It's six months since the occupation of Parliament's grounds for three weeks, but the human cost is only now becoming clear.
It's six months since the hub of the country's democracy was under siege, but the human cost is only beginning to become clear.
Despite some of the same noises, a protest at Parliament this week led by Destiny Church didn't turn into a repeat of the fiery occupation of Parliament that took place over three weeks of February and March, when a protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates got co-opted by extremists, malcontents and conspiracy theorists, culminating in a violent conflagration.
A half-year on provides a useful distance with which to ask: what sort of an impact has it made on Parliament, and what was the experience like for those who work there?
A protester holds his message during the violent late stages of the occupation of Parliament, 2 March 2022
"Alarming, violent, confronting," was the first response from Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.
"I'm not just talking about the fires and the throwing things. I'm talking about the underbelly of it - confronting because we got lots of work to do, we've got so much work to do. It really for me held up a mirror to all of us actually to really say what on earth has happened here."
"I watched it from the windows, saw it all unfolding in front of us and it was just really disturbing. Like many of us, I had friends and whānau out there, people I love dearly, and we had words, we exchanged words over those times, but also over the entire pandemic, due to the misinformation and disinformation that had impacted and had taken my whānau, I refer to that as being that my whānau were taken by that. A lot of my whānau were taken by that.
"The actions over those three weeks in front of us, the way it transpired, yes that felt unprecedented in that very specific way of being on the front of parliament. But I sadly wasn't terribly surprised given the conversations that I've been a part of and my connections to the communities doing it the roughest over generations. And so a part of me was also sort of like, yep, they were ripe for the picking. The large movements, also international in nature, really know where to target. So part of me unfortunately wasn't as surprised, but was definitely confronted by the way it manifested in front of parliament."…