Normally politicians are scrambling over each other to get out on the front steps of Parliament to address protesters. 

It’s a political skill to be able to handle vocal critics, which the anti-mandate camp dwellers out on the front lawn of Parliament and beyond most certainly are. 

But across the political spectrum they’ve decided those who have been singing and dancing out the front are a bunch of low lifes, white supremacists, Māori separatists and everything else in between. It seems they’ve come to that conclusion by looking at them and reading their placards from the safety of their offices because they most haven’t been outside to find out. 

Parliament’s Speaker Trevor Mallard even justified turning the sprinklers on them because he saw them defecating and urinating on the lawn.  There have been reports of kids wallowing in mud and portaloos stinking to high heaven. There have been claims from the Prime Minister they’ve abused passers-by who aren’t wearing masks and of kids being prevented from going to schools in the area. 

She’s even suggested they’re funded from overseas, citing the Trump flags, whatever they are. 

There was a glimmer of hope late yesterday though when word went around that Mallard had put on his big boy pants, talking to the politicians and encouraging them to engage with the protest leaders. But that was quickly quashed by parliament’s landlord, which is what Mallard is, with him saying there’ll be no dialogue while vehicles are blocking streets, the camp is dismantled and while they stop intimidating Wellingtonians. 

Mallard seems to have forgotten the much more violent protest he was once involved in, back during the Springbok tour of 1981, where they camped on Parliament’s front lawn for the more than the 40 days the rugby players were in the country. 

I’ve been down on the forecourt every day with a mask on and only once have I been told to go and do something unpleasant to myself. The rest of the time they have been willing to engage and until the politicians do the same, chances are they’ll be there for some time to come. 

The camp’s become a well-fed, ordered, hippie village of sorts including one protester, Tracey Jane, a medic from Tauranga who brought around 150kgs of avocados with her. She was asked to drop them just up the road from Parliament at what she describes as a massive garage warehouse full of food being prepared by volunteers. Jane says there are another two in the city. 

Down in tent city there’s everything from a medics’ tent to a barber, a child care tent to a laundry where bags of clothes are picked up in the morning and delivered back at night. If you need a towel or a sleeping bag, they’re available, all free of charge. 

They’re flying in from all over the country, staying in nearby accommodation. 

It was unruly last week, this week there’s an air of permanency and the only thing that’ll disrupt that is dialogue. 

The trouble is the politicians have painted them as illegal, dangerous radicals which, having talked to many of them which the politicians haven’t, isn’t the case for the vast majority of them. 

The longer this goes on though, the harder dialogue is going to become. 

Barry Soper is a New Zealand political journalist, and has been featured regularly on radio and television since the 1970s. Currently, Soper’s main role is political editor at Newstalk ZB, a radio network in New Zealand.

When someone like Russell Coutts says this about her government she knows she has a Public Relations problem — the response of her Legacy Media propagandists is to ramp up the name calling. But the more she and they say, the worse it looks for her.