "don't deserve names".

 "Names imply some sort of humanity and I struggle to see how anyone who would engage in this sort of hate and violence is human," he said. 

"That sort of hateful thinking has just reaped murder and misery on a peaceful people just going about their practice of faith on a Friday."

Our nation can feel isolated, and therefore protected from the atrocities that happen across the seas. Until Friday afternoon, New Zealanders likely felt the same way.  

"Not only are New Zealanders our close friends and often family, but we share the same proud values of freedom, diversity and democracy," NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Saturday.

"An attack on one section of the community is an attack on us all."

Others, including Senator Fraser Anning, have been slapped down comprehensively by all sides of politics after attempting to widen the cracks and divisions that apparently motivated the misguided perpetrators to forego mercy and basic humanity. 

"Australians will be utterly ashamed of this racist man," British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said of Mr Anning.

"In no way does he represent our Australian friends."

The dog-whistles that have shifted into our public discourse, both national and international, do little to bring people together in anything but opposition to others.

Nothing that happens now can undo the horrors of Friday or the loss of those families whose loved ones were in solemn prayer at Masjid Al Noor and Linwood.

All we can decide is the legacy of these horrors.

To put it plainly, we must choose whether these horrors divide us further or our shared revulsion that someone could commit them draws us closer. 

Surely it is best to remember the victims first, and the perpetrator only as a misguided and cautionary vision of what emphasising difference and division over similarity and solidarity reaps. 

Australians certainly have more in common with those killed in New Zealand than the native of this country who allegedly pulled the trigger. Offering a fair go for all is how we can prove that daily.