Steve Braunias: The persecution of Liz Gunn

Liz Gunn arrives at Manukau District Court with co-defendant Jonathan Clark. Photo / Michael Craig

OPINION

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? The slow, stupid, and what would seem to be quite unnecessary torture of the seemingly messianic Liz Gunn played out for much of Tuesday in a courtroom in the Manukau District Court. It was a long, strange day. It did not run to the expected narrative. Gunn and her supporters – they packed the courtroom, 68 of them filling every seat and needing more chairs brought in to watch justice unravel – emerged as righteous, as wronged. Up until 3.50pm, courtroom 7 told a story of the brutal hounding of Elizabeth Cooney, as Gunn’s name appeared on the charge sheet, a 64-year-old grandmother and conspiracy hobbyist.

She began the day facing three charges. But one of the charges was dismissed, and the remaining two seemed to be hanging on by a thread when Judge Forrest adjourned at 5pm, and called for the case to resume on Friday. It could not be sooner; she had other duties. It could not be later; police lawyer Jerome Beveridge said he had three weeks’ leave starting on Monday. A somewhat shambling youth who bit his nails as the day wore on, with his shirt untucked at the front and his peculiar cowlick lock of hair swiped this way and that on his forehead, it felt like his holiday could not start soon enough.

Liz Gunn arrives at Manukau District Court. Photo / Michael Craig

The case was about the events that occurred at the arrivals hall of Auckland International Airport in the early evening of February 25 last year. Gunn was there with Jonathan Clark in their roles as champions of the right not to submit to the Covid-19 vaccine. They were looking forward to welcoming an unvaccinated family arriving from Apia. They wanted to film them. She held a microphone, and he had a large camera strapped from his shoulder. The pair were approached by an airport security guard, who asked whether they had permission to record, and a few minutes later two police constables told them to leave. Gunn stood her ground. That is, she stood upright for 18 seconds until both she and Clark fell or were manhandled to the ground and arrested, with Gunn yelling bloody murder at the top of her voice. Weird scenes in the arrivals hall; even weirder, though, was that it ended up a year later in court. The pair were charged with trespass and resisting arrest. Weirdest of all, Gunn was charged with assault.

And so to their trial – of course they pleaded not guilty – at the Manukau District Court, in all likelihood the cleanest and most welcoming court in Auckland. It has an outdoor courtyard in the middle of it and the whole precinct feels bathed in natural light. So much of downtown Manukau is an architectural marvel, with beautiful buildings surrounded by lots of grass and pretty trees dropping their autumn leaves. It’s a vision of an orderly New Zealand that perhaps resonated with Gunn and the members of her political party, New Zealand Loyal, which yearns for an idea of a civil society where people can go about their business in safety, and express their ideas without fear of discrimination. The band of 68 at Manukau took along a New Zealand flag. Most were in their 60s or older. Most were European. They wore hats, caps and tremendous beards; one woman made inspired and creative use of a face mask. At first sight, it looked like she was wearing a bandage over a badly broken nose. In fact, she had snipped out the material that covered her face and nostrils. It made the face mask pointless, and that was her exact mocking point.

There was a preliminary hearing in a small upstairs courtroom at 9am. I spoke with Liz Gunn. She was a regal presence in a long silver skirt and a gold necklace over a black top. She said: “I’m not mad.” I spoke with the police lawyer. He refused to give his first name. His full name is Jerome Peter Beveridge. I spoke with the defence lawyer, Matthew Hague, who had flown up from his home in Wellington. He said he had only taken on the case two months ago after Gunn’s lawyer Jeremy Bioletti became too ill. At first, I wondered if that meant he would be unprepared. At the hearing, he rather hesitantly argued for the inclusion of a former police constable as an expert witness, to give a kind of commentary of CCTV film showing the way police applied force when arresting Gunn and Clark. Beveridge argued against it, pointing out that the man served in the police from 1980-1996 – that is, he was last a serving officer 28 years ago and in any case had only risen in the ranks to senior constable, which he said was the lowest rank of all. Did this really meet the threshold of an expert witness? But Judge Forrest, whose first name really is Janey, allowed it, saying she would take the man’s evidence on merit. Crucially, the trial is judge-alone: no consideration has to be given to a jury’s tender intellect.

The judge had been made aware a large crowd was wanting to watch the trial. She ordered that it be moved to a more spacious downstairs courtroom. Justice must be seen to be done, as must injustice.

The police called three witnesses, airport security co-ordinator Anna Kolodeznaya, and constables Erich Postlewaight and Robett Luong. They were the three who had issues that day in February with Gunn and Clark. Airport CCTV of the incident was played over and over on Tuesday. It was hard to really tell what was going on; the arrest was filmed very far away, and it was without sound. Later in the day, when Gunn gave evidence, she wondered out loud why it was that the airport supplied such blurry footage. She also wondered why, or so she claimed, that police only gave her defence the CCTV tapes three weeks ago, and returned Clark’s camera just two weeks ago. These were very reasonable wonderings and not for the first or last time on Tuesday it strengthened the idea held by Gunn and the crew of 68 that the power of the state was conspiring against her.

Liz Gunn arrives at Manukau District Court. Photo / Michael Craig

The defence chose to play Clark’s own footage, synced with sound. It gave a clearer picture of what happened that evening – in particular the circumstances of the arrest. Again, it strengthened a conviction of Gunn and her tremendously bearded retiree cohorts, that the authorities, in Alexander Pope’s famous line from his 1735 poem, were breaking a butterfly on a wheel, a metaphor for going to some extremes to crush the spirit of a minor irritant. Gunn cried watching the footage. The public gallery was clearly troubled watching it. It will surely bolster the support base of New Zealand Loyal.

“We got over 30,000 votes in just two months,” said a party member whom I spoke with during an adjournment, “but that’s not the real number.”

I asked, “What do you estimate the real number was?”

He said, “Closer to 200,000.”

I laughed, and my attention was diverted by a woman with a collection jar, raising money for Gunn and Clark’s legal expenses. This was in the afternoon break. It was pleasant to mingle with the crowd, for all their suspicion and outright resentment of the media. Sensitively, the judge offered the members of the press another exit from courtroom 14, to avoid the barbarian hordes, but there was no need, no problem. Everyone was very friendly. I wish I’d had a word with the fellow dressed in a friar’s long black robe.

The assault charge was made because Gunn had placed her hand on the arm of the airport security worker. The court was played film of this incident over and over, with and without sound. Her lawyer moved to have the charge dismissed and you could see, and hear, why. The staff member gave evidence and was asked how she would rate the level of pain from one to 10. She said: “Five.” This was the closest the public gallery got to pandemonium, but it could just as easily have caused uproarious laughter.

Hague, in cross-examination: “When she touched you, it was brief, wasn’t it? Less than a second?”

Witness: “Yes. It was short.”

Hague: “She didn’t close her fingers around your arm, did she?”

Witness: “It was a curved hand.”

Hague: “She didn’t squeeze?”

Witness: “No.”

The awesome power and resources of the state vs a curved hand. And so it was that Hague rose to inform the judge, “It is the court’s duty to stop the case.” He moved to dismiss the charges. The assault charge, he said, was “tenuous”, the degree of force was “minimal”.

In reply, though, police lawyer Jerome Beveridge pointed out that force does not require violence, and referred to a precedent where a man was convicted of assault for removing someone’s hat. “The degree to which force is applied goes to penalty,” he said, “not the charge itself.” He argued that the definition of assault was the intentional application of force. Judge Forrest agreed with him. She ruled that the assault charge had an evidential basis. “It was not,” she commented of the brief encounter in arrivals at Auckland International Airport, “a friendly exchange”. No one could deny that. In part, and this became more explicit when Gunn took the stand at 3.40pm, it seemed to be quite a repugnant exchange.

Airport bylaws permit filming, unless it’s commercial and for profit; TV crews, for example, need to obtain permission. CCTV footage played in court showed Gunn telling the security co-ordinator that the filming was not for commercial purposes. “We are just doing voluntary filming of friends,” she said.

The woman left and called the police to intervene. Constables Postlewaight and Luong showed up minutes later, and this is when things really spiralled out of control.

“Hi,” said Postlewaight.

“Hello,” said Gunn.

“We need you to leave,” he said.

Gunn replied, “What is the law? Can you please explain the law? What law have we breached?”

There is really nothing more said after that point. Clark moves closer to Gunn and Postlewaight with his camera. Postlewaight puts out his hand to shove the camera away. Luong pushes Clark back. Clark turns, and Luong pushes him harder. Gunn, watching, has little remnants of language to continue in her attempted conversation with Postlewaight. “What,” she says, as Clark is pushed away. “What,” she says, as Luong follows Clark. “What,” she says, as Clark seems to stumble and fall to the ground, and Luong seems to fall on top of him; by that time, Gunn, too, is on the ground, with Postlewaight on top of her. She screams. Luong is recorded telling Clark, “Get up.” Gunn screams again. Luong says again, “Get up.” Clark is pulled to his feet, and marched out of the airport, while Postlewaight marches Gunn out as well.

Luong was called as a witness, and told the court, “I held him on the ground to calm him down and to stop from running away.”

In cross-examination, Hague informed Luong that from the time Gunn was approached to the time they were held on the ground and placed under arrest, was all of 18 seconds. Later, he corrected himself: it was 17 seconds, he estimated. “Are you telling me,” he asked Luong, “that there was no more communication that could have been used to defuse the situation?”

He replied, “They were aggressive.”

Hague showed the film again, and asked, “That’s aggressive to you?”

He replied, “They were argumentative.”

Postlewaight was called as a witness, and told the court, “She started shoving a mic in my face and the guy started filming me.” He then arrested Gunn: “I lost my grip on her and that’s when she fell down. She started screaming and yelling, along the lines of … ah, I just don’t remember. Going on about something. Just yelling and screaming.”

In cross-examination, Hague brought up the 17 seconds from Postlewaight’s cheerful introduction (“Hi”) to Gunn’s arrest (“Just yelling and screaming”), and asked, “Was anything stopping you from taking the time to communicate and de-escalate things? There was nothing stopping you, was there?”

Postlewaight replied, “No.”

Judge Forrest dismissed the trespass charges against Gunn and Clark.

Even though the judge did not accept that the remaining charges – assault against Gunn, resisting arrest against both Gunn and Clark – ought to be dismissed, the feeling as the day wore on was that the case had swung the way of the defendants. Butterflies on a wheel, etc. (Gunn said in court that she suffered torn ligaments when she was arrested, and continued to be in pain: “I can’t do my own bra up.”) So what that she and Clark shared unpopular beliefs about the vaccine. So what their fan base appeared in court wearing T-shirts that read “Covid Is A Deadly Pandemic. It Killed Science and the Truth”, and that one T-shirt had a cartoon of someone asking, “What are the side effects of the vaccine?” and someone answering “World depopulation.” They’re free to think whatever they want and to grow their beards to whatever tremendous size they wish, just as Gunn and Clark were free (under the bylaws of Auckland airport) to film their friends on February 25, 2023.

But then, at 3.40pm, Hague opened for the defence and called his first witness: Liz Gunn.

Liz Gunn arrives at Manukau District Court. Photo / Michael Craig

You had to wonder what a jury would have made of her. She went on long and really quite LOUD monologues. She assumed command. She made speeches from some sort of imagined throne. “My whole life,” she shouted, “is to be humane!” God almighty. A lot of it was like a kind of re-enactment of the events of February 25. It seemed to me the trouble at Auckland Airport was the result of Gunn being Gunn, talking loudly, talking all over the staff member, getting right up into her face and then Postlewaight’s face, flinging her hands in their face, really taking it to them, hectoring, haranguing, a monologist, a total bore, a regal and overbearing monarch of some imagined kingdom – to encounter Liz Gunn in the wild is, in my opinion, to think oh please shut up.

“Unless the authorities show respect,” she lectured in courtroom 14, “they can run riot. They can run loose. The country will become feral!”

And: “We do this for a free New Zealand. If we have this kind of New Zealand where we don’t have freedoms, what kind of New Zealand is it?”

Also: “This is not the way we do things in New Zealand. This is not the New Zealand I grew up in. We don’t want New Zealand to be like this!”

New Zealand, always New Zealand; this fragile land, its precious freedoms in real jeopardy but for the interventions of Liz Gunn (“I will stand my ground and not be bullied!”) on behalf of the soul of New Zealand. But the CCTV film and her own comments in court in my opinion revealed the kind of New Zealand she believed in and it was repugnant, a nasty little vision of xenophobia and exclusiveness. She spoke as though charged with the responsibility of the kinds of New Zealanders she considered to be real Kiwis, true Kiwis.

It was there in her exchange with airport security co-ordinator Anna Kolodeznaya. Gunn said to the heavily accented woman, “Where are you from originally?”

Kolodeznaya: “It doesn’t matter.”

Gunn: “It matters to me.”

In between her encounter with Kolodeznaya and the arrival of the two constables, Gunn spoke with another airport staffer. Afterwards, she walked back to Clark and said: “He listened. He was a Kiwi. He was nice.”

She also made a comment about talking with another staff member at the airport who didn’t understand the way things are done in New Zealand. Gunn described as “a little Indian girl”.

“We don’t want New Zealand to be like this.” Right. “This is not the New Zealand I grew up in.” Uh-huh. “This is not the way we do things in New Zealand.” Sure.

The case resumes on Friday. It’s possible that the verdict might be reserved to a later date. A year on from the showdown at the arrivals hall at Auckland International Airport, justice awaits.