I would like to take this moment, as an Australian, to thank Jacinda Ardern from the bottom of my heart.
For months, the glaring spotlight of world media has been focused on Australia — and not in a good way. Covid camps in the outback, closed borders, and rubber bullets at the Shrine of Remembrance. It was all humiliating stuff. Especially for a country that traditionally prides itself on a supposed anti-authoritarian streak, now gaining notoriety as the prison island of the South Pacific.
Thankfully, Jacinda has ridden to our rescue! Being more authoritarian and restrictive than even “Dictator Dan” Andrews or Mark “Sneakers” McGowan has refocused the harsh glare of world media attention across the Tasman. Again, not in a good way.
Enjoy your moment under the burning floodlight, New Zealand.
Ugly scenes erupted in New Zealand’s capital on Thursday as hundreds of ‘freedom’ protesters clashed with authorities – with a naked woman being arrested after diving through a line of police officers.
The woman was dragged away by her hair before being detained as protests against Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s hard-line Covid policies turned ugly.
Daily Mail
The “ugliness” was, of course, the work of the police. Video footage from the ground seems to show that the protests, like similar protests here in Australia, are unusually good-natured. Far from the “right-wing extremists” shrieked about by the media, the faces of the protests seem to be ordinary Kiwis, with more than a smattering of Maori and dreadlocked hippies. Drums, singing and dancing, and everywhere flags: flags flown upside-down to indicate a nation in distress, Maori flags, flags from more diverse ethnic communities than I’ve ever seen, and Canadian flags, indicating as one protester said, their solidarity with “the brothers in Canada, fighting for freedom over there”.
While Jacinda Ardern — who’ll normally turn up to the opening of a (recycled) paper bag, if it means a photo-op — remains in hiding from the protests, she can at least rely on her team of $55 million running cover for her. By contrast, even left-wing, union-owned Australian media site The New Daily managed more balanced coverage than NZ’s sycophantic media.
The convoy began from the northern tip of North Island and the southernmost town of South Island on Sunday, growing in number on the way and reaching Wellington on Tuesday for a largely respectful, if boisterous, rally […]
As of 4pm Thursday (local time), hundreds of protesters remained on the lawns, claiming victory in their resistance of the officers. Many were breaking into song – including the national anthem, Kiwi classics such as Slice of Heaven by Dave Dobbyn and 1980s charity single We are the World.
The protest appears muddled, with some protesting vaccine mandates, others opposing vaccines generally and still others protesting other government policies.
But they are united in their opposition to the police, and to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is regularity abused by speakers and in signs among the group.
The New Daily
The protests have also been noted by Fox News and the Washington Post. In contrast to the New Zealand media’s baseless smear that international media are sneering at the Wellington protests as “copycat”, neither Fox nor WaPo actually used the phrase.
Instead, the Toronto Star reported that Canada’s truckers are “inspiring” “an international populist movement against COVID-19 restrictions”.
Jacinda Ardern might be making headlines around the world again — but they’re very far from the fawning adulation she’s become accustomed to. Especially with images of her bootboys dragging naked women along by their hair.
Still, by all means, take the rap as the last covid dictator standing. It sucks to be laughing-stock of the world, doesn’t it?
