Today’s debate on whether to suspend three MPs involved in last year’s haka protest could be one of the most dramatic in recent memory, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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A dramatic start to budget week
This afternoon, MPs will gather in the House for what is set to be an explosive parliamentary debate. The motion: that they endorse the privileges committee’s recommendation to suspend three Te Pāti Māori MPs for performing a haka during the reading of the treaty principles bill last November. If it passes, party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will be suspended for 21 sitting days, and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke for seven. All of them will be barred from participating in Thursday’s budget debate, one of the most significant days in the parliamentary year.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee has described the proposed penalties as “very severe and unprecedented”. Since parliament first sat in 1854, no MP found guilty of contempt has been suspended for more than three days – a fact Brownlee pointedly emphasised when introducing the report to the House on Thursday.
A historic shattering of unanimity
As Newsroom’s Marc Daalder observes, “unprecedented” has been the word of the week – and for once, it may be accurate. Privileges committee reports “for many years have been accepted by all parties, including those whose members have been criticised or censured,” he writes. This time, there is a strong perception among critics that the government is acting undemocratically by, in effect, using its majority to remove several members of the opposition from the House during a key period in its sitting calendar. That feeling has created a deep fissure between the two sides, and set the stage for today’s potentially dramatic clash in the House. The public gallery will be closed but a protest is planned for parliament’s forecourt, RNZ reports.
Among the issues likely to be brought up in the debate is a significant error by committee chair Judith Collins, who told Morning Report the actions of the Te Pāti Māori MPs last November obstructed Act members from exercising their right to vote. “That is not true,” writes Phil Smith for RNZ. As the smallest party in parliament, TPM always votes last – after Act.
“Whatever the reason for the untruth, the claim suggests that Collins may have a more jaundiced view of the MPs’ actions than is reasonable,” writes Smith. “Did she fundamentally misunderstand the MPs’ actions during the investigation (which would cast the committee findings into doubt), or did political or other prejudice make those actions appear worse than the evidence showed?”
Could a filibuster save the MPs?
Last week Brownlee said the severity of the recommended penalties “mean it would be unreasonable to accept a closure motion until all perspectives and views had been very fully expressed”. According to Newsroom’s Daalder, it was a carefully worded statement that left the door open for an American-style filibuster, in which opposition MPs could talk out the clock to delay a vote. If the debate kept going past Wednesday, the Te Pāti Māori MPs would be able to remain in the chamber for budget day. Yesterday the PM ruled out any compromise, so a deal between the two sides for a shorter debate is unlikely.
Labour is expected to decide this morning whether to support such a filibuster. Nicola Willis has warned the public is “sick of the circus”, and Labour will be wary of looking like an “agent of chaos to middle voters who want some sobriety restored to politics”, writes Daalder. Still, the temptation to throw a wrench into the government’s most high-profile week may prove hard to resist.
Was the punishment fair, or a step too far?
Former Labour MP Louisa Wall is among many who say the committee’s verdict was excessive. Writing in The Post (paywalled), she calls the process “disproportionate, procedurally flawed and democratically dangerous”, arguing that the haka was a legitimate expression of dissent, not intimidation. In The Spinoff, Andrew Geddis says the committee’s unquestioning acceptance that the haka was intimidatory to other MPs “seems a bit out of touch with contemporary New Zealand understandings” of tikanga, and also with the concept of the House being a place for “robust debate”.
Even Brownlee seemed uneasy last week, reminding the House that “the motion may be amended” and making clear that the matter is “not an all-or-nothing decision”. Whichever way the vote goes, today’s debate will mark a defining moment for parliamentary discipline – and for Māori political expression.
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