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# She Refused to Answer His Questions
- URL: https://goodoil.news/she-refused-to-answer-his-questions/
- Published: 2026-09-10T21:00:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-10T21:00:38.000Z
- Description: Former health minister Ayesha Verrall.
- Author: Reproduced with permission
- Tags: NZ Politics, Labour Party

**Mark Freeman** 

Former health minister and current Labour candidate Ayesha Verrall avoided answering a question about her knowledge of Covid vaccine side effects in an incident at a public meeting reported on by the mainstream media.

[The *Post* and *RNZ* have claimed](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/1310827/labour-s-chris-hipkins-says-his-party-won-t-be-intimidated-by-anti-science?ref=goodoil.news) that “Labour volunteers had to form a protective barrier” around Ms Verrall to “fend off anti-vaccination protesters”, but the [video evidence](https://www.facebook.com/reel/962798280196155) tells a different story.

The incident happened at the end of a meet-the-candidates meeting in the electorate of Wellington North on Tuesday evening. The meeting finished early without questions from the audience, although the chair did invite audience members to speak to candidates directly.

One member of the public, who said the chair of the meeting had earlier promised him the opportunity to ask Ms Verrall a question, was then denied the opportunity. Wellington resident Jeremy Verity went to the front of the room to ask his question at the end of the meeting but was told he couldn’t. Ms Verrall and other candidates moved as a group into the front corner of the room while Mr Verity tried to ask his question on his own microphone metres away from them, but was prevented by the organisers.

He then walked over to the group standing around Ms Verrall to ask his question but was pushed away by Green MP Tamatha Paul and another man. Police, who were in attendance at the meeting, then told him he couldn’t ask his question.

Jeremy Verity says he acted respectfully during the incident and was trying to ask “a reasonable question”.

These were the questions he wanted to ask Ayesha Verrall: “Were you at the vaccine ministers’ meeting at 1:30 on the 13th of August 2021? Was the removal of the 12-to-15-year-old myocarditis information from public communications done in that meeting?”