Ryan Bridge: Happy Waitangi Day!

You’ll probably see and hear a bit of argy-bargy up North today as the politicians get welcomed onto the Treaty Grounds.

If you’ve never been up there, it’s easily one of the best ‘Kiwi’ weekends you’ll experience. The sunshine’s guaranteed. People are friendly. The grub’s good and there’s plenty of watering holes filled with political chats flowing long into the night.

Protest is an important part of democracy, it lances society’s boils and keeps powerful people in check.

But it must be peaceful. The minute you start throwing fists, pushing cops, and shoving people round, you lose the room.

I’ve seen that happen at Waitangi several times. I’ve seen that happen at many protests about a whole bunch of different issues.

I hope it doesn’t happen this year. There’s a group of twenty online who apparently say they’re ready to be arrested in the name of protest. What a shame that would be.

If there’s one thing we’ve shown each other as a country over the last fortnight, with the storms, flooding, landslides, and then the clean-up, it’s that we are still a united and down-to-earth country. 

The politicians might argue. The lobby groups hiss and roar. But at its heart, New Zealand is mostly made up of decent people who look out for each other.

We saw marae house, feed, and water their neighbours. I saw farmers being fed by kuia on marae. We saw farmers helping clear Māori-owned land of debris. 

We saw tradies and workers leap in to help tourists trapped under rubble.

They might fight about race in Parliament but the reality on the ground, as you know and most of us know, is way more chill than they make out.

Much more chill than we in the media make out, too, to be fair. 

We’re basically a nation of hard-working people, of all different cultures and colours, who sometimes disagree but mostly get on with life and look after each other.

Of course, there are exceptions but that’s exactly the point - they’re exceptions not the rule.

And this Waitangi Day, especially given how badly some other democracies have gone to dogs, that’s something surely worth celebrating. 

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