Evidence backing stop co-governance campaign labelled ‘ill-informed’

A stop co-governance nationwide roadshow delivered flawed and inaccurate interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi when it stopped in Timaru, according to a Waimate man with more than 40 years researching and writing about New Zealand history.

Tom O’Connor, a retired, bi-lingual journalist and also a Waimate District councillor, is also not a fan of co-governance but said some of the comments from Julian Batchelor, a Christian evangelist leading the campaign that has attracted criticism and protests across the country were “laughable”.

A Nelson City Councillor who attended a meeting in Nelson on June 10 said he had to take a dip in the sea to cleanse himself before going home.

O’Connor said “most, but not all, of the history of the Treaty of Waitangi as presented was reasonably accurate, but the interpretation of that history was seriously flawed and inaccurate”.

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“He seems to have very little understanding of Māori social or political structures and made some outrageously inaccurate sweeping generalisations about Māori, politicians and the news media.”

O’Connor said Batchelor “would not allow questions or debate, so it became a lecture of his own personal, ill-informed, opinion”.

The only positive thing that O’Connor saw at the first of two nights in Timaru was that there were a number of people in the 50-60 strong crowd who really wanted to have an honest, well-informed conversation about co-governance.

“They didn’t get that or anything like it. Instead they got a tirade of ill-informed bigotry.

“People who tried to politely question some of his early comments were very quickly shut down.”

O’Connor said there were a number of negatives with some of the most serious ones “calling politicians liars and accusing them and the news media of being part of an orchestrated campaign to destroy democracy”.

“People we disagree with are not necessarily wrong or dishonest, as he suggested several times.

“Of particular concern to me was the suggestion that there was going to be a war over co-governance.

“While Mr Batchelor did say, almost as an afterthought, that he was opposed to violence, it was an unfortunately unwise comment to make in that setting.”

However, O’Connor does think “many people, myself included, see co-governance, particularly in local government and the public service, as contrary to democracy”.

O’Connor has written about his stance on co-governance before saying the “law actually prohibits race-based divisions”.

“There has never been any impediment to any ethnic group in New Zealand from getting involved in politics at any level,” he wrote in July 2022.

Batchelor, who says on the Stop Co-Governnance website that if Labour wins the next election, New Zealand as a nation is finished, also says he has witnessed New Zealand slowly change over the years, particularly the past 10 years.

“Essentially, ‘co-governance’ is code for ‘a coup’. It’s a take-over of our country. Right now, it feels like we are living in an occupied country,” the website says.

The roadshow was in Timaru on Thursday and Friday.