Recent protest placards have featured some weirdness, some nastiness and plenty of claims contrary to established scientific fact.
But one protestors' sign at a recent protest at Parliament was more-or-less on the mark - if you ignore its pejorative implications.
The placard read “The Red Queen Shall Not Reign Supreme”. 'Well', I thought, 'That’s not a demand, that’s just a description of how parliamentary democracy works'.
Anti-mandate protestors at parliament Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
In New Zealand neither the Executive nor the Prime Minister have the ultimate authority. People like to picture it that way, but it isn’t true. The supreme practical authority in New Zealand is held by the Parliament.
Parliament is the boss of you and me, and the government, and the Prime Minister.
When people are angry about things it is always easier to focus that emotion on an individual, but that‘s not how our constitution works.
And if you need some examples of some small ways that plays out, the first items on Parliament’s agenda for the week will do nicely.
The House kicked off its week with votes to approve some appointments: a replacement MP to sit on the Parliamentary Services Commission, a company to audit the Auditor General, and a new Deputy Inspector General for Intelligence and Security.
Yes, that's all very work-a-day, mundane stuff, but it goes through Parliament for confirmation.
More relevant to the placard, the House next debated whether or not to confirm 13 different Covid-19 Orders. Orders the Executive had made under powers specifically given to it last year by Parliament.
From the outside (especially for people looking for someone to blame for all that’s wrong in their world), it might look like the Prime Minister or Government takes decisions without oversight or recourse. It doesn’t work like that. All their power derives from and is checked by Parliament.
For Covid Orders there is even more oversight than usual (because the powers are extensive). You can hear Chris Hipkins outline that in the audio above from the Executive's point of view.
During the debate on those Covid-19 Orders National Party MP Chris Bishop described it from the opposition and Parliament point of view.
"What the House is doing now is actually a very important constitutional role. Pursuant to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, the House has given the Government quite extraordinary powers to promulgate various orders and restrictions on people's movements, and make people do a variety of things—for example, if you work at the border, you have to get a test regularly, and other things. ...and now Parliament is exercising its constitutional duty to make sure that the Government is exercising those powers responsibly.
"As is its wont, Parliament has given the Regulations Review Committee the heavy burden of doing that work, and the Regulations Review Committee, as the Minister has indicated, does a very good job in doing that. We take that job seriously, we do it conscientiously, and we do it diligently,... Basically, what we are trying to do is to make sure that the powers exercised by the Government in the orders, in the legal parlance, ... are legal and they follow consistently with what the powers that Parliament has given to the Government are."
Doing that is one of Parliament's core functions. The Executive, after all, is just a subset of Parliament and is subservient to it. Government is only able to make decisions that Parliament empowers it to make, and that ultimately Parliament signs off on.
At any point Parliament can change its mind about who should be calling the shots and swap out the Government.
Because in New Zealand we have a Parliamentary Democracy - and so Parliament is Supreme.
So yeah, the placard wasn’t friendly, but it was correct.
Neither the Red Queen nor the White Queen shall reign supreme. Nor for that matter shall the March Hare, Tweedle-Dum or the Mad Hatter (though any of those would certainly be interesting choices).
