Politics
Q and A / 1News

Where are the Parliament protesters one year on?

February 12, 2023
Parliament protest.

This time last year, tents were pitched on the lawn of Parliament, and a pitched battle with police to remove them was just a few weeks away.

Q+A's Whena Owen tracked down some of the more prominent protesters, to find out what they have been doing since, and how the events of the occupation changed their lives.

Te Pou Raukawakawa put the first tent on the lawn, saying on a Facebook live stream "we're here to stay".

He said with the roadblocks in place, he realised if he put a tent up then others would follow suit, and so it proved.

Since being cleared out by police, Raukawakawa has been on a permanent protest convoy, for a time occupying Mahanga Bay in Wellington.

He is now based in a camp on the shores of Lake Horowhenua.

Social media influencer Chantelle Baker grew her platforms to almost 100,000 followers over the course of the Parliament occupation.

Since then, Baker has had two Facebook pages shut down since the protests.

Meanwhile, anti-mandate group Voices for Freedom endorsed a large number of candidates in local elections, but the group had with little success for any of them.

They've said they're working on a "secret project" ahead of this year's general election.

Hundreds of arrests were made over the course of the protests, but around 66 prosecutions are still active. The Independent Police Conduct Authority is due to release a report next month into the 2000 complaints made against officers.

New book maps online extremist groups

Byron C Clark has researched the spread of misinformation and disinformation over the internet for the past several years — including during the Parliament occupation.

His new book — Fear, New Zealand's hostile underworld of extremists — maps the alt-right groups online and tries to unearth the roots of the unprecedented occupation.

He spoke to Q+A today about the findings from his research. Clark said not everybody who went to the protest should be considered an extremist, but that there had been an "extreme core" that was within the occupation movement.

"For people who are just along there — not adopting wholesale that far-right worldview — those people can be pulled away and we should work with them to pull them out of that conspiracy theory rabbit hole."

The researcher said there was an increased risk of violence towards politicians and journalists due to some of the online spaces that extremists used.

Clark said he was disappointed that the Government scrapped its proposed hate speech reforms last week as part of new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins' policy "refocus".

"On the far right, they're certainly seeing that as a victory that the Government has put this on the back burner," he said.

"It will potentially mean that there'll be less of a legal framework to deal with some of these things."

Last week, the Government said it wanted the Law Commission's advice on any future changes first before moving to change legislation.

Q+A is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air

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