Cabinet plans to erect parliamentary fence, as protest lingers
How free is New Zealand, and will the scars of Covid mend? Kevin Norquay reports.
When the protesting cries for freedom die away, one legacy will be fewer freedoms, in the form of a security fence to restrict access to Parliament’s grounds.
The anti-mandate protest of the past two weeks has damaged the grounds. Beneath signs calling for freedom and proclaiming ‘‘We’re here for all New Zealand’’, the lawns of Parliament have been turned into a bustling campsite, then mud.
Cabinet is set to soon consider and approve the building of a fence encompassing the entire parliamentary complex, well-placed sources told the Sunday Star-Times.
Public access to the gardens – a tourist attraction and favoured commuter walkway – will be dramatically curtailed, in a move akin to tightened airport security after the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks in New York, or spectator fencing at world football stadiums.
The fence will be a monument to a troubled period, in which Government policies designed to fight the Covid pandemic also stranded Kiwis overseas, cost the unvaccinated their jobs, hurt business, and created stress, division and anger.
But the Covid battle does not signal permanent restriction of personal freedoms, or creeping Government control of day-today life, say legal experts, ACT party leader David Seymour, and Council for Civil Liberties chairman Thomas Beagle.
When the Covid threat is gone, legislation used to fight it will expire, they say.
In the latest Cato Human Freedom Index, New Zealand trails only Switzerland, with Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Canada and Finland next in line. It is based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom.
University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis predicts the public mindset will be the main thing stopping New Zealand returning to its pre-pandemic state.
‘‘How comfortable will people feel in going out, especially into large crowds?’’ he asks.
‘‘Under current settings there’s significant reluctance to do the things we’re still allowed to do, such as go out for dinner, or invite unvaxxed relatives to family gatherings.
‘‘So, legal controls may actually be less long-lasting than are our changed comfortableness about doing things that we used to.’’
Nor does Beagle, chair of the watchdog for rights and freedoms in New Zealand, fear Government powers being extended.
‘‘The only prediction I’m going to make is that I suspect that face masks are going to be a lot more popular than they were in the past for people with colds or other communicable diseases,’’ he says.
‘‘I feel confident that the New Zealand Government will be glad to let the Covid-19 emergency powers lapse when they can.
‘‘I don’t really see anything in there that they’d want to keep – no-one is that excited by QR codes, contact tracing, special subsidies for people off work due to isolating, and so on.
‘‘One of the big problems with the Covid-19 conspiracy theories is simply ‘But why would anyone want to do this’?’’
New Zealand’s reaction to the pandemic was similar to that of other countries, with short periods of comparatively very strict regulation, followed by lengthy periods of comparatively very relaxed regulation.
And it has been tolerant of dissent around what should be done, Beagle says.
‘‘While the measures taken to control the Covid-19 pandemic have at times been very strong, I don’t think they compare to the measures taken during the 1951 waterfront dispute,’’ he says.
‘‘The Government of the time prohibited meetings, seized union funds, and deployed the armed forces to replace workers.
‘‘It was illegal to report favourably about the strike, and something that still shocks me on hearing it today, it was illegal to provide food and other support to dockworkers and their children. ‘‘There is no doubt that at the moment we can still say what we want about the pandemic and the policies put in place by the Government. And as the protest in Wellington shows us, we can still loudly proclaim that we disagree with those policies and call for political change.’’ As for protests overseas; Canada is gridlocked by them. Truckers and supporters demanding an end to coronavirus restrictions have set up border blockades and occupied a residential area in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked emergency legislation allowing bank accounts to be frozen, and forcing tow truck drivers to tow protest vehicles.
Waikato University law professor Al Gillespie hoped New Zealand MPs never saw the need to take similar action.
Legislation used to enforce Covid regulations over the past two years had existed before the pandemic, he says. It was not purpose built.
‘‘Canada is at a point where it’s almost becoming a threat to national security, that they’re willing to bypass civil liberties,’’ he says.
‘‘New Zealanders have one of the most liberal countries in the world. We are one of the countries where we have many more freedoms than most other people can even comprehend.
‘‘In times of non-emergency, or nonpandemic, we are excellent. But the problem is that when you go into a situation of emergency or pandemic . . . then you will find that all the liberties that you take for granted will be shrunk right down, for the common good.’’
Previous generations of Kiwis lived through restrictions imposed in two world wars, and the Spanish flu.
‘‘They’ve gone through some pretty heavy things. Our generation, we’ve had more or less 70 years of just peace, then something’s happened. We’ve had to revert to the kind of restrictions older generations would have been familiar with.
‘‘The restrictions should only last one minute longer than they’re necessary. As soon as they’re not justified, take them off the books.’’
There are those who say they are not justified now, calling for the dismantling of MIQ and an end to vaccine mandates, which have removed many from their families and livelihoods. Those calls are at the centre of the protests. Both sides are calling for ‘‘freedom’’.
‘‘They’re looking at different sides of the equation,’’ Gillespie says.
‘‘One side of common good is protecting individual rights, and the other side of the common good is protecting the health of the population from a disease.
‘‘The importance of protest is critical. And so long as it’s orderly and peaceful then we should be as tolerant as we can be of it. The problem is when it’s not peaceful and not orderly . . . we need to have zero tolerance for death threats.’’
ACT leader Seymour has been disturbed both by the nastiness of the debate, and by how willing people have been to abandon democratic scrutiny of the Government’s Covid decisions.
‘‘We’ve had quite a long period where the Government was basically making rules with no democratic scrutiny, where Parliament was shut for a couple of months.
‘‘It is really quite worrying, we should be really concerned about it. The last two years can only be negative for a free and democratic society.’’
He would like an examination of how much the Government spent fighting Covid. Omicron is predicted to kill between 500 and 1300 people, ‘‘yet we continue to have the border closed, have highly restrictive isolation criteria which are almost like a lockdown’’.
‘‘We don’t make the same sacrifices when it comes to fixing unsafe passages of road. We don’t make the same calculations when it comes to funding cancer drugs. We say sorry, we can’t afford this.
‘‘I guess it comes down to the group psychology of what’s happened in the last couple of years ... it’s made us behave irrationally.’’
‘‘One of the big problems with the Covid-19 conspiracy theories is simply ‘But why would anyone want to do this’?’’ Thomas Beagle Council for Civil Liberties chairman