stop co governance tour tauranga

‘Offensive’ Stop Co-Governance Tour to go ahead in Tauranga, for now

Tauranga council will continue to allow a controversial tour to use its venue, for now.

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'Offensive': Stop Co-Governance Tour meeting to go ahead in Tauranga, but with warning

Police separate protestors at the Ōrewa leg of Julian Batchelor's 'Stop Co-Governance' tour. Photo: Jake Law / NZ Herald

By Kiri Gillespie and Laura Smith, Bay of Plenty Times

Tauranga City Council is standing by its decision to allow a controversial and “offensive” anti-co-governance tour to use one of its venues despite pressure to pull out.

The council has insisted tour organisers provide their own council-approved security services “to ensure the safety” of the local community and warned it would monitor the tour for signs of deviation from “free speech”.

The Stop Co-Governance Tour has already attracted protests and controversy for its likening co-governance to apartheid.

Co-governance is already in operation in parts of New Zealand, including Tauranga with Ngā Poutiriao o Mauao, which is the joint management board for Mauao made up of representatives of the Mauao Trust and city council.

An online petition to New Zealand Attorney-General David Parker calling for the tour to be canned, saying it is in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights and Humans Rights Act, attracted more than 5000 signatures. It also expressed a view the tour was inciting racial disharmony.

At the tour’s Orewa meeting this month, police were needed to separate counter-protesters and attendees at several venues listed on its tour have since either cancelled, refused a booking, or haven’t received a booking.

In Tauranga, tour organisers booked the Historic Village Hall in Greerton and the Mount Maunganui Community Hall on April 22 and 23.

The city council oversees the running of the village hall.

Council general manager of corporate services Alastair McNeil told the Bay of Plenty Times it was committed to being an inclusive city that recognised and promoted partnerships with iwi.

“The beliefs expressed by the Stop Co-Governance campaign do not align with the community outcomes we are seeking to achieve and we suspect the general anti-co-governance rhetoric is offensive to many in our community,” McNeil said.

Greerton Village Hall is the venue for a controversial Stop Co-Governance Tour. Photo / NZME

However, councils could not make venue-hiring decisions based solely on value judgments about what kinds of ideas or opinions are deserving of a forum, as this would go against the right to freedom of expression, he said.

For now, the bookings would remain in place, but the council and its partner Bay Venues would be “closely monitoring” the campaign “and we are open to changing our position if there is evidence that the balance has shifted away from ‘free speech’”.

“Additionally, we will work with other councils to understand how the tour has played out in their areas,” McNeil said.

As of Friday morning, the council had received five emails from people expressing their disappointment and raising concerns about safety.

“We have instructed the event organisers to provide (at its own cost) a council-approved security service at the Historic Village Hall event to ensure the safety of our village community,” McNeil said.

Mount Maunganui Community Hall is set to review its booking at its next committee meeting.

Rotorua Bowling Club has cancelled its booking. Club manager Nick James said this was “a result of being made aware of the content of the event and the volatility of the presentation”.

Newstalk ZB reported on Friday that, despite its venues being listed on the group’s website, Timaru District Council had not received a booking and, while Taupō District Council had not either, it said its responsibility as a public venue holder was to make them available for everyone to use.

Stop Co-Governance Tour organiser Julian Batchelor at the Kerikeri meeting. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Mikaela Matenga was among those who protested at previous roadshow events, including in Ōrewa last week.

Matenga (Tūhourangi, Tūwharetoa, Rongowhakaata, Te Arawa) said Rotorua was home, her tūrangawaewae, and she had whānau there.

She believed the events that tour organiser Julian Batchelor was holding spread misinformation and fear, and that he was using the events as a vehicle to be anti-Māori and spread notions of white supremacy.

This information, she said, included that he was telling his audiences co-governance would result in the country being controlled by tribal authority.

She said he described Māori culture as archaic.

Her own definition of co-governance was that it allowed Māori to make decisions for Māori.

Speaking to Local Democracy Reporting, Batchelor referred to the Stop Co-Governance website for both his book and his blog posts when asked what co-governance was to him, and what his concerns about it were.

A blog posted on the site yesterday claimed: “Co-governance is a code for the takeover of New Zealand by tribal companies and their representatives, the end of democracy, the installation of apartheid and seperatism [sic] into everyday life, leading eventually to full blown government by tribal rule”.

Batchelor said his concerns included a belief the government was using a fraudulent version of the Treaty of Waitangi.

He said securing venues had become more challenging recently but said the group would simply find another venue to replace the one it lost in Rotorua. Batchelor claimed support was growing and forecast 500 people would attend the Rotorua event.

He claimed some venue owners had been contacted by activists and told the event would result in them “smashing” it up. He said no one and no property had yet been damaged.

Batchelor welcomed those with opposing views to attend: “That’s what free speech is about.”

Batchelor was emailed Matenga’s comments for a response but did not respond by deadline. When he spoke to Local Democracy Reporting on the phone, he said he did not have time to go through all points.

The only point able to be put to him was her belief that the events spread misinformation and fear, that he was anti-Māori and spread notions of white supremacy.

He said he would ask her to give examples.

Earlier this month, Batchelor said in an emailed statement to the NZ Herald he was not a racist.

Instead, he said the Government and “elite Maori” were guilty of racism by “signalling” to Māori that it was “a superior race of people”, and in doing so were “turning Māori into the biggest bunch of racists this country has ever known”.

Minister Parker told Local Democracy Reporting in response to the petition that it was an election year, there would be a lot of people saying things others did not like and his views were irrelevant.

”We’re a democracy so people have the right to express their views providing they do not break the law.”

However, Parker urged people to express their views respectfully and for those who opposed them to do so lawfully.

Prosecutions and issues of public order were a matter for the police, and a prosecution alleging the offence of inciting racial disharmony could only be initiated with the consent of the attorney general, he said.

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Fact-checking the co-governance roadshow

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Social media erupted with pictures of distorted faces, pulled into expressions of anger or yelling gleefully into the camera.

The mugshots of a mostly older and Pākehā crowd loudly opposing co-governance came from an event opposing co-governance in Orewa on Saturday.

READ MORE: * Co-governance: It’s nothing like you think *  Co-governance means rubbing out your line in the sand

The pictures and video have become prescient symbols of the harshly divided opinions on the policy, which would see a shared governance arrangement between Māori and non-Māori.

Not only do those photos depict the fury of a small amount of white New Zealanders, but they’ve also become a lightning rod for ire from those on the other side of the debate.

Public figures like Auckland Council independent Māori statutory board member Tau Henare were calling for names of one attendee who had a rather unflattering moment of rage plastered all over the media.

Henare called her “the face of white anger and misunderstanding” – and a trip down the woman’s Facebook timeline shows a belief that multiculturalism is destroying New Zealand.

The mid-proclamation moment was captured at a ‘Stop Co-Governance’ event held by evangelical preacher Julian Batchelor, where he said the co-governance issue sees New Zealand “at war” and called upon his crowd to join him in a march on Parliament before the election.

Batchelor has held a handful of meetings across Auckland and Northland in the past six months where he presses his crowds to oppose all “race-based legislation”.

However as the events have gone on and media coverage has increased, it seems the ratio of supporters to opponents has moved towards swinging out of his favour. 

Footage of the weekend’s event in Orewa shows members of Ngāti Manuhiri and members of Te Herenga Waka o Ōrewa Marae attending in protest, blocked from Batchelor’s usual crowd by a line of police officers.

But what is Batchelor actually saying at these events that’s getting everybody so riled up?

The Batchelor sermon

Julian Batchelor is a former school principal and real estate agent. In an interview from 2012 with Virtue Online , he said he found Christ as a student at Massey University in Palmerston North back in 1982, despite coming from a largely secular family.

Ten years after that, he quit his teaching job and started on his evangelical mission. Since then he’s given sermons and written a book on spreading the word of his God. 

It’s not the first time he’s leapt to war as a metaphor for his modus operandi – his 2006 book is called ‘Evangelism: Strategies from Heaven in the War for Souls’.

Batchelor wrote that he was moved to write the book after studying The Book of Acts and finding Christians were much less likely to spread their religion in the present day.

“For 10 years, I became an investigative journalist, and over that time, slowly but surely, God revealed 67 reasons why this shift had occurred. And here is the thing – each of these reasons has to do with 2 Corinthians 2:10-11 and the devil’s devices,” he wrote.

As a preacher, he takes on the trappings of American televangelists like Billy Graham or Joel Osteen – think earpiece, suit, big crowds. That’s carried over to the co-governance meetings.

Like those American preachers, he’s a good speaker, with a dynamic and engaging voice. He does crowd work like a stand-up comedian.

He encourages his crowds to get animated and worked up.

“I’m serious, I’d love you guys to get really wound up,” he told an audience in Warkworth last September. “The problem we have is Kiwis are too passive.”

However when it’s the opposition that he’s faced who are bringing their passion with them, he’s been less than keen to see it.

Batchelor’s argument

Before shuffling out of the room, the crowds are asked to donate to the campaign and given some literature to distribute.

Among the latter is Batchelor’s own book – ‘Co-Governance – what it is, why it’s wrong, and why it must be stopped’. The book is a repackaging of many of the talking points he’s been making in his meetings, which roughly follow this format:

First he tells the audience that New Zealand is at war, and sets out the goals of Te Pāti Māori. Then he cites historian Stuart C Scott on the future of Treaty settlements, saying that they will go on “ad infinitum”.

Then citing the New Zealand Centre for Political Research he runs through how society would be affected by co-governance policies in spheres such as media, healthcare, justice, water rights and local government.

Next, he runs through the Treaty articles and compares them to how co-governance is playing out and could play out in future, before appealing to his audience to join him in a march through Wellington later in the year calling on whomever is next in government to repeal these policies.

His research relies heavily on the work of Stuart C Scott, particularly his 1995 work ‘The Travesty of Waitangi’. 

It’s not the most solid of citations. A bit of research into Scott finds little apart from a handful of Amazon reviews for the out-of-print book and this from Richard S Hill’s ‘Māori and the State: Crown-Māori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000’:

“Throughout the 1990s, in fact, media coverage of Waitangi Tribunal hearings and Treaty negotiations led to considerable anti-Treaty publicity, and a corpus of racist literature by authors such as Stuart C Scott became hugely popular in some quarters.”

The front cover for the book was designed by cartoonist Garrick Tremain, who was himself accused of racism following a satire of the measles epidemic in Samoa in 2019.

That last fact may be totally by the by, but Scott is still a bit of a cherry-pick.

Then there’s the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, which was founded by former ACT politician Dr Muriel Newman.

The think tank wears its political biases on their sleeve. It attracted controversy for running an advertisement in newspapers back in 2016 that used language like “There will be no end” and “Kiwis must act … now!” with regard to Māori gaining water rights.

It’s clear that Batchelor’s facts all come from people who would be voting the same way as he.

But like so many of these kinds of arguments, much of it comes down to different interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Batchelor bases his arguments on the Littlewood Treaty Document, a version of the Treaty rediscovered in 1989 claimed to be the final English draft of the foundational document.

The Littlewood document uses the word sovereignty in the first article, while its second article says “the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and the tribes and to all the people of New Zealand, the possession of their lands, dwellings and all their property”.

Batchelor says pre-colonial notions of property should reframe how “possession” is understood, and suggests there is nothing in that document to say it was agreed that Māori have co-governance.

Nevertheless, the very translation he chooses to use does specify protected ownership of all Māori ownership of Māori property. How the history unfolded and how the wordings of different translations changes the meaning of the document allow for an interminable disagreement over interpretation.

The scenes of righteous anger at the roadshow have revealed just how politicised the issue has become.

But as Batchelor continues his tour, it will be telling whether or not attendees outnumber protesters or vice versa – it’s a ratio that may offer some foresight into the makeup of next year’s government.

The protests

Batchelor is happy for his own flock to be moved by the spirit, but he made it clear that Māori protesters interrupting his Dargaville show were not welcome.

When one protester during question time began his question in te reo Māori, Batchelor told him he couldn’t understand. Then as the audience member switched to English, Batchelor turned off his microphone.

Another earlier speaker was shut down as his question was “just woke”.

Batchelor reasoned that he’d booked out the halls, and if people wanted to raise the opposing viewpoint, they could book their own venue and have their own time at the pulpit.

In an interview with Sean Plunket yesterday morning, Batchelor said he’ll hold further meetings as private functions, meaning he will be entitled to keep a bouncer on the door. It’s an idea he said the police chief of Orewa had floated to him at the conclusion of last weekend’s event.

Batchelor went so far as to compare his booked venues to marae in an interview with Plunket last week, and wondered if Māori speakers would interrupt in that setting.

Nevertheless, the meetings so far have largely occurred in public spaces. The Orewa meeting featured a sandwich board outside that said “All Welcome”. The events have been advertised widely – and perhaps most importantly, Batchelor has taken a stance that could not be firmer on the country’s most contentious issue.

If you pick up a political hot potato – well, it’s going to be hot.

Batchelor’s tour continues down country, with more than 40 meetings planned between Kerikeri and Queenstown.

Both the Orewa and an upcoming Mt Eden event have council-owned venues. It seems the bulk of the venues have yet to be publicly announced, but past hosts have included the Wellsford RSA and churches.

Batchelor lashed out at media reporting of his roadshow in his interview with Plunket, saying reports of violence at events up north had been greatly exaggerated in order to dissuade other venues from taking him on.

“They want to put the fear of God up all the people who have venues in New Zealand to not have us because it’s dangerous and they want to shut down free speech,” he said.

However, video footage of the Dargaville meeting shows that as RNZ reported, police were present and disagreements between members of the audience were pretty constant through Batchelor’s allotted hour.

RNZ’s coverage did not describe any acts of violence.

Batchelor disputed that it was police who ended the event and asked people to disperse. The footage shows that Batchelor himself did indeed bring the event to a close, saying “We’re sort of getting like it’s the end of the night at the pub”, but an officer did then ask people to leave.

What remains undeniable is that the meetings have provoked great passion from both sides – for better or worse.

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Watch: Fiery scenes, two arrests; police say anti co-governance meeting 'unsafe'

A Hastings meeting of the controversial Stop Co-Governance nationwide tour has ended early amid arrests and tensions, as protesters tried to use waiata, haka and meeting interruptions to drown out speakers.

Ngāti Kahungunu iwi’s promise to meet Julian Batchelor’s controversial rhetoric with opposition and noise during meetings in its rohe prompted at least two Havelock North venues to cancel in the lead-up.

Wannabe attendees of Batchelor’s meeting on Monday night were therefore directed at the last minute to a Hastings CBD building on Heretaunga St West, which once housed a Dollarama Store.

Protesters sung waiata to try to drown out speakers at Julian Batchelor's Stop Co-Governance meeting. Photo / Paul Taylor

He spoke to a crowd of about 70 as a number of counter-protesters formed outside, singing waiata and performing haka in a bid to drown out those trying to speak.

Police formed a barricade when protester numbers on Heretaunga St West began to swell to more than 100.

Inspector Dean Clifford said the meeting was ended early following police concerns the gathering had “become unsafe”.

“Police were monitoring the event due to expected protest activity. A number of people were trespassed from the premises and two people were arrested.

“Charges have not been laid at this stage and police inquiries into the matter are continuing.”

• 'Pull her pants down': Woman dragged out of anti co-governance meeting
• 'Embarrassed': Iwi rep vows to protest Stop Co-Governance meetings

Jeremy Tātere MacLeod protests the Stop Co-Governance meeting in the Hastings CBD on Monday night. Photo / Paul Taylor

Witnesses told  Hawke’s Bay Today  the meeting indoors was disjointed from the start, the result of numerous interruptions by protesters who had made it inside.

One witness - a protester - claimed a woman at the meeting “threw over” Batchelor’s laptop during his talk, sparking what the protester claimed was an altercation in which the woman was then assaulted.

Video on social media showed the moment the woman threw a laptop onto the ground, and then went to grab it again when Batchelor pushed her away, with Batchelor saying “don’t touch my equipment”.

A  Hawke’s Bay Today  photographer, who was invited inside the meeting for a period on the proviso that he not photograph it, confirmed the meeting had been consistently interrupted.

However, he had exited the meeting to photograph protesters outside when the altercation occurred, and was not immediately able to verify what had happened.

Haka ring out in the Hastings CBD. Photo / Paul Taylor

Julian Batchelor, silhouetted in the background, speaks to a Stop Co-Governance meeting in Hastings as protesters sing outside. Photo / Paul Taylor

The controversial country-wide tour has attracted fiery scenes at multiple stops.

A meeting in  Golden Bay  earlier this month descended into violence as attendees - including far-right extremist Lee Williams - and protesters clashed. Bookings have been cancelled on several occasions, often at the last minute, and organisers have also  struggled  to find venues willing to host meetings.

A Palmerston North woman was over the weekend dragged out of a meeting after protesting against the event, with some members of the crowd yelling “pull her pants down”.

Victoria Jakobs claims around   six people assaulted her. Police confirmed officers were outside the event when a member of the public exited the premises with a minor injury.

Inquiries revealed the woman received the injuries after she was forcibly removed by members of the public, and police were speaking to several people, police said.

Batchelor’s original itinerary for Hawke’s Bay includes another meeting at an undisclosed venue in Hastings on Tuesday night and two meetings in undisclosed venues in Napier on Wednesday and Thursday.

* Chris Hyde is the editor of Hawke’s Bay Today. He compiled this report from Hastings, using eyewitness accounts and video from the scene.

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Anti-co-governance group finding it difficult to book venues

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An anti-co-governance group - whose website likens the idea to 9/11 and apartheid - is finding it difficult to book venues for its nationwide roadshow.

But, Stop Co-Governance founder evangelist Julian Batchelor is confident saying for “every three that cancel, we have six that pop up like mushrooms all over the country”.

The meetings have already sparked controversy - with Police separating counter-protesters and attendees in Auckland’s Orewa earlier this month.

An online petition calling for Batchelor’s tour to be axed has already garnered thousands of signatures - alleging the roadshow incites racial disharmony between Māori and Pakeha.

Of the 35 meetings planned from now until mid-July, 14 venues are listed on the group’s website.

After being contacted by Newstalk ZB - eight of those have either cancelled, refused a booking, haven’t received a booking or are meeting to decide whether to decline.

The Ruakaka Recreation Centre posted to its Facebook page to say the Stop Co Governance event there, which was scheduled for tonight, has been cancelled.

The Cambridge Town Hall Community Trust has also confirmed its cancelled the group’s booking.

In its “Cambridge Town Hall Hirers Guide” it states the Trust or Destination Cambridge Incorporated reserves the right to cancel any hire at any time should they have reason to believe the hire will “adversely affect the smooth running of the Town Hall, the safety of the hirers, or DCI’s business, security or reputation”.

The Wellsford RSA was more straightforward, replying to questions about the booking with a simply put, “cancelled”.

After a club discussion, the Rotorua Bowling club canned its booking as well - and the Mount Maunganui Community Hall’s set to review the booking there at its next committee meeting.

But, public venue holders are in a tougher spot.

Despite its venues being listed on the group’s website, Timaru District Council hasn’t received a booking - and while Taupo District Council hasn’t either, it says its responsibility as a public venue holder is to make them available for everyone to use.

Council CEO Gareth Green says they would rent it out.

“It does not mean that we accept or agree with their stance. And in fact, the Taupo District Council clearly does not,” he said.

The group’s next confirmed meeting is at Auckland’s Mt Eden War Memorial Hall.

Auckland Council says if a booking’s accepted, it doesn’t mean council endorses the event’s content - but rather, it’s obliged to manage venues in a “non-discriminatory manner”.

Tauranga City Council says while the group’s beliefs don’t align with its views - its booking at the Historic Village Hall will remain.

But, it is monitoring the group and is open to changing its position if there’s evidence the group’s shifted away from “free speech”.

Waikato University law professor Al Gillespie says public authorities are obligated to adhere to the Bill of Rights, which comes with it freedom of speech.

He says you don’t have an absolute right to freedom of speech if it’s going to cause an upset to public safety.

But, public venues can’t ban something just because they think it may cause an incident.

“They should take guidance from the authorities, like the Police, about what the upset may look like and steps you can do to remedy that before actually banning them. That might mean extra security, for example”

Group founder Julian Batchelor has confidence he’ll be able to keep his show on the road.

“Some of the bookings have been difficult, others have been easy,” he says. “It depends who the booking people are. We’ve found that people who have some character and an IQ over room temperature, they know what’s going on ...”

On his group’s likening of co-governance to 9/11 - Batchelor admits, it’s not as severe.

“Obviously it’s not up there with 9/11 because people aren’t dying and we haven’t had planes crash into the venues.”

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