A renewed wave of protests planned for outside New Zealand’s parliament last month largely went unnoticed by the Australian media. That was until Avi Yemini’s name began trending on Australia’s Twittersphere. The reporter for the Rebel News website was making known he had been denied entry into New Zealand to cover upcoming anti-government protests.
Investigations into how it came about are still to fully play out, and Yemini has consulted his legal team. But it serves as an opportunity to revisit concerns by disinformation researchers in New Zealand about the formation of – and implications from – the protest movement.
From all accounts, including that of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the August 23 rally outside parliament was peaceful. News reports counted about 2000 anti-government protesters who had gathered ‘to vent their frustration on a range of issues nearly six months after protesters were forcibly removed from the grounds of the legislature.’
The relative calm contrasted with the earlier three-week occupation of parliament which began when Covid-19 protest convoys from both ends of New Zealand arrived in Wellington in February. National Party justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith told RNZ in March, that New Zealanders saw ‘an unprecedented occupation and trashing of Parliament's grounds and its surrounding streets, followed by a fiery and riotous conclusion.’
New Zealand-based The Disinformation Project researchers analysed a steep rise in mis- and disinformation circulating online surrounding the movement. They concluded a grave warning they gave in November 2021 had been ‘fully realised’ during the February–March Parliament protest: ‘anti-vaccination and Covid-19 mis- and disinformation were being used as a Trojan Horse for the norm-setting of far-right ideals...’ and individuals including Prime Minister Ardern, ‘were consistently targeted with extremely misogynistic, vulgar, violent, and vicious commentary and content.’
Consider the months leading up to those protests – there was a shift to Covid-19 Alert Level 4 across New Zealand, and the Omicron outbreak – a perfect breeding ground for discontent. The Disinformation Project researchers noted this ‘exacerbated, entrenched and expanded domestic information disorders studied since the start of the pandemic.’
The February protests also went largely unnoticed in Australia where the ‘Convoy to Canberra’ was in motion which, along with the Wellington protests, took inspiration from the Canadian trucker convoys.
New Zealand is expected to call its next general election before the end of 2023 so any future protests will likely be on the radar – both in Aotearoa and from Australia.
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Anne Kruger, Associate Professor, UTS FASS