Parliament voted today to enact record suspensions for three Te Pāti Māori MPs who performed a haka to protest the Treaty Principles Bill.
Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke received a seven-day ban while co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi were barred for 21 days. Three days had been the longest ban for a lawmaker from Parliament before.
The Te Pāti Māori MPs performed the haka last November to oppose a widely unpopular bill, now defeated, that they said would reverse Māori rights.
But the protest drew global headlines and provoked months of fraught debate among lawmakers about what the consequences for the lawmakers’ actions should be and whether Parliament welcomed or valued Māori culture — or felt threatened by it.
A committee of the lawmakers’ peers in April recommended the lengthy punishments in a report that said the lawmakers were not being punished for the haka itself, but for striding across the floor of the debating chamber towards their opponents while they did it. Maipi-Clarke today rejected that, citing other instances where legislators have left their seats and approached their opponents without sanction.
It was expected that the suspensions would be approved, because Government parties have more seats in Parliament than the opposition and had the necessary votes to affirm them. But the punishment was so severe that Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee in April ordered a free-ranging debate among lawmakers and urged them to attempt to reach a consensus on what repercussions were appropriate.
No such accord was reached today. During hours of at times emotional speeches, MPs rejected opposition proposals for lighter sanctions.
There were suggestions that opposition lawmakers might extend the debate for days or even longer through filibuster-style speeches but, with the outcome already certain and no one’s mind changed, all lawmakers agreed that the debate should end.
