Newmarket locals are frustrated at Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki, saying Saturday’s protest left people cut off from sick family and businesses counting yet more losses.
Several hundred demonstrators, associated with the Freedom and Rights Coalition, swamped Auckland’s Southern Motorway on Saturday, protesting everything from the cost of living to agricultural regulations.
But Newmarket Business Association chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas said small business owners were left “incredibly frustrated”.
“By all means protest… it’s part of our democratic right, and I’ve protested in my life,” he said.
“But actually, when you’re fundamentally hurting small business owners, the Beehive doesn’t care about this. It doesn’t affect the Beehive one iota, it affects people who are opening these stores, and their cafes, and bars and restaurants.
“And they had really bad trade because of it.”
Knoff-Thomas suggested the protest did little aside from brass off locals.
“It’s p***d a lot of people off, the only impact it’s going to have is polarise New Zealand further,” he said.
“That is not the way to do it, to hurt small business owners, it’s not fair.”
One woman Checkpoint spoke to said the protest made a tough day for her family even more difficult.
“I felt they went too far, they were disruptive to genuine members of the public,” she said.
“I was trying to get to … a close member of our family in Auckland Hospital so I wasn’t happy at all.”
She had little sympathy for the protesters’ cause, given the difficulties they caused.
“Yes, people have a right to protest, but they cannot inhibit others who are going about their right to have the ability to carry on with their daily lives.”
No member of the public who spoke to Checkpoint agreed with the protesters’ and Tamaki’s actions.
“He’s got them by the short and curlies,” one woman said.
“They can’t think for themselves and they follow him mindlessly in breaking the law.”
Another felt the police had not done enough to stop the motorway blockage.
“I think the police just actually helped them because they allowed them to get onto it,” she said.
Even those who backed the protesters’ sentiments believed they went too far.
“I agreed with some of the sentiments of the protest, but they went too far blocking the motorway,” one person said.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff was less sympathetic.
“The Freedom and Rights Coalition they call themselves, but what about the freedom and rights of other people who were out there on Saturday trying to get about their day-to-day business when this group of people, as foreshadowed the day before, were creating in their own words, motorway mayhem,” he said.
Goff challenged Tamaki to put his money where his mouth is.
“If Mr Tamaki has a strong political viewpoint, which he clearly has, then he should run for Parliament,” Goff said.
“He should put his name out there and see how much support he gets. I would suspect very little, as indeed his partner did when she ran for office last year.”
Checkpoint made multiple attempts to get a response from the Freedom and Rights Coalition, but requests were declined.
Hannah Tamaki had used Destiny Church’s Sunday service to address the march.
“I was walking outside yesterday, and I had a nice walk outside, and I saw a whole lot of people that I knew,” she said.
“I saw cars, I’ve never been that close to that many cars at one time … and some of them were waving and some of them were tooting.
“And I thought, ‘why are you doing that? I’m only out for a walk’.”
The self-styled Bishop Tamaki addressed the protest.
“See they’re always watching, the media,” he said.
“They send all this stuff I do to the police so they can arrest me. Who does that? They only do that in Colombia and Ethiopia.
“Media sends stuff, recordings, to the police and to the Crown lawyers to get me. That’s really bad stuff, but Kiwis are still driving out there giving us the fingers.”
In Newmarket, the irony was not lost on Mark Knoff-Thomas – a protest decrying the state of the country, only making life harder for battling businesses.
“As a retail town centre, we are at the forefront of a lot of these issues, we understand there is pain,” he said.
“However, the rest of the world isn’t rosy either, the world right now is in a really bad space.
“New Zealand has got to work through this, and by doing it we can together work through a solution with our government in a logical way.
“Not through protesting and blocking motorways. It’s not cool at all.”
As for Brian Tamaki calling his critics “angry, self-entitled d***heads”?
“I think the only person entitled in this situation is Brian Tamaki,” Knoff-Thomas said.
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