Christopher Luxon meets with Xi Jinpeng at APEC Summit.
Hīkoi to arrive in Porirua today.
Brian Tamaki faces police action over march.
Video / NZ Herald
THREE KEY FACTS
Act’s Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in Parliament on Thursday with support from National, Act and NZ First.
National and NZ First have said they will not support it beyond the select committee stages.
The video of the Te Pāti Māori-led haka in Parliament has gone viral, and has been covered by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and the Daily Mail.
Jason Walls is Newstalk ZB’s political editor and has years of experience in radio and print, including in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for the NZ Herald and Interest.co.nz. He is also the chairman of the Press Gallery.
A combination of wordslikely to send even the most extreme insomniac into the sweet land of the slumber.
Throw in a panel discussion titled “Driving Prosperity: Financial Access and Economic Growth”and you’ve got yourself one hell of a nocturnal cocktail.
Not for Christopher Luxon.
The Prime Minister was well and truly in his element as he waxed lyrical about the importance of e-invoicing, business supply chains and the importance of financial infrastructure.
But his audience was less than engaged. Looking down from the pressbalcony, the audience was a sea of bowed heads; faces illuminated by the glow of phones.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon among several leaders at the Apec CEO summit in Lima, Peru.
Once such phone revealed a familiar image.
As the host asked about the difference between “formal, and informal banking”, a muted video of Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke tearing a copy of the Treaty Principles Bill in half, before launching into a haka with half the House, played on one man’s iPhone.
It was not a surprise to see the video had reached the Apec summit in the Peruvian capital of Lima.
The video’s gone viral – by now viewed likely hundreds of millions of times.
The New York Times, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Daily Mail and hundreds of other media outlets have reported on the haka in the House.
It was a familiar story to more than a few reporters at the Apec media village too.
One Korean reporter told the Herald he had seen the now-viral video; another from Colombia also said it had popped up on their news feed – “it was a beautiful sentiment,” she said.
Moments before going on air at midnight local time Friday night, a man asked 1News reporter Jack Tame about the video.
“Just as we were setting up, two minutes ago, someone came up to me and asked us where we’re from. I said New Zealand and he said: You know what, I saw this amazing video of this haka performed in your Parliament.”
Luxon was not at the first reading of the bill – he was on his way to Lima for the summit. But in the days leading up to that, he was putting as much distance between himself and the controversial bill as possible.
“A Treaty Principles Bill that is simplistic, that hopes to rewrite a debate and discussion over 184 years through the stroke of a pen, is not the way forward.”
Christopher Luxon waves next to Daniela Rigoli, NZ Ambassador to Chile, at the Apec CEO summit in Lima, Peru.
But try as he might, he can’t escape the impact the opposition to the bill has had on New Zealand, and now its international reputation. It seems not even half a world away is enough distance for the Prime Minister.
Asked if he was concerned that the discourse over the Treaty Principles Bill was spilling beyond New Zealand, he told reporters that this was not an issue that has been raised by any international leaders.
No one was suggesting it was.
Luxon met with major world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, for less than 25 minutes – the suggestion that the Treaty Principles Bill would be brought up was a laughable deflection from the Prime Minister.
He arrives back in New Zealand on Monday morning. The next day, the anti-Treaty Principles Bill hīkoi arrives in the capital. Thousands are expected to turn up outside Parliament.
Try as he might, Luxon will not be unable to ignore this mighty opposition – and that’s just the start. The six-month select committee process proceeding the successful first reading will dominate the news agenda for some time to come.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is not finding many friends.
Former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley has warned the bill was “inviting civil war”; former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson said the bill will greatly damage National’s relationship with Māori.
Expect comments like these to come thick and fast as the bill makes its way through hundreds of submissions during the select committee process.
This means six months of distraction for Luxon, his ministers and his MPs.
As he sits in the House, copping copious amounts of questions from the Opposition, no doubt the Prime Minister will be harking back to better, more simpler times: At the CEO summit at Apec, answering questions about the Driving Prosperity: Financial Access and.... zzzzzz.
