Footage of a motorcyclist clipping the Green Party co-leader was captured during filming for the second season of The Spinoff’s Youth Wings series.
It’s March 25, 2023 and thousands of people have converged on Auckland’s Albert Park to protest the arrival of anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker. There are countless placards and banners and, as a Spinoff reporter detailed, a “wall of noise” intended to drown out the sound of Parker’s speech.
Nearby on Princes Street, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson meets with members of the Auckland University Young Greens ready to move into the park and join the protest. Davidson is one of a handful of politicians, largely from the Green Party, intending to attend the counter-protest; she will later address the large crowd that has gathered.
Meanwhile, a group of Brian Tamaki-aligned motorcyclists is moving along the street, revving their engines in a counter-protest of their own.
Davidson isn’t happy about it. “We’re fucking pedestrians,” she says, brandishing a “trans solidarity” sign as she tries to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing. She puts her hand out to try and slow the convoy of motorcyclists. “Fucking stop.”
They don’t stop. A motorcycle clips Davidson in the stomach, causing her to recoil and lower herself down onto the ground. As was reported at the time, a police complaint was laid by Davidson and the Green Party described the incident as “upsetting”.
“We are asking people to show care and love,” a party spokesperson told The Spinoff.
The moment the motorcyclist collided with Davidson was captured on camera during filming for The Spinoff’s Youth Wings series and has been released today for the first time. The footage shows Davidson in the moments after the incident. “I got hit,” she says. “I can’t believe he actually hit me.”
Speaking this week to The Spinoff’s politics podcast Gone by Lunchtime for a forthcoming episode, Davidson confirmed there had been progress in the police investigation into the incident. “A person associated with Destiny Church has been identified,” she said. “The next steps aren’t in public yet so I’ll allow that conversation to take place in the right way.”
More broadly, Davidson said she hoped to highlight the plight of the trans and rainbow community in the current heightened political environment. “These are people who have been discriminated, oppressed, systemically and violently abused. These are people who are actually disproportionately affected by family violence, sexual violence,” she said.
“The fact that we have got political players exploiting them to build hate for some clicks and for some votes is quite abhorrent to me. The Greens will always stand for those very groups of people who get systemically and daily abused and targeted.”
With Davidson at the time of the incident were University of Auckland Young Greens co-convenors Lily Chen, 22, and James Blackmore, 23 – the subjects of episode two of Youth Wings’ second season. In the episode, Chen says she is feeling “slightly anxious” ahead of the protest as she had never “been face-to-face with someone with such extreme ideologies”.
The pair were left shell-shocked by the motorcycle incident. “[Davidson was] clipped by an entire bike right in the stomach,” Blackmore says in the episode. Chen can’t believe what has happened. “I am feeling so angry but also so scared,” she tells the filmmakers moments after Davidson has been hit. “They were physically abusive. It’s quite an awful situation.” Chen says her initial reaction after witnessing the incident was to “flee home to safety”. But, she adds, “I know that being… present on the ground is so necessary for our trans whānau.”
Davidson remained at the protest for a while and then sought medical attention. In the aftermath of the incident, the documentary-makers provided the footage to the police.
Watch more episodes of Youth Wings here. Made with support from NZ On Air.