Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan.
Weekly column by Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan.
Last Thursday, I had to take my son to Wellington for an overdue elective surgery.
On arrival he had a RAT test in the car before being allowed to enter the hospital to progress his surgery. I had to wait in the carpark. As it turned out it was a longer wait than planned due, I understand, to the hospital being understaffed.
This personal experience brought to mind a key outcome of the Covid vaccination strategy of the Government. Double jab and a booster to reduce the number having to be hospitalised and needing ICU beds.
With the inevitability of hospital staff getting sick combined with the rapid spread of Omicron it was clear our hospitals and the health system would not be able to cope, resulting in a systemic collapse. If that happened all those others, like my son, waiting for a range of health services, including elective surgeries, would suffer long delays.
For some the delay would be life-threatening. Why has it been difficult for some, especially those bent on undermining the vaccination process, to understand the simple rationale and common-good morality of this strategy?
Going through Wellington, just a day after the remnant violent rump of the protest were biffed out of Parliament grounds by the police, was an interesting experience.
Coming into Wellington down the narrow Ngauranga Gorge we were greeted by the full sun on an absolutely dead calm harbour. The sea was like glass. It set the tone but not the realisation.
It was when we were heading back home after the surgery I realised what I was feeling. Yes, there was the fatherly relief of knowing my son had had his surgery. There was appreciation that the medically semi-doped son was proving to be exceptionally good company.
There was something else. There was a lightness, a feeling of being freed. I had not ventured into Wellington anytime during the 23-day occupation of Parliament grounds. Mainstream and social media had shaped my perceptions.
It was not just the removal of the protesters that impacted me. It was the removal of the impact some of the protesters had on not just Wellington City but on the nation's capital.
A few years ago a clever man had identified Wellington as a tale of two cities. There is the municipal identity framed by the Wellington City Council and there is Wellington, the Capital City of the country, symbolised by Parliament and national institutions like the Court of Appeal and the National Library.
There was the attempted siege of Parliament. Then the Wellington Cenotaph War Memorial was not only defaced but a makeshift bathroom was built alongside. The organiser of a charitable trust looking after war veterans said this desecration of "a sacred place for veterans" was a slap in the face.
Since 1995, I have attended every Anzac Day commemoration in Kāpiti as a journalist, then as a councillor and mayor. It's one of the most moving ceremonial commitment by veterans, children and our communities to the values of freedom and the sacrifice of lives to defend those values. Why would you think defacing this sacred symbol somehow helps your demand for freedom?
Then you have the Chief Justice of NZ, Dame Helen Winkelmann, responding to protesters blocking both the High Court and the Appeal Court.
"Functioning courts are critical to the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of human rights," she said.
Add to that the arson attempt at the heritage Old Government Building housing the Victoria University law school. The Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, had, in an agonising statement, tried to get across the civilising notion that human rights is a fine balancing act between competing rights. What the protesters finally did was not a fine balancing act. To assert their rights they trampled on the rights of others.
There will be attempts to calculate the cost of the protest. The economic cost to surrounding businesses, the cost of cleaning up the site and restoring amenities, the cost of security in Parliament and policing, the cost of school closures including the law faculty.
Wellington City supports a public administration and safety sector worth $4.2 billion and a professional and technical sector that supports the government worth another $4 billion.
Of the estimated 50,000 civil servants employed across the country 70 per cent are employed in Wellington. Just over 10,000 commuters from Kāpiti work in Wellington. How do you identify and measure the negative impact the protestors have had on these?
But some costs like the psychological trampling of the symbols of national unity and values cannot be measured. May we never be trampled like this again.