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The Blenheim Bowing Club has changed its mind about hosting the controversial Stop Co-Governance Tour. (File photo)
A second Stop Co-Governance meeting in Blenheim is on hold after its venue realised “it’s not really us”.
The meeting was to be held at the Blenheim Bowling Club on Wednesday next week, however club secretary Malcolm Young said they had recently realised the meeting did not align with what they were trying to do as a sports club.
“When he [Julian Batchelor] first came to us, it was just another meeting, that kind of thing,” Young said.
“The more we looked at it, we thought, ‘no, we’re a sports club, and we don’t want that kind of stuff around’.”
Young said while they were not “overly worried”, some members of the club had read various articles that had come out about the tour.
“Originally, it just came across as a normal meeting, but the more we read, the more we had members saying, ‘it’s not really us’,” he said.
“And the numbers involved might have been a bit much for us anyway.”
Young said Batchelor’s team seemed “quite happy” because they had not gone as far as signing anything to do with hiring the venue.
Batchelor was campaigning against the decision-making model of co-governance in a roadshow across the country, with several more meetings still planned, including in Picton next Thursday. The venue for Picton was yet to be released.
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Anti co-governance speaker Julian Batchelor in Blenheim.
Batchelor’s website said he was “fighting against tribal rule, racism, separatism, and apartheid … for one person, one vote, for one law for all and racial unity”. It also claimed “protesters are simply pawns in the elite Māori plan to take over New Zealand”.
The Human Rights Commission had received complaints about the tour inciting racial disharmony.
Last month in Blenheim, filmmaker Keelan Walker tried to attend one of the meetings but Batchelor stopped him at the door, and said he…
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