Mike Butler: What triggered Julian?

The day that correspondents on the tail of an email from Heritage New Zealand gloated about getting control of a picturesque Bay of Islands homestay property via “wahi tapu” legislation was the day Julian Batchelor launched his Stop Co-governance crusade.

Batchelor, a former teacher turned real estate salesman, has held dozens of hall meetings throughout New Zealand and distributed hundreds of thousands of booklets.

At those meetings he tells his story of an attack on his two-storey villa at 2am on January 1, 2016, that involved a haka by 20 Maori men on his front lawn, death threats, and $10,000 worth of damage.

That was just one of a series of incidents since 2008, when Batchelor bought the villa on 3.5-acres of land at Rawhiti on the Cape Brett peninsula about 35 minutes from Russell.