Police face protesters outside Julian Batchelor's Stop Co-Governance meeting in the Hastings CBD on Monday night. Several people were evicted and trespassed for disrupting the meeting, while two were arrested. Photo / Paul Taylor
Several people were evicted from Julian Batchelor’s Stop Co-Governance meeting in Hastings on Monday night, with some claiming they had no intention of protesting, while others now plan to protest future events.
Attendees and protestors turned up to a last-minute venue switch at a vacant Hastings CBD building on Heretaunga St West, following cancellations by other venues.
Batchelor spoke to a crowd of about 70 as a larger crowd of counter-protesters gathered outside, singing waiata and performing haka in a bid to drown out those trying to speak.
Ngāti Kahungunu had in the lead up to the tour’s arrival in Hawke’s Bay called on people to make noise at Batchelor’s meetings in the iwi’s rohe, to counter his rhetoric.
Police formed a barricade when protester numbers on Heretaunga St West began to swell to more than 100 and the event was halted, with police saying it had “become unsafe”.
Video on social media showed the moment a woman inside the meeting threw a laptop onto the ground, and then went to grab it again when Batchelor pushed her away, with Batchelor saying “don’t wreck my equipment”.
Inspector Dean Clifford confirmed earlier that a number of people were trespassed from the premises and two people were arrested.
Ariki Haira was one of those evicted but says he did not intend to protest the event and went to the meeting because he didn’t know what co-governance meant and he wanted to hear Batchelor’s perspective.
Haira said Batchelor made it clear no one should disrupt the meeting while he was talking, but several people in the crowd spoke up and he stopped until police arrived.
“People weren’t acting out or being abusive, they were just speaking out of hand,” Haira said.
“We were standing there and Julian is standing at the front so I just thought ‘why don’t we have a dialogue’. I said ‘Mr Batchelor, can you tell us what co-governance means or what your definition of no co-governance is and what that looks like’.”
He said others in the audience told him to shut up so Batchelor could respond, but Haira claims he abided by the rules and Batchelor wasn’t speaking while he waited for protestors to be removed.
“When the police started walking over to get rid of the other gentleman, he pointed me out and said ‘get rid of him too’,” Haira said.
Hawke’s Bay Today calls to Batchelor on Tuesday went unanswered.
Batchelor told Hawke’s Bay Today at the end of June he was not specifically excluding Māori from his meetings, only “activists”, and there was a guest list that told them who was allowed inside.
“They can object to what I am saying somewhere else, not inside my meeting. It is a private meeting.”
In the same interview, he also denied accusations of hateful rhetoric or racism, challenging critics to find examples.
Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated chairman Bayden Barber released a statement on Tuesday saying the iwi, and many others concerned had arrived on Monday night to “respectfully protest the event”.
“Some were able to enter the venue, and others remained outside. Throughout the event, people inside the venue attempted to engage in open debate, and challenge some of the dangerous mistruths shared,” Barber said.
“Let me be clear at the outset - we do not oppose the right of people to freely share their views in our region, regardless of whether we agree with those or not, but we are opposed to the right of freedom of speech being used as a guise to promote hate and discrimination.
“The debate may be academic for some, but for most of us, it is an attack on our identity, on our fight to improve the wellbeing of those in our families and communities.”
Haira said he had joined half a dozen people singing waiata and playing the guitar outside, which eventually grew to outnumber the people inside the meeting.
Haira said he saw videos from inside the meeting taken by his wife and he was not impressed with Batchelor’s claims, particularly a suggestion Māori use the Treaty of Waitangi “to get what we want”.
He said the audience was largely an older, Pākehā crowd, that may be threatened by the growing prominence of Māori culture and language in daily life but he still felt like he could identify with them.
“To me, these people looked isolated, they hadn’t been heard in a long time and Mr Batchelor kind of sings a song that perks their ears up in a sense,” he said.
“There were a couple of younger people there as well and I got the feeling that if we were at the bar they would be the kind of people that I would strike up a conversation with over a beer.”
He said he would try to attend other meetings - with Batchelor scheduled to continue meetings in Hawke’s Bay until at least Thursday - but he believed his face would be remembered and he would be stopped.
Denis O’Reilly said he decided to attend after he received a pamphlet for the event in his letterbox.
“I was intrigued by the amount of disinformation in them,” O’Reilly said.
He was allowed in, but it wasn’t long before he was trespassed for disrupting the meeting by challenging Batchelor.
He said he wasn’t planning on attending any further meetings, but he was going to write a list of rebuttals to the assertions made by Julian Batchelor in his tour pamphlets.
“My perspective is that the Treaty actually unites us, it doesn’t divide us.”
Neill Gordon said he believed three Pākehā were the first to be ejected from the meeting - O’Reilly, himself and a third person.
“Julian Batchelor is a Pākehā guy and I think that puts the onus on Pākehā to stand up and address this problem,” Gordon said.
“Hawke’s Bay should be out in force saying, ‘We don’t want your hate here, thanks’.”
James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz