Rotary Meeting – Visit to Hamilton East – Wednesday 18th May
Approximately 20 members from Cambridge headed across to the Hamilton East Club at Ruakura Campus.
The Cambridge crew arrived early and milled around with a few drinks meeting the Hamilton East Club as they arrived.
Our MC for the evening was Ian Hook and the meeting started at 6:10pm.
MC Ian welcomed the Hamilton East Rotary members and the visitors from Cambridge.
President Judith welcomed us as guests and talked about the evening ahead.
Dinner started at 6:15 and was a very nice 2 course meal.
Our President Ian was welcomed to address us all and thanked Hamilton East for the invite.
A raffle followed and there were 5 draws and the Cambridge Rotary Club took away a good majority of the prizes with Bev Heron winning some wine and John Bishop winning twice.
Neville from the Hamilton East Club was the sergeant and ran through a scenario where the Hamilton East Club were going to capture President Putin and bring him back to NZ for trial by our guest Judge Aidan Warren.
All of the Hamilton East members in some way or form were involved in this plot involving boats, aeroplanes, spies on the ground and Neville managed to fine all the members in the room.
Our Ted Mason, Cambridge Rotary Club Sergeant fined everyone who was living in a Retirement Centre and then also fined everyone who didn’t which covered the whole Club.
We then had a Quiz which was enjoyable. We had 2 teams sitting at each table and answered a raft of questions relating to Hamilton and the Waikato area and team 2a took away the prize which consisted of Andrew Bateman, David Partis and Neville from the Hamilton East Club. A box of Roses chocolates each was the prize.
Then there was the auction, 3 items up for offers.
- 3 night weekend and a bach in Pauanui – sponsored by Neville Woodcock, Hamilton East
- A large Scottish Highland frozen meat pack – sponsored by Don Shirely
- A Tiva heater – sponsored by Greet van der Helm
All 3 auction items were secured by Cambridge Rotary members, Brian Palmer took out the 3 night weekend at Pauanui, Ian Grant took out the Scottish meat pack and Nigel took out the Tiva heater.
Don Shirley introduced our guest speaker Judge Aidan Warren. Judge Aidan is a Judge on the Maori Land Court and also a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Judge Aidan’s speaker slot was structured around a Question & Answer session by Don Shirley, a retired Lawyer and Partner of local law firm McCaw Lewis.
Judge Aidan was raised in the Hawkes Bay and grew up a son of a blend of European and Maori parents. His Grandfather sat him on his knee just before his Grandfather died and said to him..”become a lawyer”..so that set Judge Aidan up for his course in life.
Following University Judge Aidan secured a position at McCaw Lewis in Hamilton from 2000 to 2021.
Judge Aidan was invited to sit on the Maori Land Court, the oldest court in the land. The Maori Land Court’s role in life is to judge on Maori Land issues and grievances relating to 5% of the total land in New Zealand which is Maori Land.
Judge Aidan talked about the trials and tribulations of being a Judge in this court and talked about sometimes a piece of land has hundreds of interested parties and some of these are not present and decisions are hard to make in these situations.
Judge Aidan was then invited to sit on the Waitangi Tribunal. The purpose of the Tribunal is to hear breaches by the Crown against the Treaty of Waitangi and he said there were only a few grievances left. The Northland one involving Ngapuhi covers a wide area and involves multiple tribes who didn’t all see eye to eye.
He likened the example to an analogy of trying to Judge over bringing England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland to the table and getting them to all agree on a Land dispute. Yeah, right, that is never going to happen and the Ngapuhi Iwi claim in Northland against the Treaty of Waitangi sat in the same situation.
Everyone enjoyed Judge Aidans speech and President Ian from Cambridge Rotary Club wrapped up the Cambridge portion of the evening and President Judith from Hamilton Easy concluded the evenings programme.
Both Presidents talked about this becoming a regular event that we shared Vocational meetings together.
The evening concluded ontime at 8:35pm