Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke was among those to perform a haka, at Parliament, after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, on November 14, 2024. Photo / RNZ
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke was among those to perform a haka, at Parliament, after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, on November 14, 2024. Photo / RNZ
Opinion by Thomas Coughlan
Thomas Coughlan, Political Editor at the New Zealand Herald, loves applying a political lens to people's stories and explaining the way things like transport and finance touch our lives.
But it is also the place in which the tiniest of differences are enlarged to Himalayan magnitude thanks to the intransigence and pigheadedness of those involved.
Sadly, in the case of Te Pāti Māori vs. The Privileges Committee, we have a case of the latter.
The committee was investigating a clear breach of Parliament’s rules last year when co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, and MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, left their seats to perform a haka during tallying of votes on the Treaty Principles Bill.
Haka are allowed in the House in a number of circumstances, but in cases like this, the Speaker needs to be notified in advance, and it should take place after the tallying of votes. The haka came too soon, and MPs came too close to the Act Party seats, an act of intimidation that should not be allowed. Act’s MPs have the right to represent their voters without intimidation, the same as any other MPs.
But that’s all there is to this. A call to the Speaker, a few seconds later and a few steps away from Act, and the haka would be a vastly smaller issue — if it were an issue at all.
The House planned on Tuesday to discuss recommendations of the committee and to possibly confirm the recommendations of its majority to hand down an unprecedented 21-day suspension for Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi alongside a seven-day suspension for Maipi-Clarke.
Leader of the House Chris Bishop’s decision on Tuesday to delay the debate to June 5 has given Parliament some breathing space.
A quick poll of MPs from across the House suggests most think a compromise should be found, but no one agrees what that compromise should be, how much compromise it should entail and from whom and, perhaps most importantly, who should be the one to pick up the phone.
Privileges Committee chair Judith Collins begins the debate to a full chamber and empty public gallery. Photo / Mark Mitchell
No party has an unblemished record when it comes to parliamentary conduct. What frustrates other MPs - and not just those on the Government side, but in Labour as well - is that Te Pāti Māori is the only party to use the House almost exclusively as a stage for social media. Everyone does it. No one does it quite as much or with quite as much disruption to everyone else.
This is where the party’s critics are right to be concerned — Te Pāti Māori seems to enjoy breaking rules in order to post about having broken them. MPs on the committee are within their right to be concerned about how to deal with this.
The Government finds this disrespect shown to Parliament to be disrespectful to the voters who sent them to the Treasury benches.
Its frustration runs even deeper than that, with Government Māori MPs taking great offence and hurt at some of Te Pāti Māori’s attacks, particularly Maipi-Clarke’s comments to NZ First leader Winston Peters last year that his “Māori blood is wasted”.
The frankly OTT punishment recommended by the Government side of the Privileges Committee should be seen in this context. While the committee was strictly investigating the events around haka, it seems fair to assume the harsh recommendation owes at least something to these aggravating factors.
But it isn’t just the Government that would be happy for Te Pāti Māori to get a bit of a flick. Some Labour MPs are quietly worried that Te Pāti Māori’s outrageous campaigning style and impossible promises risk making the left side of politics impossibly unruly.
The party takes little effort in Parliament, and campaigns on outrageous and unrealistic promises in the knowledge that Labour will get the blame when they turn out to be undeliverable.
Te Pāti Māori doesn’t appear to care if Parliament is functional, but Labour does, knowing that in the not-too-distant future, it’s going to need a functional Parliament to pass some legislation.
Parliament’s patience is wearing thin and a lot of the frustration MPs feel is quite justified.
But whether Te Pāti Māori is a nuisance isn’t the issue the House is being asked to decide. That issue is what to do with the recommendations of the Privileges Committee on the rules broken by the haka.
There’s a risk that MPs are projecting all of that angst about Te Pāti Māori onto the haka, when it might better be resolved via other means.
David Seymour starts to drive a Land Rover up the steps of Parliament, in a screenshot from the Act Party's video of the event. Photo / Act Party
The main point of contention is the severity of the punishment.
Almost everyone (apart from Te Pāti Māori) agrees that under the current rules of the House, the timing of the haka and the way it was performed (going far too close to the Act benches) was a breach of the rules. The co-leaders’ lack of contrition hasn’t helped things.
The problem is the penalties that the committee recommended, which, if they were adopted, would be the most severe punishments by far doled out by the House by quite a way — the next most severe suspension was just three days.
Even if people consider the actions of Te Pāti Māori merit a more severe punishment, they probably do not merit a punishment seven times as severe as that.
From where could a compromise emerge?
Labour leader Chris Hipkins offered to amend the punishment to a single day’s suspension for the co-leaders and nothing for Maipi-Clarke, after meeting with his party’s caucus on Tuesday morning.
On his way into that caucus meeting Hipkins was hesitant to use a filibuster to drag out proceedings (the arcane rules around this debate allow for something closer to an American-style filibuster than is usually allowed), probably sensing such silly tactics would go down poorly with voters who might see them as self-centred.
The chair of Labour’s Māori caucus, Willie Jackson, a strong ally of Hipkins who is also close to Te Pāti Māori’s president John Tamihere, seemed more keen to keep all options on the table.
Labour might have been willing to go up to three days’ suspension as a compromise, perhaps even five days, but that doesn’t appear to be enough for the Government. Even five days is a long, long, way from the 21 days the governing parties are seeking.
The problem is that the Government’s MPs on the committee have started the bidding at 21 days’ suspension, making it very difficult to find a sensible compromise without losing face.
If the Government agreed to discount the penalty down to three days, it would look like a pretty serious vote of no confidence in its MPs on the Privileges Committee, which includes not just senior National MP Collins, but Peters as well.
But National is - as it so often likes to remind voters - a broad church, and not everyone inside the party is as onside with the recommendation from the committee.
Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka went over to Ngarewa-Packer’s seat and kissed her on the cheek earlier in the day, an obvious sign of sympathy.
And at least some in the Government quietly wonder whether it’s fair to throw the book at Te Pāti Māori when David Seymour and Brooke van Velden got off with nothing for driving a vehicle up Parliament’s steps and dropping the c-word in Parliament (neither MP was considered to have broken the rules).
Potaka isn’t the only one with affection for Te Pāti Māori’s MPs. Many other Nats feel the same. Parliament’s a fairly social place. Te Pāti Māori’s MPs are good fun.
Away from the parliamentary livestream, the MPs get on fairly well. Ngarewa-Packer is kind and Waititi is a good laugh - evinced today by his chuckle during Peters’ off-colour joke connecting “Māorification” with getting a sun tan.
Winston Peters has voiced concern about parliamentary standards. Photo / NZ Herald
Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi could make things easier for themselves by simply apologising. That would clearly open the door to a compromise by allowing the Government to discount the punishment to a level the opposition might agree to.
Former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe is meant to be looking at the issue of tikanga in the House. Apparently not every party has been enthusiastically engaging with his work, perhaps because many MPs see there’s more to be gained digging in on both sides of this issue than there is in finding compromise.
All of this angst is being projected on to what is really quite a pedestrian issue.
The Herald’s rough poll of MPs would suggest that most agree on an approximation of the following:
Haka are already allowed in the House.
The rules around when and how they are allowed are fairly liberal at the moment, but could be liberalised further to allow some impromptu haka.
They should not involve crossing the floor to other MPs’ seats, but could maybe be liberalised to allow some movement.
Votes should not be interrupted at any point, but haka could be allowed after voting is tallied.
That’s all there is in this - the same haka, a few seconds later, and a few steps away from Act’s seats, might have generated a fraction, if any, of the uproar it did. In future, a haka of this kind might even be within the rules.
There’s no denying Te Pāti Māori’s general contempt for Parliament and some of the people represented within it pose a very serious challenge to the place.
The fact that no one in the chamber can admit that in the specific case of the haka, the transgression is really one of seconds and centimetres bodes ill for Parliament’s ability to address it.
Thomas Coughlan, Political Editor at the New Zealand Herald, loves applying a political lens to people’s stories and explaining the way things like transport and finance touch our lives.
