Peter MacDonald
I’ll never forget how they locked us in our homes in March 2020. Not just asked us but ordered us. Ardern’s Labour Government told us we couldn’t go to work, couldn’t go to school and couldn’t say goodbye to dying loved ones in hospitals or care homes. We weren’t allowed to attend funerals, weddings, or births. Human connection was deemed non essential.
I’ll never forget how they closed the borders even to our own. Kiwis stranded overseas, begging to come home, were forced into a lottery system for MIQ rooms. People missed funerals, missed the births of their children. Some never made it back at all. Others spent weeks locked in hotel rooms under guard.
I’ll never forget the mandates. First came the pressure, then the coercion, then the ultimatums. No jab, no job. Nurses, midwives, police officers, firefighters: heroes only months earlier were sacked for refusing the vaccine. Teachers with decades of experience were marched out of schools. Families turned against each other. Lifelong friends divided. We were told it was our fault.
I’ll never forget the vaccine passports. A two-tier society. You couldn’t sit in a cafe, enter a library, visit a museum or take your kids to the pool unless you had a government issued vaccine certificate. It didn’t matter if you were healthy. You were labelled a threat. The unvaccinated were treated like lepers.
I’ll never forget how they turned the media against us. The state pumped $55 million into legacy media through the Public Interest Journalism Fund provided they toed the line. Anyone who questioned the mandates, the lockdowns, the MIQ system or the vaccines was called a conspiracy theorist, a danger or a radical. We were dehumanised.
I’ll never forget how they ignored us when we finally said enough. Tens of thousands of us gathered peacefully at parliament in early 2022. Mums, dads, grandparents, Māori, Pākehā, vaxxed and unvaxxed, all standing together for freedom. And they locked the doors. They sent out riot police. They unleashed pepper spray and batons. They burned our tents. They smashed our things. They hurt our people.
I’ll never forget how not one MP from the governing parties came out to talk to us. Not one. Only two dared meet with us and they were trespassed from parliament for doing so.
I’ll never forget how the government used fear to divide us. How they kept us apart, masked our children, destroyed livelihoods and told us it was for our own good. How they silenced doctors, censored scientists and made it a crime to disagree.
I’ll never forget the pain. The suicides. The divorces. The broken families. The lost jobs. The lost years. They called it kindness.
But I remember what it really was.
I’ll never forget what they did to us.
