What a difference a year makes.

Twelve months on from the parliament protest against Covid measures.

A year ago this week we saw the headline “Mask-wearing 17-year-old egged by aggressive convoy protesters”.

As the protestors settled in for their long campout in opposition to vaccination requirements they demonstrated their commitment to standing up for the rights of the individual by verbally abusing, and throwing eggs at, a young girl. Her crime - following health guidance by choosing to wear a mask.

As she was walking to get some food, a car-load of protesters hurled abuse at her for wearing a mask, demanding she take it off and not comply with Covid-19 rules.

After choosing to ignore them, they then threw raw eggs at her while continuing to hurl abuse.

This was the sort of behaviour we saw repeatedly, as some of the most damaged members of our society congregated to demand that the government stop trying to look after their health, and the health of others.

No doubt some of the protestors came with peaceful intentions. Alternative science types and others opposed to vaccines, who wanted to trust their own body’s immunity, or Ivermectin, or llama foetuses, to fight a virus killing millions. United in their opposition to the forced vaccinations that absolutely no one was threatening.

Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Then there were the fundamentalists, far-right conservatives, and even neo-Nazis. Many of whom would have turned up whatever the anti-government protest was about. They rather lowered the tone, but no doubt raised a bit of money to support their causes, i.e. themselves.

It was a sad period in our country’s history all round.

While I strongly disagreed with the demands of those who arrived in Wellington they certainly had the right to protest peacefully in our democracy.

Whatever message they may have had though was lost as some took to painting swastikas, wrecking the place, and threatening horrendous violent actions against our journalists and politicians. None more so of course than against then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

At the start of that week a poll had been released which showed Labour + Greens on 53.9% versus National + ACT on 39.3%. A margin of almost 15% - hard to imagine now.

Jenna Lynch was finding it hard to imagine then - “the Government is still somehow riding its pandemic popularity wave” she said, mystified that “the Omicron omni-shambles has not hit the Government where it hurts.”

As an aside, I think whoever writes the speeches for Jenna and senior National MPs should really buy a thesaurus. Come on - does it always have to be a “shambles”?