The crowd cheered, yelling, clapping, singing, most of them unmasked.
That's fine — if you want your "freedom and your lives" back, take yourselves off to a remote area of the country and you will be free to do as you please,
However, you are not entitled to put the rest of us at risk.
All it takes is one infectious person at that rally and life as we know it today is out the window.
People have been complaining that police didn't intervene. I think they made the right decision.
Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.
That would have played right into Tamaki's hand. He would be shouting from the roof now about his right to protest, even though he were breaking all the level 3 rules around gatherings, masks and social distancing.
Any police intervention would have certainly ended in violence.
It's ironic that people are protesting about restrictions because it's those very restrictions that have kept us safe
At the moment we are lucky enough not to be living in a country with hospitals and mortuaries full of Covid patients.
Now we have a vaccination, a far better way of ensuring we keep the virus away from our friends and families.
Sooner or later it's going to land in Hawke's Bay and as Napier Port CEO Todd Dawson points out in his Talking Point on page 9, New Zealand simply doesn't have the infrastructure in place to seamlessly move product along the supply chain without ports.
Think about the consequences of an outbreak that would close our port. That's what Tamaki should be thinking about. Ways to keep his congregation and everyone in New Zealand safe.
Not using Covid as a means of preaching and seeking attention.
