Kiwis have lost our freedom? Give me a break
The word ‘‘freedom’’ is on many people’s lips right now. When I think about freedom, I remember why my parents moved to New Zealand in the 1980s: to escape a country where bombings and riots were rife, where political opponents ‘‘disappeared’’, and where journalists were killed in broad daylight.
I think about the freedoms I’ve enjoyed throughout my life in Aotearoa. I’ve moved cities. I’ve joined groups. I’ve practiced faith. I’ve voted in free, fair elections. I’ve relied on the courts to protect me. As a journalist, I’ve challenged politicians on both sides of the House. Not once have I been silenced.
So I feel bemused as I wander around Wellington, trying to make sense of placards that are crying out for ‘‘freedom’’. Freedom from what, exactly?
The last time I checked, New Zealand was one of the most free countries in the world. In other states, protesters who trashed Parliament grounds would be tear-gassed, arrested or even shot. Here, police offered to arrange free parking. Doesn’t that tell us something about our freedom?
For those who have chosen not to be vaccinated, there’s no question that some of their freedoms have been curtailed to protect public health.
The law already restricts Kiwis’ freedom in a whole range of ways. The question is, are these new restrictions justified? Are they reasonable? Are they proportionate?
Vaccine mandates were introduced while we were fighting Delta, a variant that posed a major threat to our largely unvaccinated population. Models showed unvaccinated people were three times more likely to catch Covid, 20 times more likely to pass it on, and 25 times more likely to be hospitalised.
While Omicron is different, initial data suggests
Tunvaccinated Kiwis are about 27 times more likely to end up in hospital compared with those who are boosted.
But in some ways, all of this Covid stuff feels like a made-up scenario in a school exam, because New Zealand hasn’t experienced the death and devastation that other countries have seen.
Most Kiwis haven’t had to FaceTime loved ones who are lying in ICU units, struggling to breathe. We haven’t joined Zoom funerals for people who have been killed by this virus. Our healthy young people haven’t been crippled by the effects of Long Covid.
For two years, we have been hiding from a monster that we haven’t really seen. Perhaps that’s why some people – including the protesters – think the monster isn’t real. he members of Convoy 2022 claim their voices haven’t been heard. In fact, for many months, media have interviewed people who oppose mandates, from midwives to teachers. Back in December, the front page of this newspaper carried the face of an unvaccinated 21-year-old with the headline: ‘‘I feel like an outcast’’.
Now that our vaccination rates are high, do we need to have a conversation about whether mandates should continue? Sure. Is it reasonable to expect the Government to offer a timeline to remove them? Yes.
But when you scratch beneath the surface of this protest, you quickly discover that it is not just about unvaccinated people wanting to get their jobs back.
The majority of protesters aren’t just antimandate – they’re anti-Covid. At Parliament, one protester declared: ‘‘None of us are wearing masks or social distancing, and we’re all pretty healthy!’’ The crowd erupted into a massive cheer.
This protest is a middle finger to all public health advice – and the very idea that Covid should be taken seriously.
If protesters genuinely believed in Covid, they wouldn’t be describing it as a ‘‘scam’’. They wouldn’t be spitting at locals wearing masks. They wouldn’t be harassing pregnant MPs. They wouldn’t be intimidating schoolkids. And they certainly wouldn’t be sharing a portaloo with people who are openly advocating for violence against public figures.
This protest supports a much wider narrative that New Zealand is no longer a ‘‘free’’ country. Kiwis are being ‘‘oppressed’’ by ‘‘evil’’ leader ‘‘Jabcinda’’ and her ‘‘comrades’’, who use ‘‘fear’’ and ‘‘intimidation’’ to ‘‘control’’ citizens.
I’ve lifted these words straight from the protesters’ placards.
These are not fringe views. This language and rhetoric is now well-entrenched in pockets of our society. The evidence can be found across social media, including from senior business leaders on LinkedIn. Sailor Sir Russell Coutts, who plans to join the protest, has claimed New Zealand is a ‘‘dictatorship’’.
Expat Kiwi journalist Dan Wootton, a prominent voice in Britain, wrote in the Daily Mail that liberal leaders have used Covid ‘‘to oppress their people and steal their freedoms’’. There’s that word ‘‘oppress’’ again. He was referring to Jacinda Ardern, Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron.
Do these leaders really enjoy locking up their citizens and preventing them from contributing to the economy? Do they enjoy racking up huge debt, and having to pay welfare to families and
businesses? This logic would be comical, if its implications weren’t so serious.
I’m sure most of the Wellington protesters are good people. But many of them are also desperate and scared. When people are isolated, they gravitate towards other people who share their grievances – in this case, people who feel betrayed by authority and rejected by society.
Around this group of ordinary folk, there are nefarious forces at work. Well-known agitators continue to spread misinformation. They promote a narrative that the Government is against its own people and that Kiwis need to rise up and reclaim their rights, using whatever force or means is necessary.
Some of the protesters sound like they have swallowed a political science textbook. Depending on who you listen to, the Government is ‘‘authoritarian’’, ‘‘communist’’, ‘‘fascist’’ or ‘‘socialist’’. Protesters threaten to conduct ‘‘citizen’s arrests’’ on MPs, who they describe as ‘‘criminals’’ or ‘‘tyrants’’ working for foreign agents.
Does any of this sound Kiwi to you? Of course not. This imported rhetoric has filtered through online communities and into this group of disenfranchised folk.
Let’s call it for what it is. What we are witnessing here is the radicalisation of ordinary people – people who are becoming more extreme in their ideology, and in some cases, their behaviour.
Radicalisation doesn’t just happen to angry young men who spend too much time on the dark web. Here, radicalisation is taking place in broad daylight and no amount of guitar-strumming or bubble-blowing can mask that.
Even after this protest is over, it will only take a few individuals to blow on the embers to lead to violent outcomes. We have seen this overseas.
There’s no point labelling the protesters as ‘‘Nazis’’ or members of the ‘‘alt-Right’’. Instead, let’s call them what they are: hurting, scared people who are vulnerable to being misinformed and manipulated by those who seek to undermine our democracy.
Yes, go ahead and protest against vaccine mandates. Protests are part of a healthy democracy. But it’s another thing entirely to advance a false claim that the Government has a secret agenda to oppress and harm its own people. No matter what your political stripes are, that affects all of us.
Jacinda Ardern’s biggest challenge is not how to get the protesters to dismantle their tents. Her real challenge is how to bring many of those people back from their extreme beliefs – along with the thousands of Kiwis they represent.
This is not about Left or Right politics. It doesn’t matter which party is in government. It’s about how we protect the social fabric of our country.
We need to think about the deep social chasms that this protest has exposed. We need to learn how to disagree on policy issues without tearing down the institutions that we should trust to look after our collective interests.
Most importantly, we need to find a way to help the protesters understand that they are not ‘‘oppressed’’ or lacking freedom. In fact, they have power over their lives, and their choices matter.
Fortunately, most Kiwis know the truth: we are blessed with an abundance of freedom that millions around the world can only dream of.