Ryan Bridge: The price we must pay for living in a democracy

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Commuter chaos.

It's one of the prices we must pay for living in a democracy.

I know this won't be popular with Aucklanders this morning or others around the country where this hīkoi is heading, but it's a cost we must bear.

They're closing two lanes of the Harbour Bridge this morning, and if you've got kids getting to an NCEA exam, then you will be fuming about this.

But let's remember, this is a one-off protest.

It's not like those dickheads from the public rail or whatever they were in Wellington. Remember them? They repeatedly shut down the motorways. They did it time and time again. They repeatedly stopped the ambulances from getting to call outs, the kidney patients from getting to dialysis.

They deserved to be swept to the curb, and it seems like for the most part they have been, which is a good thing.

This is a one off from a group of people who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they're getting a hard time from this government. They feel they're not being heard in our democracy.

And whether you agree with that or not is beside the point, the point is we live in a democracy and the right to protest is, well, a right.

It can be an annoying one, but the minute you say you can't do it, we all lose.

If we learned anything through Covid, it's that this whole system is rather fragile when people feel ostracized or maligned – we do better to listen rather than suppress and silence debate and dissent.

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