Police watching the protesters at the anti-mandate protest and occupation at Parliament, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Police watching the protesters at the anti-mandate protest and occupation at Parliament, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION
For its own sake, the Government needs to find a way to end this parliamentary protest quickly.
Sympathy for the protestors is already far higher than many thought. According to a Horizon poll, one in three Kiwis support the protest.
It's possible that support could yet grow.
Already thenarrative on this protest has shifted fast. What last week looked like a rabble of far-right troublemakers, this week looks like a hippie campground of ordinary Kiwis forced out of their jobs by government rules.
Day 10 of the anti-mandate protests at Parliament in Wellington. Photo / George Heard
Sailing icon Sir Russell Coutts is now planning to visit. That could only add credibility to the movement and gain even more popular support.
That's especially risky for Labour given the public is more split on mandates than first appeared. It was previously thought that support for mandates sat at around 64 per cent. But drill down and it gets more complicated. When asked by reputable polling company Curia if they supported employers firing staff who don't want to take the jab, Kiwis were split: 39 per cent support, 38 per cent oppose, and the rest unsure. The Government should be worried by that. Labour's policy of forcing Kiwis out of work because they refuse the vaccine is not as popular as previously thought.
This protest risks getting very uncomfortable for Labour. They need to fix it.
For a start, they should immediately stop demonising the crowd. Jacinda Ardern has written the protest off as "imported", Trevor Mallard has labelled them "the biggest collection of ferals that I've seen", and Michael Wood described the crowd as a "river of filth".
People aren't swallowing those lines so easily now. Too many counter-narratives are emerging. We're hearing too many stories of former cops, midwives and defence force staff joining the protest out of frustration. Those people are not ferals. They're ordinary, front-line, valuable Kiwis. Too many double-jabbed New Zealanders are voicing support or showing up. Too many local businesses are offering food and assistance out of sheer frustration at two years of government restrictions.
If the Government continues to punch down on those Kiwis by calling them names, they run the risk of becoming the bully. They also make it much harder to open any dialogue with them. It'll be hard to justify sitting down to talk to people you've written off as unworthy.
And, frankly, opening dialogue may be the only way out of this impasse. After Mallard's epic fail with the sprinklers and Barry Manilow, he's only entrenched that protest. Clearly the police cannot tow the cars.
The Government does not have any leverage here to make demands. The only people with leverage are the protestors.
Everyone is telling the Government to sort this out – from former lead police negotiator Lance Burdett to the owner of the local Backbencher pub who just wants the cars moved so he can get back to business. Only one party is refusing to sit down to talk and that's the Government. What looked principled last week, is starting to look stubborn this week. Unless they find a way to solve this, they might be the ones copping the blame for ongoing disruption to business.
The longer this protest goes on, the more it will drive the mandate debate into the mainstream. Already, the vaccination mandates are now being openly questioned. That wasn't the case last week.
Day 10 of the anti-mandate protests at Parliament in Wellington. Photo / George Heard
We are now – rightly – asking whether it's right to excommunicate people when an astoundingly high 94 per cent of us are double-jabbed. Our jab rates in metro-Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury are 98 per cent. Omicron is widely accepted as mild. An October Lancet study found the risk of catching Covid from an unjabbed household contact is virtually identical to the risk of catching Covid from a jabbed household contact.
