The SWMAC is being disbanded and a new incorporated club called the South Waikato International Modelers (SWIM) has been formed.
This group will promise to follow all the MFNZ rules and regulations -- but I fear that it may be the beginning of the end for what was once a vibrant club of like-minded individuals who just had a snot-load of fun flying their models in a safe and entertaining fashion.
You have no idea how sad that makes me. Why can't SWMAC promise to follow the regs and then do what everyone else does: follow in form but not in substance? Just because you have safety officers, high muckety-mucks and the like doesn't mean they absolutely have to lord it over everyone in the club. You can function as usual and these people would just be official contacts for the totalitarian machine that thinks it's Model Flying New Zealand: absolutely essential to preventing the total elimination of human life in New Zealand that would happen without their benevolent dictatorship. Hey, that's good! I'll suggest that as their tag line. They already like me, I think...
I am amazed that some young, hungry lawyer trying to establish a reputation for himself has not come to you with a proposition to take this petty SWDC and MFNZ to court for violating your rights to due process and negotiate with the CAA, which seems only a reluctant patsy to the machinations of the other two, and let you emerge fully victorious and with the claws of these two dictatorial organizations trimmed nicely. I know in the United States, all this would be strictly illegal, and New Zealand, claiming to be a nation of laws as well, could well agree that you have been severely wronged.
I hate to see you slink away from the battlefield as if you were in the wrong, accepting draconian changes that could "be the beginning of the end for what was once a vibrant club." You are totally in the right here. Nothing you have done is severe enough to warrant the death penalty for your organization. (and we thought New Zealand no longer practiced capital punishment)