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A woman sits in front of police before they moved in to evict protesters in parliament grounds, February 10, 2022 (Photo by MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
A woman sits in front of police before they moved in to evict protesters in parliament grounds, February 10, 2022 (Photo by MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

OPINIONPoliticsFebruary 10, 2022

‘This too will pass’ says Ardern of the anti-mandate fury. But will it really?

A woman sits in front of police before they moved in to evict protesters in parliament grounds, February 10, 2022 (Photo by MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
A woman sits in front of police before they moved in to evict protesters in parliament grounds, February 10, 2022 (Photo by MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

Politicians and police have been remarkably tolerant of those spreading threats and misinformation in ways that cost lives and livelihoods. But now they have to act, argues Bernard Hickey.

This is an edited version of a post first published on Bernard Hickey’s Substack newsletter, The Kākā. It was published this morning, before the arrests began in earnest.

Yesterday I watched protesters threaten to kill politicians and journalists as they spat at onlookers. Others reported they threw eggs and bullied a student wearing a face mask who was walking past on her way to school.

Then they tried to break into parliament to lynch a prime minister they accuse of murdering children. As I write this, they are still camped in parliament’s grounds, although police have started pulling them away one by one into detention.

Why have the great and the good, the politicians and the police, all been so tolerant and relaxed about a phenomenon of hyper-amplified and hysterical misinformation that is now an existential threat to our national security and health? We should act now and I have a few suggestions about how to do so below.

This phenomenon is a threat to our national security

I’ve covered all sorts of street protests in my 35 years of journalism and none of them have been as ugly, vituperative and just plain bonkers as the ones that crawled and blockaded their way to parliament over the last two days.

They flew Trump flags, spouted QAnon conspiracy theories about global elites running child trafficking rings and demanded “freedom” to spread a deadly disease and paralyse a health system that is barely able to deal with the illnesses of the 96% of their fellow adult citizens who got vaccinated and wear masks in public. They threw eggs at students for wearing masks.

They demanded their “right” to opt out of the social contract to try to look after those around us in exchange for protection from bigger threats, under democratically agreed laws, to get on with our lives in peace, health and safety. We pay taxes and vote for governments and laws with the understanding we’ll be protected from external and internal threats to life and liberty.

That’s the deal, and for the past three days these protesters have broken it repeatedly, aggressively, violently and without any sense of empathy for those trying to go about their daily lives and jobs. And without consequence. Protestors happily sat and blocked traffic and pedestrians for hours on end. They harassed and abused others without a police officer in sight on Tuesday. By Wednesday, the police in their high vis vests were there, but only after loud and repeated threats of a plan to “storm” parliament. Even yesterday, the police were playing rock, paper, scissors with protesters on the front line. Some kind soul even arranged for portaloos for the protesters to do their own personal business in peace.

The first protesters arrested at parliament, February 9 (Photo: Justin Giovannetti)

Why are politicians and police so chilled?

So why are politicians and the police so tolerant and accepting of what I believe is a movement (albeit a chaotic and incoherent one) that has become an existential threat to our national security and health?

This may seem a strange thing to say, and it’s certainly not in step with the sort of tired and resigned frustration that our government, opposition, police and civil society are displaying at the moment.

There seems to be a feeling that cracking down is not the “Kiwi” way to deal with protesters. Police were barely visible on Tuesday. No MP left parliament or the Beehive to meet them or accept any petitions, which is almost unheard of, given the regular and peaceful gatherings on the lawns out the front. The collective sigh was one of “ignore them and they’ll go away”.

From the top down, the protesters have been handled with the lightest touch possible. Restraint and repeated attempts to “engage” are current modus operandi across government and most of the media. No one has called them “deplorables” and few anywhere near power demanded any sort of crackdown with mass arrests or punishments. Until this morning, “they’ll just go away in their own time” seemed to be the thinking.

‘This too will pass.’ Really?

PM Jacinda Ardern is the target of the most egregious, vituperative and frankly insane accusations in placards, chants and across Facebook, Twitter and comment sections. Yet she has turned the other cheek again and again in an admirable display of restraint and tolerance. She regularly exposes herself to torrents of hatred in her Facebook Live sessions in a way that no other PM would (and has) done.

Only once has the torrent overwhelmed her. In early December, a clearly exhausted Ardern couldn’t let yet another comment pass from someone saying they were ‘over you, over your mandates’ without a pained rebuttal:

“Um, Amanda. Sorry you’re over me. But you don’t have to stay on my Facebook Live if I’m bothering you. I’m sure there are many other things you could do with your time if you find this irritating,” she said during a Facebook Live on December 9.

Asked for yet another message to the protesters and the rest of us on Tuesday, she said (bolding mine):

“The first thing I’d say to the vast majority of New Zealanders who have made sacrifices, who have gone out and been vaccinated, is thank you, and that this too will pass.”

Supporters cheer on the anti-mandate ‘freedom convoy’ as it drives through Warkworth on February 06, Waitangi Day. (Photo: Fiona Goodall / Getty Images)

The problem with the high road

Taking the high road is admirable in most cases and something any successful mainstream politician learns to do with grace and forbearance. But sometimes it’s actually dangerous to let it slide. Not responding encourages some to test the boundaries even more, and for the most extreme to act on the wildest accusations and threats.

Turning the other cheek was what British civil society did during and after Brexit, and what US civil society did before and during Trump’s nomination, presidency and attempted coup on January 6, 2021. It was as if no one thought the worst could happen. That this rag-tag bunch of incoherent grievances would go away once it was clear they couldn’t get their hands on the usual levers of political power. After all, it worked with the Occupy and Arab Spring sit-ins and protest movements. Once the initial enthusiasm was spent and there were new things filling our Facebook and Twitter feeds, these groups faded away.

It’s only now dawning on many that this was a mistake that has cost both countries millions of lives, years of economic growth and, in one case, could potentially destroy one of the oldest democracies in the world. British MPs have been murdered. The Capitol was stormed. Trump’s supporters tried to mount a coup, and were not that far away from achieving it. The United States is far from out of the woods, and neither is Britain.

But we’re different. Aren’t we?

Aotearoa’s modern history of political protest and democratic activity has been largely peaceful and eventually progressive. Aside from the Springbok tour clashes and the riots on waterfronts before and after the world wars, our political movements have not disrupted national security in any immediate or existential sense.

But that was before we all had smart phones in our hands.

Now, a significant portion of the population get most of their information and have most of their public debates in online landscapes of misinformation, disinformation and hyper-emotion. These debates are often purely performative demonstrations of tribal fealty and rarely become genuine attempts to understand and come to some new joint position.

This is no accident. The algorithms developed by Facebook and Google’s YouTube are designed to amplify the most engaging comments, news and videos. The ones that attract the most likes and shares. The most hate and love. The most extreme positions. Since the widespread distribution and adoption of smart phones, public debate has become ever more extreme.

Apparently normal, functional people who would seem rational colleagues and family members appear to slide down holes into plainly wrong views about politics, health, technology and science. It is a collective descent into madness, that often goes in tandem with, and can worsen, mental illness.

So why do we tolerate and enable these algorithmic amplifiers of poison?

New Zealand’s civic society has made no serious attempt to understand or regulate these rivers of hatred and misinformation. Other democratic countries are stumbling around trying to regulate and control the social media platforms and the algorithms. We have done nothing.

If anything, the problem has been enabled by both sides of politics here. They have enthusiastically adopted Facebook’s ability to communicate directly with voters, free of the usual gatekeepers in the mainstream media. The government has made Facebook Live a semi-official tool to distribute official information and engage with the public. Government departments employ hundreds of social media specialists and spend tens of millions of dollars on Facebook and Google advertising. On occasion, the government has even partnered with them on technology investment projects. There has been no serious attempt to try to control the spread of this misinformation and the use of these platforms to organise threats to our national security.

Even after the Christchurch attacks, little was done to protect our national security and health from these sources of disinformation. Initially, the PM rightly condemned Facebook and Google for enabling and allowing a domestic terrorist to amplify the terror attack on their platforms. But that was as far as it went. The Christchurch Call has dissolved into a Davos-style talkfest for world leaders and tech execs to avoid regulation or any meaningful change whatsoever.

NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron address the press on the Christchurch Call at the Elysee Palace in Paris, 2019. (Photo: YOAN VALAT/AFP/Getty Images)

We are not immune. At all.

I have watched dumbstruck over the last five years as extremists have harassed and attacked journalists and public figures, including those I work with. I’ve seen death threats delivered to homes by mail. I’ve watched camera operators being spat at and shoved. I’ve seen nooses paraded in front of parliament.

This has to stop and we have to take it seriously. Others are starting to.

The Department of Internal Affairs commissioned a report last year on the online activities of extremists with a demonstrable link to New Zealand, as well as the digital platforms connecting New Zealand to an international extremist ecosystem.

Here’s what it found (bolding mine):

“Overall, our research shows that New Zealand is not an exception to broader international extremism trends. A concentrated but engaged core of online activists in New Zealand are intimately plugged into international extremist subcultures which draw New Zealanders away from the protective factors around them – such as a long history of liberal values and strong institutions – and surround them with the polarising grievances raging on the other side of the world. To a lesser extent, international extremist subcultures are also plugged into New Zealand and discuss the people, places and issues of the country at some volume, especially the Christchurch attack itself.”

There are real world consequences happening right now

I have sat on my hands too for the last two years, expecting the temperature to cool naturally and for the “Kiwi” way to resume. I was jolted out of my complacency for the final time on Tuesday in the middle of the post-cabinet news conference when it dawned on me the government had decided not to use schools as mass vaccination sites because of the danger of violent attacks on teachers, students and vaccinators. This has not been reported widely and I don’t understand why.

Here’s education and Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins in that news conference when asked why schools weren’t being used as mass vaccination sites to accelerate the vaccine rollout (bolding mine):

“There is no question there are strong levels of support for tamariki to be vaccinate, but there is also some concern that schools can and have become the targets of some pretty aggressive and, in some cases, very nasty anti-vax sentiment. And so we have to just tread that line very carefully, and that has been a recurring theme in that conversation. So I think schools will want to be involved. They want to be supported but they don’t want to find themselves targeted.”

So these protesters who have regularly harassed vaccinators and in some cases falsely booked appointments to stop others being vaccinated, have now forced the government to abandon a plan that could have accelerated the vaccination programme, saved lives and helped avoid more of the damaging lockdowns and restrictions we have endured for two years.

No more. This has to stop. This type of “protest” is actually a threat to our national security and health and should be treated as such. It is not just an inconvenience or even a tragic case of mass hysteria. It is costing us lives. It could threaten our democracy, as it has in other countries. That may seem extreme, but that’s what people said in Britain and America in 2016 before Brexit and the election of Trump. Now look at the results.

In the US, more than 900,000 people are dead because of Covid. The world’s biggest democracy almost collapsed into a mad dictatorship. Meanwhile, the parliamentary democracy from which ours is directly descended is run by a man who refuses to resign in the face of public contempt, even though he is a serial liar who treated lockdown laws as rules for him to announce and ignore, and for other people to strictly obey. Boris Johnson announced overnight that he plans to end public mask wearing rules because his back bench MPs thought it would be a good idea.

So what should we do?

We should regulate the algorithms that transmit and amplify misinformation into the news feeds of the millions of New Zealanders who spend hours a day scrolling through social media.

We should take threats of violence aimed at journalists, politicians, vaccinators and scientists seriously. It is illegal to make those threats. People should be prosecuted and imprisoned.

We should not let protesters attack, bully, abuse, spit at and shove bystanders. We should not let them block off roads for days on end. An awful lot of parking tickets should be issued and vehicles towed away.

This has to stop.


Follow When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey’s essential weekly guide to the intersection of economics, politics and business on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

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List Labour MP ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. (Image: Tina Tiller)
List Labour MP ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. (Image: Tina Tiller)

PoliticsFebruary 9, 2022

This social media-friendly Pasifika MP is doing it for her community

List Labour MP ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. (Image: Tina Tiller)
List Labour MP ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. (Image: Tina Tiller)

Before she took a leading role in relief efforts for Tonga, Labour list MP ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki flew somewhat under the radar. But she’s been taking a stand for what she believes long before entering parliament in 2017.

‘Anahila Lose Kanongata’a-Suisuiki has been busy. These past couple of weeks, the Labour list MP has been co-leading the Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee alongside her colleague Jenny Salesa, assisting families in New Zealand to send much-needed goods to their families in Tonga following the volcanic eruption and tsunami in January.

Every day she switches her mobile phone camera to selfie mode to do a Facebook Live of what’s happening at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium, where the donations are packed and shipped. One update was with Sir Michael Jones, informing her viewers of the generous donations the former All Black had made, while another showed Kanongata’a-Suisuiki standing in a queue of vehicles waiting up to four hours outside the stadium to donate goods. She’s full of energy and pride for her community – you can see it in her videos as she gives a greeting in te reo Māori before speaking in her mother tongue of Tongan and then English.

But while Kanongata’a-Suisuiki’s name and face may be better known among the wider public following the Tongan disaster, her bilingual video updates actually began during the first alert level four lockdown in 2020. “I thought of doing a demonstration on how to cough in both Tongan and English and it got a good response,” she says at the stadium when The Spinoff visits. Kanongata’a-Suisuiki’s early videos were breakdowns of the information from the prime minister’s 1pm briefings, translated into Tongan with summaries of the latest guidance. The one day she didn’t do a live video, people knew. “A friend of mine, Dr Seini Taufa, noticed and asked me if I could continue the bilingual updates as it’s helpful for the large Pasifika following I had at a time where there was a lot of misinformation,” she says.

“I’ve had young people tell me how helpful the videos are for their grandparents to understand what’s going on during the pandemic. I’ve even had Tongan adults who watch the news and say that when they hear my update, they get it.”

Then Papakura Labour candidate ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki supporting Jacinda Ardern campaigning at Manurewa Mall in the lead-up to the 2020 election (Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Before Facebook Lives and TikTok dance routines – something she also dabbles in – Kanongata’a-Suisuiki was a young girl in Tonga with minimal English, raised by her maternal grandfather until he passed away in 1977. “My parents never married and so having had my grandfather look after me for most of my childhood, I decided to choose my surname in honour of him, which is where Kanongata’a comes from,” she says. “Suisuiki is my ex-husband’s surname who is Samoan.”

After her grandfather’s passing, Kanongata’a-Suisuiki’s uncle helped out with raising her. He had always wanted her to be an economist, since she was very good with numbers. She moved to New Zealand to be with her late mother who got her permanent residency in 1979, when the young Kanongata’a-Suisuiki was about 10. They lived in a state house in Onehunga, where she still resides, now living in an apartment not far from where her mother is buried at Waikaraka Cemetery.

Kanongata’a-Suisuiki got married to her first husband, who is Tongan, and had two children before she turned 20. When she turned 30, she was awarded a government scholarship to study either economics or social work. “I was reading up on the values of being a social worker and working with others, respecting people and their backgrounds, and it resonated with me and the journey I’ve been through as a young parent from a minority group in a western society,” she says. “So, I chose social work and unintentionally went against the expectations of my family,” she laughs. 

‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki takes a selfie with fellow Labour MPs Aupito William Sio and Poto Williams during the opening of parliament on November 25, 2020 (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

After graduating with a degree in social work from the University of Auckland, she worked herself up the ranks, becoming a social worker, then a supervisor, and finally becoming one of the first Tongan managers in the Ministry of Social Development. Kanongata’a-Suisuiki says managers would have access to the many messages coming through from the various political parties and it was when Helen Clark’s Labour lost the 2008 election to the John Key-led National Party that she thought, “I need to go help the Labour Party get back into parliament.”

“John Key would say that unemployment is low in New Zealand and that they’re helping people into employment, yet on the ground in my line of work that wasn’t the case. The scholarship that I got was cut under the National government and anything specific to Pacific peoples was also cut, and that was enough for me to apply to become a candidate for the Labour Party. I finally understood why my mother was a huge supporter of Labour,” she says.

Kanongata’a-Suisuiki was 38 years old when she officially joined the party in red. At the time she was living in Manukau, so she received a letter from the Labour Party saying she would be part of the Manurewa Labour electorate committee. She laughs as she remembers those early days, because the committee had thought she was a spy.

“When I got my acknowledgement letter, I immediately called up the committee and asked if I could join their next meeting. They said that before I could, I had to meet with the MP, George Hawkins.

“I met with him twice and then I met with his secretary a couple of times and throughout those meetings, I kept being asked why I would like to join the party.” At the time, the Pacific sector of Labour had a candidate they were going to stand against Hawkins, and his team thought she had been sent to spy.

“I didn’t even know that sector existed until then,” she laughs.

‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki with Jacinda Ardern during the Labour caucus retreat in New Plymouth on January 20, 2022 (Photo: Andy Jackson/Getty Images)

In the 2017 general election, Kanongata’a-Suisuiki came into parliament on the list, and in 2020 was part of the Labour Party’s largest ever Pacific caucus after the party’s landslide victory that gave them 64 seats in parliament. She says she wasn’t nervous going into that environment, considering the many years she spent as a public servant. Once in, she was vocal about her stance on the cannabis referendum and the End of Life Choice Act. 

She was strongly opposed to both. 

When asked if she’s worried her decision could impact her position with the Labour Party, she confidently says “not at all”.

“It’s an opportunity for my colleagues to view a different perspective from the majority and the Labour Party is a broad church, so there are always going to be contrasting views. Our prime minister has been understanding of my decisions and respects them.”

As for the future, the MP based in Papakura says her big goal is for New Zealanders to have warm and dry homes, as it has direct impacts on health and wellbeing. “That’s why housing, health and jobs are my priorities given my life experiences growing up in a state home and having a family before I turned 20. I’ll be working hard to bring those issues to parliament and help promote a positive, lasting change,” she says, before pausing a moment to think.

“That, and trying to not get in trouble again with the Speaker of the House for doing a Facebook Live inside parliament,” she laughs.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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