The ‘Stop Co-governance’ campaign stopped off at Cromwell on Tuesday night (June 27), holding a meeting at Lowburn Hall that drew about 25 attendees and 15 protestors. 

Campaign organiser Julian Batchelor told the Central App the previous day that the meetings he is holding around the country are private events and who can enter is “a discernment issue”.

Asked about reports he had denied entry to Te Tauihi iwi members in Blenheim, Julian said the meetings "have a guest list".

"Anybody can get on the guest list but they have to pass the criteria," he said.

Those criteria were mainly that they were going to be respectful, he said.

"They are private meetings. We were advised by police to make the meetings private, and then if somebody gets into the meeting and isn't respectful, we can eject them for trespassing.”

Central Otago District mayor Tim Cadogan was one of those who did attend, and said he had wrestled with how to approach a “meeting that had drawn a lot of interest in the district in which I am mayor, and generally when something like that is happening I do go”.

“On the other side, I’d seen some video of what Julian Batchelor had to say and I found it fundamentally something I didn’t agree with. But I thought until I went and heard for myself, I wouldn’t know. 

“It was quite intimidating to walk in, and this happened to everyone, not just me as mayor, to be told that if you speak, you will be trespassed and removed.”

He said to hear the protestors who were outside singing waiata referred to as activists “kinda summed things up” and he quietly left after about 20 minutes.

“When I heard that our nation was at war with 1,000 elite Maori, I couldn’t listen to any more.

“He is spreading hatred, and using misinformation to fan that hatred,” Tim said, speaking of Julian Batchelor.

“If there was one thing I agreed with Julian Batchelor, it was that there has not been an adequate explanation by government or anybody else of what co-governance is, and these people are filling the void that is left by that.”

Lowburn Hall committee chairman Jack Davis also attended, and said he had been interested in hearing what Julian had to say.

He had been surprised by the backlash the committee had received for accepting the hall booking, but they believed in giving everybody a fair go.

He said he had learned more about co-governance from the meeting “but truth is the most flexible thing ever invented, and I’m still not sure what to believe”.

Vincent Community Board member Jayden Cromb was one of the 15 people protesting outside the hall, and said the protest was peaceful, and some of those attending engaged in conversation with the protestors.

“The conversations I was trying to have with this group was around education,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there who view co-governance as that their rights are going to be taken away.”