Protesters only strung themselves up, not our MPs
OPINION: It was hard to imagine any other conclusion last week, given how polarising the protest at Parliament had become, and given how provocative the actions of some protesters had been for weeks on end. Having come this far, the protesters couldn’t back down and go home of their own volition, emptyhanded.
In the end, their shapeless anger met organised force head on and unsurprisingly, they lost that contest.
For all the talk on camera about it being unreal that such scenes were happening here, it also seemed naive to think that they wouldn’t happen here.
With the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, some armchair critics have since blamed the police for not intervening on day one to stop the protesters from setting up camp. Such action would have been premature, and intolerable. An early police onslaught would have confirmed and promoted the protesters’ core fantasy, that the government is a jackbooted tyranny.
It required the 23 days of chaos to ultimately give the police a strong public mandate for their final operation. Ironically, some within the encampment had expressed a desire to hang some politicians – yet, given enough rope, they managed to hang themselves, at least in the court of public opinion.
Since then, Speaker Trevor Mallard has put forward another tone-deaf idea. He has suggested a security wall be built around Parliament, to prevent anything similar from happening again.
By doing so, New Zealand would sacrifice what is uniquely open and accessible about our parliamentary precinct. Mallard’s idea was overkill. After all, Parliament itself had continued to function largely as before, behind its own wall of police protection.
In reality, what had disrupted public access and business activity in the surrounding areas had been the weaponising of cars and vans as tools of obstruction.
Over the coming months, Mallard would be better advised to create (with police help) a procedure for the speedy removal of obstructive vehicles.
Basically, the public want to see the grounds of Parliament restored, not put off limits to them and their families for good.
Moreover, if autocrats like Mallard do build their wall, any future protest of any sort would be very lucky indeed to get through the gates of Parliament.
Yes, these protests were different.
The notion that protesters should make their point and go home is an admirable, but somewhat middle-class notion. It allows people to protest when their values are infringed upon, but expects them to resume their reasonably comfortable lives once the protest march is over.
Without excusing the protesters’ actions in any way, it is different when the sense of being ignored is intergenerational, and where the relative lack of opportunity is officially lamented, but remains in place as if it were the natural order of things.
For such people, Covid has sharpened their sense of being shut out of society’s reward systems.
This feeling preceded vaccine mandates.
Last week, a nihilistic rage was being directed at the police, who did not create our social settings, but who are society’s most visible gatekeepers.
Some protesters may have left their tents and belongings on the lawns of Parliament, but many will have taken their rage home with them.