Anti-vaccine mandate protesters blocking access to Parliament’s front steps have forced a petition calling for better enforcement of mobility parking rules to be delivered via the back door.
The irony of being unable to use Parliament’s mobility parking spaces - also occupied by the protesters - was not lost on petition creator Claire Dale, who suffers pain simply to walk.
"They're talking about their civil rights and they have just trampled over the civil rights of a million Kiwis," she told 1News.
"Twenty-four per cent of New Zealanders have a mobility issue. That's a million people, and the few hundred or thousand that were out front making a big old noise [don't have permission to be there]."
More than 2700 Kiwis have signed the petition so far, demanding tougher fines for misusing mobility parking spaces on both public and private property. The current fine in New Zealand for misusing mobility parking spaces is just $150 - in New South Wales it's $549 and one demerit point.
Dale has been working for years to champion New Zealanders like her who need mobility spaces. She says confronting people who park without a permit generally ends in abuse.
"If you challenge someone that's in a mobility park that doesn't have a placard, most of the reactions are aggressive and negative. At best I get a dirty look. At worst I get shoved."
CCS Disability Action access coordinator Raewyn Hailes has backed Dale's petition since its inception in August 2021. She told 1News many supporters who wanted to be at Parliament for its presentation to Transport Minister Michael Wood didn't come, feeling unsafe in the chaotic environment.
"[Protesters] just have vehicles parked all over the place - randomly blocking streets, blocking footpaths, blocking transport. So it's very difficult for people with impairments to actually get around that end of the city.
"There's no way Minister Wood could have come out the front doors to accept the petition, and so he agreed that he would accept it by facilitating us entrance to Parliament building through a different way, and so we went in the back."
Hailes said the unusual procedure allowed Wood and MPs from the Green Party, ACT and National to sit down with the small group of disability advocates and really understand the issue.
"Rather than just a formal speech and then a formal speech back, it was a very good discussion around something that was ironically quite important at the time."
Dale said despite the challenge of accessing Parliament amid the protest, she left the meeting "filled with bubbles".
"What I hope for more than anything else is, I hope that mobility parking on private land for public use becomes a national law - that it is nationally enforceable as it is in so many other countries around the world."
She's also asking the Government to run an education campaign to educate able-bodied people why they shouldn’t be using mobility parking spaces.
"The feeling is that this is the start of a process, and that by no means is the fight over, but at least it will go forward and be heard by a select committee," added Hailes.
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