I watched the first day the protest arrived here. I've watched protests come to Parliament over the years, I have received petitions, and I have spoken at many. And yet the day this one arrived, it was clear that it was different. There was an immediate focus on occupying the space. The rhetoric that came from the speakers they installed swung between benign to sometimes threatening. Many media who walked the grounds were either abused or, in some cases, chased away. It was a form of protest I did not recognise, and I found it hard to reconcile it with the reality of what all New Zealanders had faced in this pandemic and yet quietly got on with it.