Knox Presbyterian Church cancelled a booking for Julian Batchelor's Stop Co-governance tour, weeks ago, but the tour's website has been advertising it as a location until this week. Photo: Supplied via LDR
Whakatāne police are rostering on extra staff to cope with any disturbances caused by the Stop Co-Governance Tour, expected to visit Whakatāne on Tuesday night.
The venue for the event is still under wraps and it is possible those who have hired the organisers a hall do not yet know who they have booked.
Julian Batchelor's Stop Co-Governance tour began in February travelling throughout New Zealand speaking against the government and local councils working in shared governance arrangements with Treaty of Waitangi partners.
Up until Wednesday morning, Batchelor's Stop Co-governance Tour of New Zealand website had been advertising the Knox Presbyterian Church as the venue for an event scheduled for tomorrow night.
This had been removed by Wednesday afternoon and yesterday, a new time of Tuesday night at 7pm had been provided, but no venue.
The website said the new venue had been confirmed and people should "check back for details".
A spokesperson for the Knox church said the organiser of the Voices for Freedom group, which has been hiring the church hall for its meetings for the past two years, had booked the church for the event, without revealing who the speaker was.
A few weeks ago, as soon as the church found out that the event was part of Batchelor's tour, they cancelled the booking but it was still appearing as the venue on the Stop Co-Governance website.
Police had spoken to members of the church to alert them to the fact that there would likely be protestors attending and that there had been disturbances in other towns where the tour had visited.
The church was told that at least five protest groups were organising protests at the Whakatāne meeting. The spokesperson said anyone taking bookings for their venues needed to check who the speaker was.
"It's not [Batchelor] that's making the booking, it's someone else that's making the booking. I phoned the guy that booked it and said, 'please, you need to take it off', because we were getting so many emails and phone calls and Facebook posts. We've been accused of racism and everything," the spokesperson said.
Whakatāne police Senior Sergeant Al Fenwick said there had been at least two meetings around the country recently that resulted in "a lot of disorder" with protestors being dragged out of the meeting in at least one case.
"Just to be very clear, we don't have an opinion one way or the other on what [Batchelor] is talking about. That's not our job," Fenwick said.
"I was just making them aware what was likely to happen if they did host it. From a policing point of view, we are going to have extra staff working that night, just in case."
He was pleased it was no longer going to be held over the weekend.
"Saturday night is one of our high demand times anyway, so we didn't want all our frontline response staff tied up, to the detriment to our response times to other life-and-death or serious jobs. It's just a draw on our resources that we don't need when we've got plenty of other stuff to keep us busy.
"It just creates extra headaches for us when we don't know what's happening and there's likely to be quite passionate people on both sides of the argument, who may or may not cross that line when it comes to what's acceptable and what isn't."
Police were also aware that if the roadshow could not find a venue, they could just hold the meeting in a public place, Fenwick said.
"In other places around the country when they've had their booking bumped, they've moved to other locations at short notice."
Free speech works both ways, councillor says
Whakatāne district councillor Nandor Tanczos said he fully supported Knox Church in its choice not to host the event.
"I'm all for free speech, but free speech doesn't oblige anyone to give you a venue, a stage or a microphone."
Whakatāne district councillor Nandor Tanczos Photo: Supplied via LDR
He said though he did not dispute Batchelor's right to express his views, he hoped he would be just as prepared to listen to other's views.
"I might see if I can get in the door and have a listen. But if I have a listen, I hope to be able to have my say as well, because the whole [anti] co-governance thing, I think, is misinformed."
He was optimistic that the event would be peaceful.
"I wouldn't have thought anyone was going to get violent. I would be very surprised if anything like that happened. What I see is people looking to have their free speech.
"He's got a right to free speech but so do protestors. People have a right to say, 'we don't want that in our community. Go home.' Good on them for expressing their free speech.
"Hopefully, if it does go ahead and if people go along to protest, everyone stays well behaved, but people have a right to say 'we don't want that korero in our community'.
"I think it's really unhelpful, divisive talk. It's about creating the environment for racist sentiment to flourish really."
Tanczos said, at a local level, Whakatāne District Council was putting a lot of effort into building positive relationships with tangata whenua.
"Our council, historically, has treated tangata whenua extremely poorly. It's shameful and has created a legacy of understandable mistrust. Now we're making a lot of effort to ... be responsive to Māori aspirations and goals and to work co-operatively to support those.
"To me, that's the way we have to go as a nation. This country was founded on stolen Māori land, the dispossession of Māori resources and the destruction of Māori culture and political systems. That's the reality.
"No one should feel guilty. What we do have is the opportunity to create something really amazing and unique around the world that people can look to as guidance for how can an indigenous people and a settler colonial society actually find peace together."
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air