Showground feud erupts

Two rival groups are claiming stewardship of an A and P show and grounds which has been part of their community since 1911.

In rural Ōhura one group is accusing the other of “staging a coup”.

A meeting attended by 85 people in the Matiere Hall on Monday night was told a family with local iwi affiliation launched a bid to take over the show committee at its annual meeting on August 20.

Draft minutes of the August meeting said the family arrived with supporters who had paid subscriptions to join the society the previous day, and their votes enabled the family to install president, Matthew Howe, vice president Les Howe and two committee members Maria Howe and Anthony Muraahi.

In turn, the newly elected committee has accused opponents of “mischief” and bringing the committee into disrepute, “while also creating a mutiny by operating to their own set of terms and conditions”.

“We recognise a group of people who were part of the committee have grievances. It has always been our intent to address issues promptly and effectively to continue good relations and focus on running the show,” a statement from the new administration said.

The new committee has since formed an incorporated show society to run the annual event, it having an identical name to the previous incorporated society.
Opponents say it changed locks on the gate providing access to the 3.2ha showgrounds, added security cameras, set up a show company and wrote a new constitution. This has a clause that in the event of the Show being wound up assets would be left to groups associated with the new committee.

Members of the original committee - secretary treasurer Linda Mackinder, Christopher Brears, Khristone Carmichael, Susan Dyson and Jenny Etherington – said they had received legal advice not to meet formally with the new one, which they say staged a coup.

Representatives of the new committee stayed away from the Monday night meeting, spokesperson Maria Howe saying they did not consider Matiere Hall to be an impartial venue.

They were also unhappy that they had not been advised who the neutral chairperson would be. It was Hamilton JP Graeme Kito, who has decades-long links to the King Country.

Some Howe family members live in a house next to the showgrounds on Ohura Rd, Nihoniho.

Maria Howe came out of this house to meet The News when we visited to take photos of the showgrounds ahead of the meeting on Monday.

In a brief conversation Maria she rejected allegations of “a takeover” and added that the new committee had already received donations from Taumarunui.

Draft minutes of the August 20 annual meeting quoted Les Howe as saying his group had reasons for taking the action – firstly to keep the show running.
He suggested another iwi organisation from Taumarunui was prepared to take over the land, and that “we are the original owners of the land… and you’d be better off working with us than going through Taumarunui”.

He said the new administration could do more for the showgrounds for the communities of Ōhura and Matiere and there were “big benefits for everyone”.

Howe said his group would continue to support the show: “we are not going to disconnect it, but you’ve got to remember we are doing it together, like a partnership kind of thing, and if you can’t see that well we might as well go on our own.”

He said the land the showgrounds stood upon had never been paid for, “they confiscated everything in the King Country”.

The annual meeting also briefly discussed previous ownership of the land and committee member Christopher Brears said as it stood, “we believe the show is owned under genuine European title”.

Brears wished the new committee members well with their search for justice, but pointed out the task at hand was running the next A&P Show. (A member of the incumbant committee later pointed out that with the exception of Maria Howe, no members of the committee had itself elected on August 20 had previous experience running an A & P Show).

A member of Ngāti Hauā from Taumarunui told the meeting this week she knew nothing of a group of Taumarunui iwi with their eye on the Ohura Showgrounds and she felt uneasy that Les Howe had been stated this, as it was almost certainly false.

Ruapehu mayor Weston Kirton said that on the face of it, it did not sound right for a new group to take over a show society that could trace its organisation back to 1911. He offered the district council’s resources to plot a successful path through the dispute.

A former show committee member, Pricilla Spooner, urged the two committees to talk to each other, a view backed by Ruapehu District Councillor Fiona Kahukura Hadley Chase.

However, Brears said it was hard to see how the two committees could agree on a compromise, when the new committee had acted unilaterally to displace the previous one, and then take over the society and its assets.

“If they had come to us a year or 18 months ago and explained their grounds for a land claim and given us their facts, perhaps we could have worked with them,” Brears said.

He suggested the new committee’s actions had been so over the top his committee would be within its rights to simply take back the management of the showgrounds.