Sure, it's a shame the copscouldn't get stuck into these disgraceful individuals sooner but, hey, wasn't it great to finally see the batons and the boots flying.
Those pieces of excrement sure did get what was coming to them.
Now we can get back to the convivial state-approved types of protests that our politicians and media elite can really support.
You know, the kinds of protests that prove New Zealand is a truly progressive democracy and a team of five million.
A place where your point of view is heard and respected, so long as it's the prevailing one.
These are pretty interesting times. Times that I didn't think I'd live to see.
Times that make you feel as if you don't belong. Times when you wonder what kind of country we're becoming. Times when you wonder if sectarian violence is our future.
I wrote a few weeks back that I didn't really know what was being protested about at Parliament. And nor, actually, did I care.
Hamish Bidwell: "These are pretty interesting times .... times when you wonder if sectarian violence is our future''. Photo / NZME
But as someone who's never mustered much respect for authority, I at least admired the gesture.
What I haven't admired, though, is the portrayal of the people who did descend on Parliament. Nor have I respected the behaviour of our elected officials and media.
The media bit is particularly interesting to me, as a career-journalist.
Rightly or wrongly, a growing group of people don't trust the media anymore.
They don't trust the reporting out of Parliament, they don't trust what they've been told about Covid-19 and vaccines and they don't trust anyone to hold the government to account.
There's an establishment view that if you can't define what people are angry about or isolate it to a single issue, then it's proof that the angry people are just unhinged.
That they've been brainwashed by nefarious foreign agitators or are simply halfwits and weirdos living in the margins of society.
I think the bottom line here is the anger, not the issue, and the fact that it's unlikely to go away.
Far from ridding New Zealand of the problem, punting the protesters from Parliament is only going to radicalise more people.
The triumphant reaction to the end of the protest has troubled me. It's shown a real hatred towards rank and file folk that I'd assumed didn't exist here.
It has smacked of a "them and us" mentality violently at odds with the mantra of kindness and tolerance that's been sold to us.
I have been left sickened by the events in Wellington and confused. Confused at how everyone, on all sides, conducted themselves so poorly and confused about why people have celebrated seeing the cops cut a swathe through the protest group.
I've heard and read that the people who assembled at parliament were "not us''.
Well, I didn't think that condemning and, ultimately, clobbering people we disagreed with was actually us either.
