Mark Freeman
The early-evening silence of a Wellington suburb is shattered by upbeat music and the amplified shouts of a woman’s voice.
About 80 protesters from the Poneke Anti-Fascist Coalition stand on the footpath outside a wooden church hall, chanting “Racist, go home!” over recorded music blaring through a portable stereo system. Protesters’ signs read “Fascist go home”, “No room for white supremacy”, “Haere atu racist trash” and “Honour te Tiriti”.
A number of people heading for the hall feel intimidated as they walk through the crowd of protesters and are subjected to verbal abuse. A handful of police stand by on the footpath.
Several protesters try to talk their way into the hall, which is the venue of an invitation-only meeting, but they are turned away when their names aren’t found on the guest list. However, one protester, a local Anglican priest, manages to slip into the building. He sits down and ignores requests for him to leave until the police are brought inside and persuade him to go.
The meeting starts just after 7 pm, and the 45 members of the audience listen intently to the target of the protesters’ vitriol, Julian Batchelor, the founder of Stop Co-Governance. He’s a little distracted by the protesters’ noise but continues talking, increasing the volume of his microphone to compete with the cacophony outside. Even though the talk has been planned as a private event in order to avoid such a protest, somehow word about it has got out to the “anti-fascists”.
At one point, a few protesters walk alongside the hall shouting, chanting and banging on the windows. A young man in a skirt breaks a window. He’s accompanied from the property by police officers.
At 9 pm the protesters finally turn off their sound system under instructions from the police. Although the Stop Co-Governance meetings usually go until about 10 pm, this one is shortened by half an hour to accommodate the police, who want to ensure people’s safety in exiting the property.
Audience members leave the premises escorted by police through the now-depleted crowd of protesters who call out “Racists!” and “Shame on you!” One audience member later blogs, “As I left the crowd there was a young woman there who looked at me with such earnest concerned disgust and just said ‘shame on you’. But she doesn’t know anything about me or what I think or why I came. It was a tough experience overall.”
Julian Batchelor is used to this type of drama by now. For four months he’s been confronted with protests as he has toured New Zealand talking to audiences about the dangers of co-governance and its lack of foundation in the Treaty of Waitangi. He argues, counter to the official current narrative, that when the Maori chiefs signed the treaty they ceded sovereignty to the Crown. He also says the ideas of the principles of the treaty and treaty partnership go against the intent of the treaty.
The day after the Wellington meeting, I talk to him online. He denies the claims of his opponents that he’s a racist. He believes all people and people groups are equal. “They’re born equal and they should be treated equally. If I believe that, then I can’t possibly be a racist.”
The protesters are mixed up about what they think, he says. “They think that any criticism of Maori makes you a racist and that’s simply not true. They equate constructive criticism with racism.”
Accusing him and other alternative voices of racism is “a psychological trick that they are using to shut down opposition. So they think it’s a magic card they can pull out and close people down who oppose them.”
There’s a huge psychological war going on which is aided and abetted by the media and the government, Mr Batchelor says.
“New Zealand is awash with misinformation about the treaty, about Maori land loss, about land confiscations and so on, and it’s all to bring guilt and shame upon the people of New Zealand.”
On the subject of the Treaty of Waitangi, he says supporters of co-governance don’t understand it.
“They’ve swallowed the government narrative that Maori have been ripped off and cheated and they need to have the whole country given back to them, and that they didn’t cede sovereignty and that they have a right to have New Zealand. And none of that is in the treaty. This is all just government spin and narrative.”
He says his group is trying to bring honour to the original treaty in the Maori language.
“We’re bringing that Maori treaty back into focus and its original meaning. We’re actually the people doing what these protesters are protesting about. They always have banners [saying] ‘Honour the Treaty.’ I am the guy honouring the treaty.”
“If we went back to the original treaty in Maori, we would have a beautiful country because the original treaty is about democracy, equality, one law for all, no apartheid, no racism.”