Their work is usually unpaid and sometimes overlooked, but activists play an important long-term role in the parliament system. Four veterans open up on their experiences at parliament.
If elected representatives have their work cut out for them to create the slightest social or political change through Parliament, spare a thought for activists.
For the committed activist, in it for the long term, their work brings them inevitably to engage with the parliament system. Protesting at parliament, demonstrating, submitting to select committees, sending in petitions, or just being there to watch, activists are an important, if sometimes misunderstood, part of the system. And we're not talking about the agitators who talk about hanging MPs.
The House offers a look at four activists who have long participated in the parliament space - from single or multiple issue campaigners to the lifelong activist who became an MP and got out the other side alive:
Valerie Morse
The Organiser
Valerie Morse is a well established activist who has organised many campaigns in anti-war and climate justice spaces among others. Over the past 20 years, she's been part of hundreds of protests to parliament, and has made "dozens and dozens of submissions on everything from the environment to defence to the SIS to local body matters, everything under the sun".
In order to get MPs to listen, Morse has sometimes used theatre in her activism. Some of the highlights include a naked protest on the forecourt in support of the genetic engineering moratorium, and entering a select committee hearing on Security Intelligence Service legislation with a group who blew loud whistles to highlight the importance of whistle-blowing - to the dismay of the MPs.
There have been setbacks. In 2008, during an event to commemorate Vietnam War veterans, Morse attempted to enter parliament with an A3-sized sign about then-prime minister Helen Clark and former foreign affairs minister Phil Goff's anti-war activism during the Vietnam War being at odds with their subsequent support for the war in Afghanistan:
"Parliamentary security stopped me from coming to the grounds, and trespassed me from parliament for two years," Morse explained.
"Subsequently I challenged that by coming on to parliament grounds at a protest around slashed funding for adult and community education in the John Key era. I came on to parliament grounds with thousands of other people and was arrested by parliamentary security. I had to go all the way through the court system, and eventually, the speaker of the house at the time, Lockwood Smith, actually withdrew the trespass."…