TABLING OF DOCUMENTS — Leave Declined

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table a series of documents, being correspondence between yourself and the ACT Party whip, dated from 25 July—last Thursday—to today, in which you appear to give a green light to racial harassment in this Parliament.

💬 SPEAKER: I beg your pardon? Say that all again. I could hardly hear you. Speak into the microphone.

I seek leave to table a series of documents, being correspondence between the ACT Party whip and yourself, dated from 25 July—Thursday—to today, wherein you appear to give a green light to racial harassment in this Parliament.

Well, you’re asking the Parliament to make a judgment in this case, or you’re asking the Parliament to accept your judgment, in which case I certainly don’t, but, none the less, you’ve sought leave—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Speaking to that point of order. What we’ve just seen from a Minister in the Government is an absolutely outrageous attack on the Speaker of the House. Now, I appreciate you’re being very restrained in your response to that, but you would be well within your rights to censure David Seymour for this. This is directly questioning your ruling as a Speaker and your authority as a Speaker in a way that I’ve not seen in the time that I’ve been in this House. And it’s a senior Government Minister, who will shortly be deputy Prime Minister, who’s doing it; it’s utterly unacceptable.

💬 Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order.

Point of order—well, hang on a minute, it can’t be a new point of order, so are you speaking to the point of order?

Speaking to the point of order. Thank you for your clarity. We also would like to express our deep concern at this senior position abusing the role to sit there and actually say that your ruling was wrong. Te Pāti Māori received that ruling and we stand by your judgment and indeed your years of professional experience to be able to give that judgment, so we would ask that we are able to carry on.

Carry on with what?

💬 DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: With business as usual—sorry, Mr Speaker.

Right. Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll put the leave. Leave is put, is there any objection? There is objection.

💬 Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: You should have objected too—what kind of a Leader of the House are you? [Interruption]

Just a minute—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. If we’re going to have a plea for decorum in this House, then you cannot have someone saying, “You should have objected too”, because what Mr Hipkins is saying is that you personally, as Speaker of this House, should’ve objected to what is going on. Now, with the greatest respect, I think he should get a better fix on Standing Orders before he so prematurely gets to his feet.

Look, I appreciate the tensions that naturally—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Stand up for your people.

Yeah, Willie, we don’t need that, thanks very much. I’m OK to look after myself in many ways. I think my view is that leave was sought, the House has expressed a view that the leave is not sought, and therefore it ends there.