The role of protest in Aotearoa New Zealand
Protest and activism have been at the heart of who we are for centuries. From the first moments of colonisation, Māori have organised to protect whenua, moana, mātauranga, and taonga. Parihaka is a particularly important place in the history of protest. There, the prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi led peaceful resistance to colonial land seizures and warfare using tactics including disrupting land surveys, ploughing land and fencing off land occupied by settlers. The Crown’s response was the military invasion of Parihaka and widespread imprisonment of these ploughmen. The legacy of Parihaka has continued to flow through Māori and non Māori forms of protest since, and particularly in the ongoing work for decolonisation.
Māori, trade unionists, feminists, peace activists, queer communities and environmentalists have all contributed, through protest, to protecting the wellbeing of community and environment. Our country, for example, has rich legacies of union led protest for better wages and conditions, opposing nuclear testing in the Pacific and nuclear ships in the harbours, decriminalising homosexuality, and organising against South African apartheid. More recently enormous youth-led, intergenerational mobilisation for climate justice mobilised 4% of the entire country’s population. Māori have led activism against oil and gas exploration, to hold onto whenua, and for Te Tiriti.
The importance of protest to who we are
Many of these protests are pointed to as moments where a shared identity was formed, times when those in Aotearoa questioned who we are and our place in the world. But those doing the protesting were not appreciated by everyone. The struggle to stop the 1981 South African rugby team tour, for example, was highly divisive. Many of these protests were considered ‘radical’ including the flour bombing of a rugby game at Eden Park; many protests were met with extreme police violence dealt by a specially named ‘Red Squad’ of officers. But today, there are very few who would claim to have been in favour of playing with an openly racist apartheid regime.
Protest is an important way of bringing attention to an issue and its origins – people who may not have known about or understood something are able to access more information about it through campaigns, and through media coverage of activism. Protest action can also provide a bridge between the public and decision makers; it is a way of strengthening accountability (a core aspect of democracy) and building better policy. It is an avenue, when other ways of expressing democratic voice have been closed down, for making our communities heard.
Global threats to protest
Despite all the ways that protest is important, many countries have proposed or introduced laws that increase police powers and punishments of activists. In Aotearoa New Zealand, activists have been prosecuted for coming within 500 metres of oil and gas infrastructure, and military and police powers have been significantly expanded in the deep sea environment. British police listed Extinction Rebellion as an extremist ideology, and more recently declared Palestine Action a terrorist group, while states across Australia have rushed through laws limiting the right to protest. Many places have spent significant public money on policing against protest: an enormous £145m was spent policing the international climate negotiations held in Glasgow in 2021 (COP26).
Some jurisdictions are using more militarised methods of policing, like less-lethal weapons (teargas, rubber bullets) and kettling, or permission to use deadly force. Canadian police, for instance, were given permission to use lethal violence against Indigenous people blocking the construction of a gas pipeline through Wet’suwet’en land. In the most extreme global examples, activists are killed and disappeared with implicit or explicit state backing. For instance, Global Witness reports more than 2,000 environmental defenders have been killed since 2012.
New proposals in Aotearoa New Zealand to expand the activities that count as “terrorism” and threaten to suppress related democratic activity such as protests. This is the same mechanism that the UK government, in backlash against a series of actions including painting military jets complicit in the genocide of Palestinans, designated Palestine Action a terrorist group in July 2025. Since then hundreds of people have been arrested for simply holding signs in support of Palestine Action. Here, the 2007 police raids on Tūhoe, mana motuhake, anarchist and environmental activists demonstrate the enormous harm done by expansive and misdirected definitions of terrorism. A community was terrorised, the police were forced to apologise, and no terrorism charges were brought.