Wellington: Three members of New Zealand’s Te Pāti Māori, co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, along with the party’s youngest MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, are facing temporary suspensions from parliament for performing a haka during a vote on the controversial Treaty Principles Bill last November.
The performance, which included Maipi-Clarke tearing up a copy of the bill, quickly went viral, garnering hundreds of millions of views globally. The bill in question, introduced by the libertarian ACT Party, aimed to reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding agreement between the Māori and the British Crown.
The proposal sparked nationwide protests, the largest ever seen in defence of Māori rights, and was ultimately defeated in its second reading in April.
A report released by the Privileges Committee recommended unprecedented disciplinary action: three-week suspensions for Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi, and a seven-day suspension for Maipi-Clarke, citing that the haka disrupted the voting process and may have intimidated other lawmakers, constituting contempt of parliament.
Although haka has been performed in parliament previously, including by Waititi, the committee deemed this instance especially serious due to its timing and manner. The report also criticised Ngarewa-Packer for allegedly mimicking a gun gesture, an action she said was a ‘wiri’, a traditional Māori expression used in haka and oratory.
Judith Collins, Attorney-General and committee chair, called the protest ‘the worst incident’ she had witnessed in 23 years in parliament and said that the penalties are the harshest ever issued to sitting MPs. The suspensions, which will withhold salaries and exclude the MPs from next week’s budget debate, are expected to be confirmed by parliamentary vote.
Te Pāti Māori condemned the penalties on social media, calling them a colonial overreach and ‘the worst punishment handed down ever.’ They argued it was a political move to suppress Indigenous dissent.
While the opposition Labour Party acknowledged the MPs were in contempt, it criticised the penalties as excessive, suggesting 1–2 days’ suspension would have sufficed.
The Green Party outright opposed the suspensions, saying the response was disproportionate and warned that Te Pāti Māori’s constituents would go unrepresented during critical parliamentary sessions.
In their defence, the MPs maintained that performing the haka was the only meaningful way to respond to a bill they believed endangered Māori rights. Ngarewa-Packer stated that, “In a space debating our rights and interests as tangata whenua, haka was the only way to respond for the hundreds of thousands of our people being harmed.”
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