The Bank of New Zealand ( BNZ ) branch on Willis Street in central Wellington quickly downs its shutters as a small group of protesters gathers on the sidewalk outside.
"The sooner New Zealanders give up their freedoms, the sooner we're going to get them back," a bearded middle-aged man bellows.
"Yeah, right," the crowd roars.
"If we can just keep the masses of New Zealand scared and under control, the best we can keep them safe," the man yells, pacing back and forth on the pavement.
"Yeah, right," the crowd answers.
This routine is repeated as speaker after speaker contributes to the theme of the day: the "mis-and disinformation campaign" run by the government on Covid-19.
The protesters, who bore the brunt of the police crackdown that ended their 23-day siege of Parliament in March, have re-surfaced.
This time around, they are following a different strategy. Rather than amassing at a single point, the protesters have been gathering at various locations throughout the CBD as part of a two-week campaign to draw public attention to what they call the government's misleading messaging and faulty policies around Covid-19.
The Willis Street protest was Day 8 of this 14-day campaign.
With the vaccine mandates largely lifted, the protest has shifted its focus to the perceived harmful effects and fatalities associated with taking the jab. There is also strong opposition to the Covid-19 legislation brought by the government driving the protest. They see the NZ Covid-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 as a coercive piece of legislation.
Joachim Wanihi, 46, who played a key role during the Parliament occupation, points to the wide-ranging powers granted to inspectors after the post-April 4 changes to the legislation came into effect. Presently, inspectors are still authorised to enter a premise without a warrant.
"This means businesses are locked into an agreement of conduct by force, not by choice," Wanihi argues.
While the process of revoking the vaccine mandates is underway, there are questions around feasibility and fairness, with Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood saying those who lost their jobs for failing the vaccine mandates are not guaranteed to get their jobs back.
Clearly, the aftermath of the vaccine mandates wind-down is spawning confusion regarding the rules. The protesters are seeing an opportunity to regroup and are tweaking their agenda accordingly.
The anti-vaccine mandate protest that raged on the Parliament grounds
in March appears to have morphed into an anti-vaccine stir instead, with an ideological shift away from mandates to raising questions about the politics behind the government's Covid-19 policy, the science behind vaccinations and against the mandate of the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the global authority on public health.
But this protest is nowhere close to gaining the traction witnessed in March when NZ held the world's attention for three tumultuous weeks
ISSUE
Leave a Comment