Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says National isn't willing to make any concessions on the Privileges Committee recommendations.
The Privileges Committee recommended suspending Te Pāti Māori MPs for a haka performed during the vote on the Treaty Principles Bill.
Co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi face 21-day suspensions. MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke faces seven days.
If adopted, they could be absent from the House on Budget day on Thursday. The committee’s recommendations will be debated in Parliament today.
Key Te Pāti Māori representation in the House on Budget day appears to be hanging by a thread after compromise talks over how to punish the “haka heard around the world” came to a dead end.
The haka, in November, followed Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke dramatically ripping upa copy of the Treaty Principles Bill, and performing a haka supported by Opposition MPs.
A Privileges Committee report last week recommended suspending her for seven days, and co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi for 21 days – all without pay – for crossing the floor in a potentially intimidatory way, while disrupting the voting process.
Committee chair Judith Collins defended the recommendations as commensurate with the unprecedented behaviour, but Labour and the Greens have slammed them as grossly disproportionate, with Labour leader Chris Hipkins saying they’re indicative of a “tin-pot dictatorship”.
The longest suspension in Parliament’s 171-year history is three sitting days.
Te Pāti Māori has organised a protest this afternoon at Parliament, which coincides with the House debating the committee’s recommendations. It is expected to be such a fiery affair that the public gallery will be closed for safety and security reasons.
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke in Parliament during debate on the Treaty Principles Bill. Photo / RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
If the recommendations are adopted, the three Te Pāti Māori MPs will be absent from the House on Budget day on Thursday. One way to see their voices heard is for Opposition parties to use filibuster tactics so the debate won’t be concluded by then, thereby pushing the start of any suspension beyond this week.
Negotiations between Labour and National for a compromise to avoid a lengthy debate came to nothing yesterday, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon saying there was no chance of National making concessions.
If that meant the debate dragging out beyond today, “that’s the choice of the Opposition”, he said in his post-Cabinet press conference.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis added that passing Budget legislation is “what keeps the lights on”, and she would be surprised if any MP would want to impede that. New Zealanders were “sick of the circus in Parliament”, she added.
Hipkins said the Labour caucus will meet this morning and decide how long the debate should last.
But a prolonged debate was a waste of Parliament’s time, he said, echoing Luxon in saying “the public are frankly sick of MPs talking about themselves”.
“I think there are far more important things for us to be debating in Parliament at the moment, pay equity being a very good example,” Hipkins said.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A punishment was appropriate because Te Pāti Māori MPs had broken the rules, but he said a 21-day suspension was “the sort of thing that you would see in a banana republic”.
“Doing it right before the Budget makes that even more egregious. It says that those MPs can’t participate in the Budget ... It is the sort of action you’d see from a tin pot dictatorship, not a thriving democracy as New Zealand prides itself on having.”
The Greens support a filibuster but it’s unclear whether such tactics would succeed without Labour’s numbers, given there needs to be enough MPs making enough 10-minute speeches. Ngarewa-Packer did not respond to a request for comment.
The debate is expected to be heated, given the recommendations are so unprecedented:
Suspensions are rare, with only two so far in Parliament’s history: for one and for three days.
Committee recommendations have previously almost always been adopted unanimously, and always by a combination of governing and opposition MPs. The current ones have divided the committee along Government and opposition lines.
One of the committee MPs considered the actions so inflammatory that they asked the Clerk of the House for advice on imprisonment for contempt of Parliament.
The Clerk, in general advice prepared for the committee, characterised any long suspension as a “substantial change in practice”, which should have “broad support” and clear reasons explaining why it’s proportionate.
The punishments, if adopted, would hinder minority representation in Parliament.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee emphasised the latter point last week when he said: “There’s a long-standing convention for Speakers to safeguard the fair treatment of the minority”.
Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Jason Dorday
It’s up to the House, not the Speaker, to adopt or amend the recommendations, but the issue was of such importance that Brownlee said any MP in the House can take a call in today’s debate, as well as on any proposed amendment – opening the door to filibuster tactics.
The debate won’t disrupt House proceedings on Budget day, on Thursday, because the Budget debate takes precedence over the House’s general business.
If it doesn’t conclude today, it’s up to the Speaker to say when the debate will resume. Doing so on Wednesday would eat into a members’ day and, if still unfinished, potentially into other government business when the House sits again after Budget day on June 3.
A decision to resume after Wednesday could allow the MPs in question to be present in the House on Budget day.
What’s all the fuss about?
The haka took place in November last year during a vote on the Treaty Principles Bill’s first reading.
It started with Maipi-Clarke tearing a copy of the bills to shreds, then leaving her seat to launch into a haka as Brownlee sought to stop her. Other Opposition MPs joined in, with four MPs leaving their seats in the House to do so: Maipi-Clarke, Ngarewa-Packer, Waititi and Labour’s Peeni Henare.
Maipi-Clarke, Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi crossed the floor to haka right in front of the Act MPs, including leader David Seymour, the architect of the bill.
Ngarewa-Packer pointed at Act MPs using a gesture “similar to a finger gun”, the committee’s report said, repeating the gesture at the end of the haka and “simulating a firing motion”.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspended the House and ordered the public gallery to be cleared after a haka was started by Te Pāti Māori MPs, and joined by those in the public galleries on November 14, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell
When the House resumed, Brownlee said Maipi-Clarke’s conduct was “appallingly disrespectful” and “grossly disorderly”, and moved that she be suspended for a day, and named, which the House agreed to.
She met with Brownlee the following day and apologised for “putting him in a predicament by disrupting the processes he had to conduct that day”.
Brownlee later referred the four MPs who left their seats to the Privileges Committee. In March, it found Henare had engaged in “undoubtedly disorderly behaviour”, and while his actions fell short of a contempt of Parliament, it recommended he apologise, which he did.
Last week the committee found the conduct of the three MPs from Te Pāti Māori amounted to a contempt of the House. They had acted in a way that “could have the effect of intimidating a member of the House in the discharge of their duty”.
“The right to cast one’s vote without impediment goes to the heart of being a member of Parliament. The threshold at which an interjection during a vote may be considered a contempt is where the interruption could be considered intimidatory,” the report said.
“It is not acceptable to physically approach another member on the floor of the debating chamber. It is particularly unacceptable for Ms Ngarewa-Packer to appear to simulate firing a gun at another member of Parliament.”
The committee acknowledged the previous apology from Maipi-Clarke to the Speaker in explaining her lighter penalty compared to those for the co-leaders, who were recommended to be “severely censured”. It noted they had also declined an invitation to appear before the committee, though they were not obliged to do so.
In written submissions, the co-leaders defended their actions as an appropriate expression of anger to what they considered to be an injustice.
“Haka was the only way to respond for the hundreds of thousands of our people being harmed,” Ngarewa-Packer said.
Labour MPs on the committee said the punishments were “unduly severe”, while Green MPs said they were “unprecedented and completely out of proportion”. Te Pāti Māori said the committee’s interpretation of their actions as “a potential threat of violence reflects personal prejudice and ignorance of tikanga Maori, not reality”.
Yesterday Luxon “outright” rejected any suggestion the committee’s recommendations were racist.
Tell me about imprisonment
The committee was informed by advice from the Clerk of the House, David Wilson, who was also asked by one member about imprisonment for contempt (which can be imposed, but never has been), and the last time it was used in the UK (at least as late as 1880).
“The suspension of members is a rare occurrence, especially in terms of a suspension on the recommendation of the Privileges Committee,” Wilson’s report said.
“Moving to the imposition of much longer periods of suspension than have been imposed previously would be a substantial change to the House’s practice.
“If a recommendation for a long period of suspension were to be proposed, we would recommend that the committee adopt it only with broad support among its members (though not necessarily unanimity).”
Clerk of the House David Wilson and Speaker Gerry Brownlee during their appearance at the Governance and Administration committee, in June, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell
This did not occur, with the Government’s MPs on the committee flexing their muscles to adopt recommendations that Opposition MPs did not support.
The Clerk had a further warning: “Adopting a substantial change to the House’s practice, if done in the context of a particular case, could appear arbitrary.”
If this took place, he recommended “the committee set out clearly its rationale in arriving at the particular penalty or penalties”, along with “an explanation of how each penalty would be proportionate to the offence, so that a consistent approach could be taken in future”.
The committee’s report does not provide a fulsome rationale of how it came to the length of the recommended suspensions, though chair Judith Collins has since said that the recommendations are new territory because their behaviour was new territory.
Act leader David Seymour suggested the penalties were too light.
The Clerk’s report noted that the longest suspension in Parliament’s history was for three days, after Sir Robert Muldoon criticised the Speaker in a press statement in 1987.
The only other suspension was in 1976, for one day, after Labour’s Jonathan Hunt was critical of the Speaker in a radio interview. Neither involved intimidating behaviour.
Only once has an MP been fined – in 1877, and for 50 pounds sterling – for accepting a fee to draft and support a local bill.
There have been several censures, most recently Green MP Julie Anne Genter, who crossed the floor and acted in an intimidating way, but not while a vote was in process.
The most recent apology was made by Henare – for leaving his seat for the haka.
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
