Diana Wichtel on Freedom campers: Even when outcomes can be measured in lives saved, you can't please everyone

Rain, but no regrets. The Freedom protest in Wellington. Photo / George Heard

Opinion

Freedom. According to the song, it's just another word for nothing left to lose. What does it mean when the stakes are higher? For me, freedom means I wouldn't live in a country you can't leave when you want to or where you can't protest. A country where you are a prisoner, not a citizen.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we can leave. Getting back in, not so much. A steady, cautious, inevitably imperfect plan for opening the borders to New Zealanders and the world is set to begin at the end of February. Freedom. It will no doubt come at a price.
Steady, cautious, imperfect: this approach to the mayhem unleashed by Covid-19 has worked out so far, by comparison with … anywhere. Here, Omicron is faced by an admirably vaccinated population. I'm proud of us for having the ability to imagine what "let it rip" might look like for vulnerable people, front-line medical workers, businesses, and schools.

Even when outcomes can be measured in lives saved, you can't please everyone.

At time of writing, the approach deployed to deal with the "freedom convoy" who have set up camp on the grounds of Parliament mirrors the nation's Covid strategy, writ smaller and more muddied: steady, cautious and, for many put-upon Wellingtonians, maddeningly slow.

In other places, protesters might face water cannons or rubber bullets. Here, despite cries of police brutality from the wilder corners of social media, it has been water sprinklers and Barry Manilow. In solidarity with Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard's pitiless playlist, one-hit wonder James Blunt, who has made a side hustle out of not taking himself remotely seriously, tweeted, "Give me a shout if this doesn't work." Mallard duly unleashed You're Beautiful. In a tripartite salvo of retaliatory cruelty, protesters signed Mallard up to the National Party, The Act Party and Pornhub.

You have to love this country. The response to massive disruption in Wellington has included organising portaloos and free parking for protestors if they will move their vehicles. There have been some arrests, a strategy, in the expert parlance of security analyst Paul Buchanan, that involves "selectively going after the A-holes".

The protesters just want to be heard, say some. In fact, in demanding the removal of not just vaccine mandates but of all restrictions mid-Omicron, they demand to dictate New Zealand's Covid response. That's not freedom or democracy.

And they are being heard. A clip of "vaccine-free" protester Anne Looney's views went viral. "I'm leaving my husband. He's got the booster today. He's gone. I don't want anything to do with him," she announced. "I honestly seriously believe he's going to die," she said, adding briskly, "That's getting off-topic." It was a metaphorical moment for a movement that remains, when it comes to facts, stubbornly off-topic. In deeply uncertain times, Ms Looney is scarily certain. It was later reported that her husband is 88 and a polio survivor.

This is a working-class movement, sneered at by liberal elites, say some of the liberal elites. Others have noted that such movement leaders as have been visible, including Brian Tamaki, broadcaster Liz Gunn and lawyer Sue Grey, don't appear to be on struggle street. You can't but think of de-elected Donald Trump, calling on his followers to march on the Capitol. They thought he would be by their side. He threw them under the bus, counting on his privilege to protect him from consequences.

Many among the protesters are, no doubt, normal people who have been tragically misled. Now they find themselves in association with people who spit at children in masks, write slogans about "Jewcinda" and call for the murder of politicians, health officials and reporters. That's not "normal" or peaceful protest.

What to do? Anyone who thinks there are easy answers to competing rights and freedoms isn't thinking. Perhaps for once Mallard spoke for a lot of us when he told the Herald, speaking of Barry Manilow and recent events, "I've been thinking a little bit about what I think about what I think." Indeed. I hope vaccine mandates will disappear as soon as the punishing progress of the virus, beyond the power of any politician or all the media in the world to control, allows. In the meantime, steady, cautious, and imperfect is all anyone's really got.