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Half a billion views and counting

On Thursday afternoon in parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke took to her feet, tore up a copy of the Treaty Principles Bill and led a thundering haka to protest the Act Party legislation. The intervention, in which she was joined by the public gallery and MPs from across the opposition parties, saw proceedings halted and a 24-hour suspension from the house for the 22-year-old Te Pāti Māori MP. And within hours, footage of the haka was seemingly everywhere.

Just how viral had it gone? Last night I scrolled social media in the cause of research. An Instagram post from the New York Times had 10 million views; the Australian Triple J radio station wasn’t far behind. The BBC had clocked up 6.5 million views. In Germany, Weltspeigel’s post had 4.5 million. Across a dozen social posts by global outlets that I checked, there were more than 75 million views in total – and that’s on top of the scores of stories on the news sites themselves. . 

Then there’s Tiktok. The numbers here are even more staggering. The New York Times post has 37 million views, while a pair of local accounts are off the charts. Two posts by Waatea News have cracked 73 million views. But even that is small fry alongside the Whakaata Māori Tiktok, which has now been viewed more than 320 million times. It’s had more than 21 million likes and 370,000 comments. (I haven’t had a chance to read them all but here, and across other posts of the video, most ranged from admiring to adoring, with a sizable minority demurring or jeering.) That’s far from all the activity out there, and already we’re over half a billion views. 

Former PM issues ‘civil war’ warning

Jenny Shipley has joined a growing list of grandees rebuking David Seymour’s bill, which would put a new set of Treaty principles to referendum, despite the National Party’s promise to snuff it out at second reading. She also defended Maipi-Clarke’s actions in parliament. The former prime minister told RNZ’s Saturday Morning: “The Treaty, when it’s come under pressure from either side, our voices have been raised … I remember Bastion Point – the Treaty has helped us navigate. When people have had to raise their voice, it’s brought us back to what it’s been, an enduring relationship where people then try to find their way forward. I thought the voices of this week were completely and utterly appropriate. Whether they breach standing orders, I’ll put that aside. The voice of Māori, that reminds us that this was an agreement, a contract – and you do not rip up a contract and then just say: Well, I’m happy to rewrite it on my terms, but you don’t count.”

Shipley said: “I just despise people who want to use a treasure – which is what the Treaty is to me – and use it as a political tool that drives people to the left or the right, as opposed to inform us from our history and let it deliver a future that is actually who we are as New Zealanders … I condemn David Seymour for using this, asking the public for money to fuel a campaign that I think really is going to divide New Zealand in a way that I haven’t lived through in my adult life.” Were it to become law, she said, echoing remarks by James Shaw a year ago, that would be “inviting civil war”.

‘Embarrassed New Zealand globally’

David Seymour countered by saying that, on the contrary, his bill would reverse a system which was “treating New Zealanders [differently] based on their ethnicity”. He told RNZ: “Te Pāti Māori acted in complete disregard for the democratic system of which they are a part during the first reading of the bill, causing disruption, and leading to suspension of the house.” In an interview with Newstalk ZB yesterday he said the haka beamed around the world had “embarrassed New Zealand globally … They don’t have any solutions, just theatrics.”

Seymour had support for that position – if not for his bill beyond first reading – from Shane Jones of NZ First. The TPM response had been “threatening and ugly”, and Jones was sufficiently appalled to offer an unexpected response: imprisonment. “Parliament has inherent powers to put people in jail and the way the Māori Party are carrying on, that seems to me quite the appropriate response,” he told Newstalk ZB. 

TPM co-leader Rawiri Waititi countered: “Haka is a natural tool we use to support our debate. If you can’t handle that, then maybe you should think of leaving parliament,” he told the NZ Herald. After recounting some of the indignities in Jones’s own record, he added: “He can go and have a shit, to be honest, and Winston Peters. Put that in your article.”

Luxon meets Xi in Lima, pursed by a haka

The prime minister was not in the house on Thursday, and though he did convene a press conference before his departure for Peru and the Apec summit to underscore in the sternest terms yet his opposition to the bill that National is supporting no further than select committee, Christopher Luxon must have departed with some sense of relief. His most important task in Lima: a bilateral with Xi Jinping – Luxon’s first in-person meeting with the Chinese president.

The encounter followed a year in which, under Luxon and Winston Peters, New Zealand foreign policy has discernibly moved to solidify ties with the US, with a second-tier link to the Aukus alliance a very real, if nebulous, prospect – one which raises hackles in Beijing. Among the press pack in Peru was Sam Sachdeva, author of The China Tightrope. “By this point, the need to manage differences is baked into bilateral ties and does not appear to be undermining the relationship, with the prime minister confirming he intended to visit China sometime in the first half of next year following an invitation from Xi,” Sachdeva writes for Newsroom. “Maintaining strong relations without pulling punches may be crucial in the coming years, particularly if Trump tariffs take a toll on Kiwi exporters and lead them to invest even more in New Zealand’s top trading partner.”

As for escaping the controversies of home, no such luck for Luxon. Not just because the New Zealand media were asking about domestic matters – that’s a given. But because, as Jason Walls reveals in the Herald, half the summit attendees seemed to be watching that haka video on their phones.