Protesters were forced to dig a trench. Photo / Bryce Edwards
The Speaker of the House had sprinklers turned on overnight in an effort to clear the protesters outside Parliament as the occupation enters its fifth day.
Overnight, some protesters used road cones and their hands to dig trenches in the mud to try to divert water away from their campsites.
"Parliament is usually concerned with social engineering. But today thank's to Mallard, we've taken to civil engineering," tweeted one protester.
Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard had Parliament's lawn sprinklers turned on in the evening, to soak the lawn under the tents overnight.
"They're not legally on the ground, so there is no problem adding a little to their discomfort," he told 1News.
Protesters responded by placing cones on top of the sprinklers and put a call out through social media for any plumbers present in the crowd to assist them.
Meanwhile, MetService has issued a heavy rain warning for Wellington over the weekend as the remnants of Cyclone Dovi hit New Zealand.
MetService has forecast periods of heavy rain, with up to 200mm expected to accumulate until 3pm tomorrow.
The overall atmosphere in the capital was calmer yesterday than on Thursday, when 120 people were arrested in the protest over issues including vaccine mandates.
Some police were briefly seen carrying batons yesterday but Wellington District Commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell said officers had stopped doing so by early afternoon.
He said the officer in charge at the time made a misjudgment in terms of how they were reading the crowd and Parnell had ordered the batons be removed.
In a statement on Friday night police said there were no further arrests, but trying to engage with the leaders of the protest had been "ineffective" due to the "vast array of interest groups, and their conflicts with each other".
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