When the protesters leave, a new New Zealand will emerge
Change has started, more change is coming, and not much of it is due to the protesters. Kevin Norquay reports.
When Covid is a spiky speck in the rearview mirror, the grass at Parliament has regrown, the placards are gone and faeces are no longer flung, expect a new New Zealand.
Pre-Covid New Zealand is not coming back, and we’d best get our heads around that, says Massey University sociologist and professor Paul Spoonley.
It’s modified shape will not be determined by protesters, but by the way the majority of Kiwis adjust, says Spoonley, who specialises in social change and demography.
New Zealand will be different is one thing Spoonley, legal academics, MP David Seymour and protesters agree on. Another is that even more change will be needed.
‘‘For me, the key question is – is our thinking sufficiently innovative and inclusive when we deal with a post-Covid world? It’s such a different world. What do we need to address and who’s going to provide the innovative thinking that will help us navigate this new world?’’
Stay-at-home foreign tourists and the fully vaxxed have already started the reshaping, as international tourism falls away, and hospitality has not seen the hoped for bounce-back in drinkers and eaters as Covid restrictions lift.
Use of leisure time has changed, with the Covid-anxious changing their travel and dining behaviour, Spoonley tells the Sunday Star-Times from Cromwell.
Away from the oxygenabsorbing protest at Parliament, his tour of the South Island this week found vaccine mandate compliance to be surprisingly high.
‘‘We focus on the anti-vax politics and protests too much at times. It distorts what’s really happening in New Zealand,’’ he says. ‘‘We’ve started to see the arrival of an anti-government [movement]. That’s ramped up significantly, and that’s going to be a faultline in terms of our politics for quite some time.’’
He says what is really happening is a shift in dependence on tourism, with the primary sector – sheep and beef in particular – doing well, as other parts of the traditional economy battle.
‘‘What we’re noticing is that air travel – including the airports – are really a major source of infection. There are biosecurity or medical biosecurity risks inherent in international travel,’’ Spoonley says.
‘‘Tourism and all the industries that support it are facing a very different future. We had a mass tourism model with a lot of low-end tourists coming here.
‘‘Those sorts of policies are going to have to be re-thought. I’m not sure we’ve got our heads around what that future looks like, as sectors, as communities or as a country.’’
‘‘We certainly are politically challenged in terms of dealing with the degree of inequality that’s been confirmed by the pandemic.’’ Paul Spoonley
While Covid has accentuated how many New Zealanders feel disaffected, that is not a change created by the disease, nor is it the case in protests overseas.
There have always been disaffected members of society, American political scientist Joseph Uscinski told Rolling Stone magazine.
Between 5 and 7 per cent of the population are pre-disposed to believe a certain type of antiestablishment conspiracy theory.
When they go looking for it on the internet, they will find it every time, he says. It’s not a case of the internet persuading them, it’s more about their worldview.
‘‘The internet didn’t persuade them of some foreign idea. It gave them exactly what they already believed,’’ Uscinski said.
Spoonley is part of an international group looking at the toxicity of the online environment. Conclusion: the ‘‘politics of vitriol’’ is here to stay.
‘‘We have underestimated the online influences of QAnon and others in terms of mobilising opposition, in this case to vaccine mandates,’’ he says.
But several aspects of social issues facing New Zealand are not internet-related, he says.
‘‘For a time we were focused on social cohesion as a way of settling migrants to this country,’’ he says.
‘‘We did not address Treaty issues, in that original concept Ma¯ ori were completely excluded from it. And you can’t do that.
‘‘We certainly are politically challenged in terms of dealing with the degree of inequality that’s been confirmed by the pandemic.’’
Protester Brian Kelly has
some ideas around the way forward. Son of former Labour MP and High Commissioner to Canada Graham Kelly, the Auckland chiropractor calls for ‘‘heartcentred’’ leadership.
‘‘Strong leadership doesn’t come from a dictator and this situation needs a level of pragmatism,’’ Kelly says.
‘‘If the Parliament protesters were evicted, the protest would continue in other forms throughout the country.’’
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has refused to engage with the protest, calling out some behaviour as ‘‘absolutely disgraceful’’.
Ardern this week accused National Party leader Christopher Luxon as being ‘‘dangerously close to sympathy’’ for saying the country was divided over the Covid response.
Kelly told the Sunday StarTimes that Ardern was wrong.
‘‘Belittling protesters into one group is not only untrue, it strengthens their resolve as they know the comments are untrue.’’
Kelly spent last weekend at the protest, and considered the ‘‘wacko and fringe thinking’’ a small part of what he saw. He said the way forward was an end to vaccine mandates and passports ‘‘which have created so much division unnecessarily’’.
And he backed calls for a mandatory vaccine side effects register, as protesters claim there have been many ‘‘vaccine injured’’.
‘‘It is the only way to know how ‘safe’ [the vaccine] is. The absence of this confirms people’s suspicions that there is something to hide.’’
He said it seemed the obsession with the Covid death count was disproportionate ‘‘to the medicine being served’’.
ACT leader David Seymour, who has engaged with the protesters, as did former deputy prime minister Winston Peters, rues the ‘‘nastiness’’ in the debate.
‘‘One big lesson that is there already, is that we need to prepare for black swan events,’’ he says.
‘‘I have no doubt that our pandemic response will be vastly superior in five years’ time, just as Taiwan’s was after the various pandemics in the early 2000s.
‘‘New Zealand’s probably one of the better-prepared countries, but we’re always fighting the last war.’’
Seymour called for a Royal Commission into New Zealand’s pandemic response, as the National Party also wants.
Royal commissions reach further and dig deeper than Parliamentary select committees, and are free from party political control.
University of Waikato law professors Al Gillespie and Claire Breen have already said such a commission should be held. They say while most people have suffered, the burden has not been equally shared.
Among those who carried more of the load were Ma¯ori, women, children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and those affected by international border closures or access to vaccines and healthcare.
‘‘The entire legal framework surrounding the government’s response needs the scrutiny only a Royal Commission could provide,’’ they said.
‘‘Critical pieces of legislation curtailing personal rights and freedoms were rushed urgently through Parliament, arguably weakening existing democratic safeguards.’’