An Auckland councillor has been advised not to attend events alone and to stop using her car because it has her face and name on it after she was threatened by three men outside a vaccination centre which had been vandalised the night before.
Auckland councillor Josephine Bartley encouraging people at the Rally Your Village vaccination event at the Vodafone Events Centre in October. Photo: Josephine Bartley
Maungakiekie-Tamaki Ward councillor Josephine Bartley visited Pasefika Family Health group in Panmure on Sunday after its shopfront window was smashed and posted a picture of herself in front of the broken glass on Facebook saying keep your anti-vax violence to yourself please.
She had just finished dropping off some food and speaking with staff at the clinic when she was threatened back at her car.
"I'm sitting in my car and then I just saw this guy staring at me and then these other two guys. So I just looked over at him and then I, I'm pretty sure I heard him say 'You're all scum'," she told First Up.
"So I wound my window down and then I just asked them 'Sorry, what was that? I didn't hear you' and he just stared at me like I wasn't even a person.
"And then I heard the other guy said to him, 'We should just vandalise her car' and then … got into (their) car and then that's when they left, so I managed to get a photo of the car after they left.
"Yeah, I don't get shaken easily - I've heard people unhappy, you know with me before but never like this.
"I think it was - I don't know - everything that's going on with the lockdown. I'm not sure. I've already come across people who are not happy with how I've been real supportive of the vaccination events and real public with it, but that's been online.
"This is the first time someone has been like this to my face and I don't know if it's related to it or not."
Bartley had contacted police and they were taking it "really seriously", she said.
She had been in her own bubble so she could get out into the community and help the vaccination drive and do food parcel deliveries.
"I just love being out in the community, I see there are health workers and the providers and they need that morale boost as well because we're not from the health sector.
"And it does a lot for them because they get the hate too, so to see someone that represents their community backing them and being there physically to support them, it does mean a lot for them ... because they are facing you so much hate and negativity and that's not something our Pasifika providers are used to."
Auckland mayor Phil Goff told First Up those responsible were "zealots" who were irrational and dangerous.
"It's really concerning. These people - they might have their own views on vaccination and that's fair enough. But to translate those views into extremist and damaging actions to smash a shop because that was the shop that was administering vaccinations and then to threaten a councillor who's working her heart out to try to get as many people in her community as protected as possible.
"That's not just disgraceful behaviour, that's criminal behaviour, and I hope that the police are able to track down the offenders and that the full force of the law lands on them, because that's what they deserve.
"These people are zealots. They're irrational and that makes them dangerous.
"There's been incidents around the country, of course, and you'll be familiar with Tairawhiti where you know hundreds and hundreds of (vaccination) appointments are made by people who are anti-vaxxers and who never show up, meaning a waste of the time of the medical staff and a waste of the vaccines.
"Again, that's the same sort of damaging behaviour. It's one thing for them to hold views -that are not backed by science, not backed by fact - to be selfish about the fact that they are more likely to put our hospital system under pressure. They're more likely to convey the virus to other people.
"That's bad enough in itself, but then to go out and actively act against people doing their best to get their community protected that's absolutely unconscionable."
Goff hoped that security would not have to be tightened.
"I've been in public life for nearly 40 years now and never needed security, notwithstanding the fact that periodically you get extremist people that make death threats against you or act in a threatening way.
"It would be a real shame if the behaviour of these individuals stood in the way of our councillors doing their job and meeting with people in the community that they're trying to help.
"But it it's definitely a police matter ... the police, I'm sure will follow up."
Goff said there had to be zero tolerance for such behaviour.
