February 12 2022
There was a record 454 new cases of Covid-19 in the community today with 27 people now in hospital as Omicron continues to surge.
As with Covid-19 itself, the large protests over issues such as vaccinations and vaccination mandates have come later to New Zealand than they did to many other countries.
There are shades of the example being set overseas in New Zealand's local version, most notably with the Canada protests. The protestersat Parliament this week have not earned much public sympathy or done themselves any favours by issuing threats and abuse to anyone not within their cluster.
But it is one of the most diverse protest groups ever seen at Parliament: Young, middle-aged and old, Māori, Pākehā, Asian, hippies, gang members, church groups, stoners, naked and clothed.
Even the dogs were diverse: Spaniels, chihuahua, mutts, terriers, working dogs. Someone painted a swastika on the statue of Seddon, someone else immediately washed it off. A red smudge is all that remains.
By contrast, rarely has there been such homogeneity in the response to a protest from those in the House.
Everybody wanted to be seen to believe in the right to protest – but not at the risk of being painted as standing for the great unvaccinated.
The only vague spluttering of support for what the protesters stand for came from the direction of NZ First leader Winston Peters. In this, it may be no coincidence that 5 per cent of people remain unvaccinated and it takes 5 per cent support for a political party to enter Parliament. But Peters at least has the courage to speak.
Other than Speaker Trevor Mallard, who has been keeping a close eye on proceedings, current MPs have peeked out at the protest from behind the windows at Parliament.
Only one has been seen daring to look at the protest in person – and that was from the safety of the Speaker's balcony, next to the media. It was National MP Simon Bridges, who said he would have to talk about the protest in the media the next day so he wanted to get at least some idea of its feel.
Protests, especially longer ones, tend to get an ebb and flow about them. In this instance, there have been short bursts of heat as the police move in, followed by long periods of an almost festival-like atmosphere. There has been music, mostly songs with references to freedom in them.
Protesters outside Parliament during the Convoy 2022 protests. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Early yesterday morning, there was a yoga session. There were queues outside the portaloos and the popcorn tent.
But every single political leader in the place took the same stand: They did not agree with the protesters, they were preaching anti-vaxxer messages, taking things too far.
For the opposition parties, that is borne from a fear of being painted as anti-vax.
It is an unfortunate consequence of these fevered times that raising any debate around issues such as the vaccine mandates or the vaccine pass system has tended to get conflated with being "anti-vax".
None of the political parties is anti-vax, but they have been spooked because there appears to be little room for nuance in that debate these days.
For the Government, it is because it knows the vast majority of New Zealanders – the vaccinated ones – are on the Government's side here. The unvaccinated are easily blamed for being the reason we have to hold onto restrictions – and for spreading the virus.
However, it ill behoves any Government not to filter through the concerns being raised by people who are angry enough to camp outside Parliament and to assess whether any of the questions they raise deserve an answer. By Friday, the various messages of the protest placards were distilled a bit.
Numerous posters said if the Government ditched vaccine mandates, the protesters would leave.
Most New Zealanders would not agree with the merits of the claims made by those on the front lawn of Parliament, or some of the so-called "facts" they are presenting on vaccines.
But they do raise questions that should and need to be addressed by the Government.
Those questions are not whether vaccinations are good or work. They are and do.
The question that does need answering is about how long separate rules for the vaccinated and unvaccinated need to apply and how long mandates need to apply across the vast number of workforces they currently affect: Almost half of all workers.
Act leader David Seymour has now repeated his call for workplace mandates to be replaced by a system that allows unvaccinated workers to instead undergo regular testing.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon has also raised the need to consider the mandates, saying the Government should start to give people some idea of what it would take to be able to start phasing out vaccine mandates.
He wisely did not go so far as to put a date or criteria on it himself. Luxon was caught out early by questioning why Auckland was initially put at the red under the traffic light system after its lockdown, when on paper it should be at green.
At least he's a quick study when it comes to haphazard promises.
There is a distinction between the mandates and the vaccination passes. It is unlikely mandates for core groups such as border and health workers will go any time soon. But while vaccination passes are in use, mandates also effectively apply to hospitality and other workplaces.
The Prime Minister has said little about timeframes or how those will be wound back. At first, that was because stating it would be temporary could meant people simply waited it out rather than get vaccinated. At 95 per cent vaccination rates, that argument no longer applies.
The PM has also learned about making haphazard promises.
She promised the summer of festivals. We did have a month of relative freedom but Omicron arrived before the vast majority of those festivals and they have now all been cancelled.
She also said, just before Delta arrived, that she did not want to use vaccine passes.
Breaking all of these promises has been justifiable – Covid-19 has forced it.
But she has also promised that at some point, we will get to the point when the vaccinated and unvaccinated are treated the same again.
That promise is in the green light setting of the traffic light system.
It is a setting that looks increasingly like some mythical land, far, far away, despite our high vaccination levels. We are now almost 95 per cent vaccinated.
Ardern might not yet be in a position where she can safely answer the question about the green land – but those people outside Parliament and the rest of us do deserve an answer at some point.
