Treaty Principles Bill: Labour’s Peeni Henare facing privileges committee for haka in the House

Senior Labour MP Peeni Henare faces his “first trip to the principal’s office” tomorrow evening when he goes before Parliament’s privileges committee for his involvement in a now world-famous haka inside the House.

The haka, started by Te Pāti Māori’s Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, was performed during voting after the first reading of the controversial Treaty Principles Bill in November.

While several opposition MPs stood up from their seats to join the haka, Henare, Maipi-Clarke and Te Pāti Māori leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were referred to the committee for moving away from their seats to perform.

Te Pāti Māori MPs have been asked to appear before the privileges committee at the end of the month, a spokesperson for the party said.

“Our tikanga [is] that our MPs are heard as one group, given the haka was a unified response and we are a collective culture. We have not yet responded to the request to appear.”

Members of Te Pāti Māori perform a haka in front of Act MPs during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill in the House at Parliament. Photo / Adam Pearse

Henare faces the committee at 5.30pm on Wednesday for a 30-minute public hearing.

He invited people to watch the hearing, saying “Haere mai”.

“They summon me, I go. In my 11 years in Parliament, it will be my first trip to the principal’s office.”

Asked if he would have support from whānau at the hearing or expected a waiata to be performed, he quipped: “They might do a haka for me”.

The haka garnered international attention, including millions of views on social media.

Speaking to the Morning Shift podcast late last year, Maipi-Clarke said Waititi, her party’s co-leader, was originally supposed to rip the bill and start the haka, but instead, the bill was handed to her.

“I wasn’t even supposed to do that,” she said.

“But I knew I was going to get landed with something on that day and we’ve been prepping for about a year or so.”

Maipi-Clarke was “named” and suspended from Parliament for 24-hours for leading the haka. Being “named” is one of the most serious – and rare – punishments in Parliament.

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

At the time, the Minister behind the bill, Act leader David Seymour, said the haka was designed to stop the people who represent New Zealanders from having their say and “to get in other people’s faces”, especially because those doing it left their seats.

MPs can be referred to the privileges committee if a speaker believes they may have broken the rules of Parliament, breaching privilege. A question of privilege is raised by an MP by making a complaint to the Speaker.

The privileges committee does not always agree with the complainants – for example, Michael Wood was partly exonerated by the committee in 2023 after he was referred over declaring his Auckland Airport shares.

In this case, Speaker Gerry Brownlee made the referrals to the committee after letters from several MPs, including NZ First’s Shane Jones, National’s Suze Redmayne, and Act’s Todd Stephenson, complaining about the MPs’ actions.

The committee, chaired by senior National MP Judith Collins, will determine whether Henare’s behaviour broke the rules of the House and recommend possible consequences.

As the Herald reported in January, this current Parliament has had five referrals to the committee, making it the naughtiest in recent history.

Since the haka late last year, Parliament’s justice select committee has heard 80 hours of oral submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill.

The Act Bill is very unlikely to become law as National and NZ First have stressed numerous times they will not support it at second reading.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.