Privilege — Conduct of Members—Disruption During Vote

Thank you very much, Madam Acting Speaker. I think all members of the House know why we are here, and when the House last left this matter, some 10 days or so ago, the House voted to adjourn the debate so we could get through the Budget, which has now happened. It is, I have to say, regrettable that not all members of Parliament cast a vote in relation to the Budget. As I noted publicly at the time and as we adjourned the debate on this issue, Parliament’s authority to the Government to spend money is of paramount importance to this country. It’s one of the reasons why Parliament exists. The Government literally can’t function without supply—supply being voted by the Parliament. So there is no more important function than this Parliament. Unfortunately, some members of Parliament chose not to even exercise a vote in relation to the Budget, including members for whom the debate was specifically extended so that they could cast a vote.

Rawiri Waititi: Hurry up and get on with it—stop mucking around.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, the member says, “Get on with it.”, and that would be the only remarks I wish to make—

Rawiri Waititi: Get on with it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —I wish to make in the House today.

I think the Hon Judith Collins, the member leading the Privileges Committee, has canvassed the issues that are before the House quite adroitly. We’ve heard from the Leader of the Opposition in relation to their perspectives. My view would be to encourage the Parliament to deal with this issue today. My view is that New Zealanders are over this debate. New Zealanders want the country to be focused on what Parliament is there for, which is to debate the big issues facing the country. My strong encouragement to members from the other side of the Parliament who have, at various points—it’s varied a bit, to be fair—indicated that they will have an elongated debate. That is a choice over to them. My encouragement would be for everybody to finish this debate today; have a robust debate, but let’s end this issue once and for all and deal with the issue and get back to the major issues facing this country.

Just before I call the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, I’m going to ask that—look, this has been a process, and I would just call for some respect in the House this afternoon and to make sure that we are focused on the Privileges Committee report and the events surrounding that. Let’s actually just show respect outside of that.

Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. The Privileges Committee is one of the most senior committees of this House. It’s usually bipartisan, and it almost always presents a unanimous report. It’s actually really unfortunate that that’s not the case today. The Labour Party doesn’t support the recommendations of the committee as to sanction. The proposed sanctions of seven days and 21 days are disproportionate, unprecedented, and vindictive. I think it’s really important to put on the record as to why we concluded that, whilst there was a contempt of the House, we can’t agree with the sanctions proposed by the majority.

The facts are well known. Many were present in the House for the incident, where the members concerned performed a haka while the vote was being tallied on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. We’re all familiar with the haka. It’s a well-understood ritual and, in this case, it was energetic and it was theatrical. It’s intended to express things, like anger, challenge, or endurance over adversity, but at its heart, it was a performance. There was never any suggestion of physical violence. It was never remotely likely.

It’s well known that those three members chose not to attend the Privileges Committee or provide any explanation. They weren’t required to attend the committee. They were not called to attend, and therefore did not have to. Whilst they can’t claim credit for cooperation—and nor can they say they were denied an opportunity to explain—neither can they be punished. It appears that some members of the committee may feel affronted the members didn’t come to the committee when they were invited. They may even consider that the members were defiant in not attending. However, they were not required to attend. This is no justification for the imposition of a punishment that is disproportionate and arbitrary.

Look, this place is noisy and sometimes chaotic, but it is the preeminent lawmaking body, and when we make a decision, we do it by vote. That is what was disrupted. It’s clear that Standing Order 417 says that obstructing the House in the performance of its duties will amount to a contempt. The finding of contempt was inevitable, but as a matter of first principle, we consider that a suspension of three weeks for Mr Waititi and Ms Ngarewa-Packer and seven days for Ms Maipi-Clarke to be inconsistent with the fundamental nature of this democracy. These people have been elected to speak in this House for their constituencies. It is their right to speak, and it is the right of their constituencies to be spoken for—[Interruption] It is such an important step to suspend a member—[Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’re not going to be able to have a debate if we’re going to shout over one another.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Secondly, it’s really important we take consistent approaches across different Privileges Committee decisions. This decision is wildly out of step with any other decision of the Privileges Committee. Robert Muldoon was suspended for three days for issuing a press statement which criticised the Speaker. Jonathan Hunt was suspended for one day for criticising the Speaker in a radio interview. That demonstrates how truly extraordinary these seven- and 21-day suspensions are.

There have been examples in this House of people—of current members. In 2023, Tim van de Molen was found to have committed a contempt when he actually threatened a member. In that case, Mr van de Molen stood next to the chair of a select committee at the conclusion of a committee and told him to stand up. The committee found that there was an objectively threatening element to Mr van de Molen’s behaviour and that that impeded the member in the conduct of his duty. That was a contempt, and Mr van de Molen was told to apologise. Now, finding a contempt is a serious matter, and it is appropriate that he apologised to the House, but there was no suspension there. In this case, even if it was an intimidation, and it’s not accepted it was, that is how it should be treated—not by a very large suspension.

Of course, there is Ms Genter’s case, where she moved across this Chamber and spoke in a loud fashion to Mr Doocey and waved a document in front of him—again, a contempt, but only asked to apologise. That shows that this decision of the Privileges Committee—its recommendation—is absolutely out of order. And, in the case of Ms Maipi-Clarke, only a modest allowance has been made for the fact that she has already been suspended for a day. She’s a relatively junior MP, and she has already spoken to the Speaker and expressed contrition. Now, there is no ruling in double jeopardy, but it’s wildly disproportionate to impose another seven days. We cannot see any defensible justification for the conclusion of a majority of the committee.

Finally, the Clerk provided some very important advice and observations to the committee. Firstly, the Clerk said, in his advice, “This would be a very substantial change to the House’s practice”—recognising that it would be a radical departure from what had gone before. That advice recommended that any departure be done only with broad support amongst the members of the committee—that is to say, consensus or near unanimity—and that any massive shift would appear arbitrary. It also suggested that a very clear rationale should be provided if that decision was to be taken. None of that advice was taken. Not one piece of that advice was taken by the majority of the committee.

The majority view is partisan, arbitrary, vindictive, and wildly out of step with previous decisions of the committee, and that was done with a bare majority. Given the status of the Privileges Committee and the importance of its decisions in keeping order in this House, it is deeply regrettable. That decision should be disregarded by this House and by future Privileges Committees. There is an amendment on the Table, and I urge members around the House to adopt that amendment, impose a sanction which is reasonable and proportionate, and put aside personal prejudice.

E te iwi Māori, tēnā tātou. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. I rise to speak to and for the Māori people. We’ve had our culture suppressed by acts of violence, acts of war and brutality, and Acts of Parliament for far, far too long.

I rise to speak for all of the generations of te iwi Māori that have gone before us, and for all of the generations of te iwi Māori that will come after us, to reassure them that the taonga tuku iho—our taonga tuku iho, the treasured intellectual and spiritual taonga of our ancestors—will never be silenced; that the mana of those taonga will never be diminished, not by ignorance or bigotry, nor pettiness or spite; that the enduring heartbeat of our tīpuna, that pulses in the manawataki of every haka their descendants perform, will never be stopped. E te iwi, when we stand to haka together, our tīpuna hear us, as do our mokopuna, for the haka is the symbol of a noble people. E kī ana te kōrero, “Ko te haka, he tohu whenua rangatira.”—the haka is the symbol of a chiefly land. The haka is the symbol of humanity, and its raw human connection is the irresistible allure that draws people to it from every corner of the world. It is the epitome of the superpower of being Māori.

Let me now address the root cause of this debate. This debate is not about a haka. It is not about a suspension. It’s not about the interruption of a vote. It is, at its heart, about the fact that this House continues to ignore Te Tiriti o Waitangi, that this House continues to ignore Māori sovereignty, and that this House continues to ignore all of the constitutional rights that flow forth from those two things. The fact of the matter is simple: without Māori sovereignty, there is no Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Without Te Tiriti o Waitangi, there is no constitutional right for the presence of the Crown in this part of the world. Without the constitutional right, there is no Parliament.

Therefore, I say to this House: you can only keep your head buried in the colonial sands of time for so long, and, by the way, high tide is fast approaching. You see, deep down, under layers and layers of intergenerationally refined colonisation and assimilation, this debate is about the eternal struggle for the survival of the Māori people and the survival of those people as Māori.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Have a look in the mirror, mate.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā koe e koro. Te kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea.

[Thank you, grandad. The seed that was sown from Rangiātea.]

This debate is about the relentless onslaught and imposition of colonial dominance, the endless lording of European cultural superiority, all premised on the falsehood of Māori inferiority. In the darkest recesses of its heart, this is what this debate is truly about, and after 185 years of waiting, te iwi Māori declare today that enough is enough. Ka rahi, ka rahi, kua rahi. “Unprecedented punishment” was the headline, but the punishment is not without precedent. Only weeks ago, the Privileges Committee passed another judgment on the fourth participant in this “haka party incident”, who also left their seat, who also actively aided the interruption of the voting process, who also stepped out onto the hallowed grounds of the debating chamber, who also failed to return to their seat when the Speaker was on his feet. Yet the punishment handed down did not include suspension, did not include censorship or any form of financial penalty. You see, indeed, there was a clear precedent set. [Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Quiet! This is an open debate, and members will be able to have the opportunity to take a call. So interjections are OK, but that barrage was too much.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: You see, there was a clear precedent set, yet when it comes time for the passing of judgment on Te Pati Māori, the existing precedent is conveniently ignored, and for the additional crime of positioning themselves in front of the perpetrators of the actual crime—a crime that incited the largest public political backlash in this country’s history—Te Pati Māori are handed two 21-day suspensions, a seven-day suspension, for a total of 49 days’ suspension.

Simon Court: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, Mr Ferris, I’ve just got a point of order.

Simon Court: While this is a free debate and a frank exchange of ideas, I think it’s incredibly unhelpful to the order of the House for that member to accuse other members of having committed crimes. I would ask you to consider whether that member should withdraw and apologise for that comment. It’s likely to bring the House into disorder.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: There was no accusation to any specific member of this House that I saw. [Interruption] Stop! Order! Order! If the member heard something that I didn’t hear, he’s free to come and talk to me about it. In the meantime, Mr Ferris can carry on.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Forty-nine days of suspension, censure, and financial penalty—49. Let me remind the public that the fourth participant in this very same haka received no suspension, no censure, no financial penalty whatsoever. You see, a sentence with no logic, framework, or explanation is not a sentence at all. It is in fact an act of retribution, and when retribution is involved, that is not upholding justice; that is the rearing-up of the ugly, insidious, heinous face of racism in all of its guises against Māori in Aotearoa in 2025.

I have to ask the whole country—the public who are watching, no doubt—is this really us? Is this really us, in 2025, in Aotearoa New Zealand? Is it really?

Again, I say enough is enough. We’re in 2025, for crying out loud, and having to deal with this sort of racist attitude in this House. Everyone can see the hypocrisy, everyone sees the inequality, everyone can see the racism. It is hardly being hidden. So in the face of such an unprecedented attack on te iwi Māori over the last 18 months to this current situation, it is time that we—the Māori people—took an equally unprecedented approach to remedying the historic and ongoing obfuscation of Tiriti justice. It is truly a shame that we have regressed so far, so fast. This attack has been swift and unprecedented, and our response must, too, be swift and equally as unprecedented, the likes of which the Crown has never had to deal with before.

E te iwi, there are many tools available to us—international tools—to employ in balancing and rebalancing, as the case may be, of treaty-based relationships across the world. These tools include the right of retortion, of reprisal, and even of retaliation. Retortion is the right of any partner to a treaty to suspend their ongoing consent to that treaty for the ongoing failure of the other party to uphold their treaty obligations, and, after 185 years, we say enough is truly enough. Ka rahi, ka rahi, kua rahi.

E te iwi Māori, we are more powerful than we know. We are not the helpless victims in a story of colonial domination. We are the sovereign people of this land. We are the sovereign people of Aotearoa. We are the sole sovereigns of our respective territories, as described in the Treaty text itself.

I’m reminded of a quote from Whatarangi Winiata, who said that the best way to reclaim and retain our sovereignty is to behave as if we never lost it. And these words from the great Ngāti Kahungunu leader Moana Jackson, who said that treaties are meant to be honoured; they are not meant to be settled.

So I stand here before you as an uri of the sovereign people of Ngāti Kahungunu and as a son of the sovereign people of Ngāti Kere, fully authorised to speak on their behalf, and declare to this House that we enact the right of retortion and hereby suspend our ongoing agreement and consent to Te Tiriti o Waitangi for a period of 21 days, or until the Crown can remedy its continued failure to act with dignity and honour and uphold the obligations that it set for itself in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Ngāti Kahungunu understand that this is an unfriendly action towards the Crown, but based on the last 185 years, exacerbated in the extreme by the last 18 months, we consider it a justified one, and we invite all hapū and iwi who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi in good faith, who have been gracious and patient hosts, to join us and declare on behalf of our ancestors who worked tirelessly for us to be here today. On behalf of our tamariki and mokopuna yet to be born, this ends here—enough is truly enough.

E te iwi Māori, ka rahi, ka rahi, ae rā, kua rahi.

Nō reira kei ngā wā kāinga o te motu, e tū, matike mai, maranga ake ki runga. Whakamutua atu tēnei mahi, te whakaparahako i te iwi Māori ki konei tonu kia kaua e pākia kinotia ki runga anō ki tētahi whakatipuranga o te iwi Māori, haere ake nei.

E te iwi Māori, maranga mai ki runga. Kei te Pīka, tēnā koe. Tēnā tātou. Kei raro e heke ana.

[To the Māori people, it’s enough, it’s enough, oh yes, that’s enough.

And so to the homes across the country, stand up, arise, rise up. End this action, the discrimination of the Māori people right here so that it never again badly assails another generation of the Māori people for ever more.

To the Māori people, rise up, To the Speaker, thank you. Greetings to us all. I now take my seat.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to endorse the recommendations made by the Privileges Committee. As a member of the Privileges Committee, I can say that the Privileges Committee gave thorough consideration to the question of privilege that was referred to the Privileges Committee towards the end of last year.

The incident relates to the question of privilege that actually arose after the incident that happened on 14 November 2024 in the House. This was after the first reading debate on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, and it was when the vote was being called for. When Te Pāti Māori stood up to cast its vote, at that point, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, after casting the vote, started doing haka.

The Speaker in the Chair at that time stopped her from doing that, but she didn’t stop. Instead, she stepped on to the Chamber floor and proceeded towards ACT Party members. As she proceeded towards ACT Party members, the Speaker rose on his feet and still that didn’t make any difference. In the meantime, two other members of Te Pāti Māori, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, also left their seats and joined Ms Maipi-Clarke. They faced towards ACT Party members, and in that haka, Ms Ngarewa-Packer made hand gestures similar to a finger gun, and this wasn’t just once. Towards the end of that haka, again, she repeated the gesture and simulated a firing motion. It’s a very important point to note here.

As I said, as a member of the Privileges Committee, I can say that we gave thorough consideration to this question of privilege and we did go through the video footage, so we did see ourselves that those were the gestures made by Ms Ngarewa-Packer towards ACT Party members. When they were doing that haka and when they were making those gestures, they were very, very close to the front bench of the ACT Party members. It was really good that we had the video footage because that happened here in the House.

We also invited the members to come before the Privileges Committee for hearings. We gave 30 minutes to each member because we wanted to give a fair opportunity to all these members to come and answer the questions that members had. It wasn’t just once that they were sent this invitation; it was more than once, twice, and they declined that invitation to appear before the Privileges Committee.

I know that this is a place where we don’t always agree on ideas that we debate. We disagree on ideas and sometimes we strongly disagree on ideas, but we do that through constructive debate, not through intimidating physical actions. And then to use the excuse that the actions were a display of expression of political debate, as done by Ms Ngarewa-Packer in her written response to the committee is hugely, hugely concerning, because this is not the first time we have been debating bills in this House which are categorised as controversial by some.

Just to give you some examples, we have had end of life choice legislation, we have had abortion legislation—these are the kind of examples where members in this House were divided to the extent that members were on the extreme ends of the spectrum. There were members who were really, really supportive. There were members who were strongly against this legislation. Some of the members in this House were against that legislation on the basis of their religious beliefs and we know that so many acts of violence around the world happen because of people’s religious, cultural beliefs, and despite that, we all debated those issues in a way we should be debating in this House. So there is no excuse for that kind of physical and intimidating behaviour in this House.

Going back to the invitation that was sent by the Privileges Committee to the three members—and, yes, I fully understand that members are not obliged to accept the invitation sent by the Privileges Committee, but it wasn’t a simple decline. What they did was they declined the invitation and they said that they’re going to conduct their own independent hearing. I also heard that they said that the Privileges Committee is a silly little committee with its silly little rules. They called the Privileges Committee a kangaroo court—they called the Privileges Committee a kangaroo court.

I ask this: if all these actions and all these comments are not undermining the processes that we have in place, then what was that? What was that? What were those actions and what were those comments? Then the member stated—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): All right. Thank you, members.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —that the members of the Privileges Committee—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Members—order! I know it’s a robust debate, but at this point, it’s rather difficult to hear the member.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Then the members stated that the members of the Privileges Committee needed to understand tikanga Māori—playing the race card. So they started playing the race card, only to shift and deflect the accountability for their misconduct.

Tākuta Ferris: We don’t have to play the race card—it’s our country. You’re in a Māori country.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: They did their best to shift the narrative. I want to acknowledge at this point that discussions around race and equality are important, but when members start using race as an excuse—

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. This is the second time in this debate I rise to make a point of order asking that you consider that member Tākuta Ferris’ comments to this member that she is in the wrong country. I find that deeply offensive. I’m sure that the other members of this House would find that deeply offensive. I think it’s likely to bring the House into disorder. I would ask that you seek an apology from that member.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Speaking to the point of order. Just for clarification, because I was quite close to the member that he was referring to, and that’s not what Tākuta Ferris said. He said that the member was in a Māori country, and I think that’s a really fair reflection.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Thank you, members. Look, it is a robust debate, and at the same time we do need to be respectful of each other. The difficulty, of course, from this perspective is it’s very difficult to hear when the House is in a state where there is a lot of volume, so I do ask that members reflect on what their interjections are, but at the same time that we have a level of decorum so that we’re able to all hear both the person who’s making the call and the interjections, which should be short and also relevant.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So I was saying that, by playing the race card, they have been trying to shift the narrative. I want to acknowledge that discussions around race and equality are important, but when members of Parliament start using race as an excuse, that is damaging. That is embarrassing for the communities. That’s why I also strongly reject what the Māori Party said in their written response, and that was that the—

Tākuta Ferris: Point of order.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: —appropriate or inappropriate use of haka—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Excuse me. The member will resume her seat. We have a point of order.

Tākuta Ferris: One of the simplest understandings of Te Tiriti o Waitangi that this House should know is that it has nothing to do with race.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Thank you, Mr Ferris. That is a—[Interruption] Order!

Simon Court: Point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): No, I can deal with this myself, thank you, Mr Court. That is not a point of order. That is a matter that could be raised in debate.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: That’s why I strongly reject the assertion which was made by the Māori Party in their written response, saying that the appropriateness or inappropriateness of haka, including whether the expression of haka amounts to intimidation, should be actually decided by a Māori expert. Why? The Māori Party is part of this democratically elected Parliament. They get all their entitlements according to the rules of this Parliament, so when it comes to misconduct, how can we have different standards for them? If we start applying different standards to members of Parliament on the basis of their ethnicity, on the basis of their cultural beliefs, we will have double standards in this House and that is not going to be acceptable.

Displaying reckless behaviour and then playing the race card is concerning. Displaying disorderly behaviour and then taking pride in that is hugely concerning. The members there should look around and see that this House is made up of members who come from so many different cultural backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds. We don’t all look the same. That doesn’t mean we start using our cultural beliefs, our ethnicity, to justify misconduct in this House.

Finally, I want to say this: this was not about haka, per se. I want to repeat this: this was not about haka, per se. This was about the timing. This was about the manner. This was about the disorderly behaviour. This was about those hand gestures simulating a firing motion.

The recommendations made by the Privileges Committee do justice to what happened in the House and they reflect the seriousness of the matter. Anything less would have diluted the seriousness of that matter. Despite the race card being played, I do not understand how accountability can be interpreted differently, and that’s why I commend the recommendations made by the Privileges Committee to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That all the words after the first instance of the word “That” be replaced with “Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and Rawiri Waititi be censured by the House for acting in a manner that could have the effect of intimidating a member of the House in the discharge of their duty.”

It is right that this House interrogate the findings of the Privileges Committee concerning the conduct of MPs. We think this Parliament could lead the world in affirming how indigenous MPs express ourselves in this House. To look at the cultural act that was performed in isolation of the injustice that led to the conduct is remiss of this House. It is our position that the Privileges Committee is being exploited to do the political bidding of Government MPs, which is an approach we should all treat with disdain.

The Green Party strongly opposes the suspension of Ms Ngarewa-Packer, Mr Waititi, and Ms Maipi-Clarke as recommended by the committee. I invite the Government parties to support my tabled amendment, which would instead remove suspension for all three MPs as a punishment and leave the penalty to censure. We would’ve preferred to pause the Privileges Committee proceedings while the newly established tikanga committee evaluates the incorporation of tikanga in Parliament. This would then allow the Privileges Committee to evaluate the conduct of MPs with any new Standing Orders that arise from this work.

There are critical weak points with the proposals in the committee report. Let’s start with an assertion by the chair of the committee that the conduct had prevented the vote being taken, which was simply incorrect as all parties had completed their vote, and yet the chair continued to state that inaccuracy. Now, that in itself indicates some clutching to try and make the conduct seem worse than it actually was. Now, the ruling of 21 days’ suspension for the co-leaders with the ruling of seven days on top of seven days already served by Ms Maipi-Clarke is severe and unprecedented and completely out of proportion to the breach of Standing Orders, especially when the action is taken in full context, and we must highlight the full context if this debate is to draw any respect.

In just one example, we have former Prime Minister Mr Muldoon committing some pretty full-on offences, also not turning up to the Privileges Committee, and even then, only getting a three-day suspension. Just one of many examples of why this penalty does not fly, and the enduring democratic convention of the committee reaching consensus has been blown apart with only the Government members supporting. This makes these decisions blatantly partisan, something that this House should be passionately guarding against.

The arbitrary nature of these penalties, unable to be linked rationally to any similar circumstance, leave this committee indefensible and vulnerable to attacks of racism, because there is no credible explanation that is in keeping with any pattern or ruling or logic other than the fact that they are tangata whenua challenging the status quo of power.

Now, the clerks provided a fulsome historical context of like rulings both here and from around the world, along with advice on what would be in keeping with good practice. The committee have gone against the clerks’ advice. So yes, the Speaker is right to want to have the committee recommendations scrutinised with the highest wisdom, because it is the public trust of our democracy at stake that requires the utmost protection now more than ever. Even if, for argument’s sake, we accept the suggested narrow interpretation of the rules by only the three Government parties of the committee, the final rulings threaten to blow any pretence of a democratic process right out of the park.

Now, I do want to speak to the fuller context of the conduct by those MPs, because this debate is actually bigger than just those MPs or any one party. The Greens are challenging not only the wafer-thin rationale that the committee is tying its findings to; we also challenge the very parameters that have been assumed in the committee’s deliberations. What indication is there of a modern, democratic, mature, sophisticated, and evolving House of Representatives than one that can adapt and progress with the times towards a House that actually does represent the diversity of its nation?

Now, this House over the years has shown it can evolve—for example, including babies and breastfeeding in this House, including sign language interpretation, including te reo translation, inviting diverse prayers to open sittings, and then procedural changes like the way we ask oral questions and how we hold Ministers to account. So the Greens are challenging the very static parameters regarding conduct in this House, which is why we do not support calling for Te Pāti Māori MPs to apologise.

We have to include the context of the haka in this debate, because it deserves stating that the haka is used in many different ways for many different reasons and has long been a respected cultural expression. The particular haka “Ka Mate”, composed by Te Rauparaha of Ngāti Toa Rangatira, has particular resonance with what was being voted on at the time. In addressing the conduct of the members, we have to address the context of how the haka “Ka Mate” came to be used in the first place. The Treaty principles bill had come to an end of the first reading, and let me be clear: that bill was designed to provoke. The bill attacked the generosity of Māori despite nearly 200 years of injustice against us. It threatened generations of fundamental relationships where Māori and non-Māori have worked so hard to only just start getting on the same page. It distributed disinformation and bad-faith discussion that directly harms Māori. It was political violence trying to uproot the heart of our country. The very least it deserved was that passionate haka.

I notice that of my entire party, my seat is the only seat that has unimpeded, clear access to the floor. I was unable to be in the House that day. I do know how to haka; I did mine in my backyard with a Tino Rangatiratanga flag. When those with assumed power think their privilege is under threat, there is a tendency to scream victim. One needn’t feel intimidated by the power upholding te mana i Te Tiriti in the face of futile attempts to denigrate it. So the Greens maintain a rightful place for that cultural expression.

Now, in the commentary, there has been some attempt to say that these judgments are not about the haka. Even with all the partisan, arbitrary, narrowly supported severity of these penalties, we still have insulting suggestions that this was not about the haka. There is no credible way that the haka can be separated out from the judgments happening here.

So I want to acknowledge the excellent work of Ricardo Menéndez March at the committee in driving a focus on fair solutions. It is clear that the penalties recommended are all ego rather than sensible rationale—a partisan flex, which is the antithesis of what the committee is supposed to be.

The next generations will take such pity on us grasping our pearls in this place lest Māori be Māori in here. One day, someone’s going to look in the Hansard and hang their heads in shame or ridicule, looking at what we are doing; the absurdity of the penalties for doing the haka in this place.

I want to state clearly: the Greens call out this blatant power play that is on display, that is parading in disguise at upholding process. These dangerously precedent-setting, convention-destroying, consensus-ignoring, Tiriti-trampling, racism-whistling, democracy-mocking, narrowly supported recommendations from the Privileges Committee bring this House into more disrepute than any haka ever has.

Members, the question before the House for debate is that the amendment be agreed to. The amendment is now debatable together with the motion and the previous amendment. Before I take the next call, I do need to refer members to Speaker’s Ruling 30/5, which indicates that any member who is seeking a call must do so from a seat allocated to their party. So I invite any member who wishes to do so.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Before you make that decision, I’m standing in for the Prime Minister today and I’m sitting in the right seat.

Yes, I haven’t given a call yet, Mr Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, just in case you were going to make a mistake, I can tell you now.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Right, we’ll move on to the next call.

Can I begin first of all by passing on my condolences to Edwin Perry and his family, a Māori and a former MP for New Zealand First, with a very proud tradition of representing his country—as did his parents.

The second thing I want to say is that if you’ve just heard two speeches—one from Te Pāti Māori and one from the Green Party—you can see that there is no sincerity in what they’re saying, because their speech had to be written for them. They came down there, not in a Māori way, and just read out the dribble and thought it would be acceptable—

Tākuta Ferris: I wrote it myself.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and, of course, he never stopped. Having had the first 10 minutes, he’s never shut up ever since. He had the first 10 minutes, and he’s never shut up ever since.

As for the last speech from the Green Party, it can tell you why it is that for 53 years, since 1972, under the guise of the “Values Party”, they have never ever been in Cabinet, and they never will be. For 53 years, they’ve never made it into Cabinet, and you can see why.

Now, can I just say very clearly, Standing Order 417 was about a haka occurring as the votes were being counted—that’s the chronology. As the Green representative said, she’s entirely wrong. Go and look at the Hansard—it’s all there. The second thing is—

Tākuta Ferris: It’s not in there. It’s not in the Hansard. Haka is not on the Hansard.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —that countless people have done haka in this Parliament. No, it was before your time, sunshine. You’re going to be here, gone tomorrow. I’ve seen your type. They come and go—no one will remember you very shortly. But here he goes, tamaiti’s got a motormouth. You know, he’s the only guy I know who can eat a banana sideways. There he is, but away he goes. We all heard him in silence, but, no, no, off he goes.

Now, haka have been done countless times in this Parliament, but after first consulting the Speaker so that the House and its timing is not disrupted. That’s what happened here—there was no attempt whatsoever. They told the media they were going to do it, and they didn’t tell the Speaker, did they? That’s the truth, isn’t it?

Tākuta Ferris: Well, did you tell anyone you were changing the day?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, am I hearing any denial? No, no, I’m not—that’s the way they think they can behave. The Māori Party are a bunch of extremists, and middle New Zealand and the Māori world has had enough of them. In fact, in the last poll in the last 24 hours—

Rawiri Waititi: Where’s your Māori voters? I’ve got 20,000 just for me.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The one in the cowboy hat who hates colonialism—the one that’s shouting down there, with the scribbles on his face; the guy that’s got half the South Island hanging around his neck—can’t keep quiet for five seconds.

Tākuta Ferris: Point of order, Mr Speaker. E ai ki ngā tikanga o tēnei Whare, ko te whakaparahako o te tangata kāore e whakaaehia. Ko tāna i whakaparahako i tā mātou tū. Mā te iwi Māori ia e whakawā i roto i ngā tau. Tēnā tātou.

[According to the rules of this House, discrimination of people is not allowed. His instance of discrimination was of our deportment. It will be the Māori people that judges him in the years to come. Greetings to us all.].

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Thank you, Mr Ferris. I think the point that’s being made here is that Mr Peters’ remark about Mr Waititi is rather disparaging, and so I invite Mr Peters to refrain from making comments like that and to actually withdraw and apologise, please.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I beg your pardon—apologise for what? Would you itemise what you want me to apologise for?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Well, Mr Ferris has indicated the reference to the tā moko that Mr Waititi has, and so I invite Mr Peters to—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, if I’ve misdescribed his tā moko, I apologise—I can quite easily do that—but the rest of it, I hope, is understood to be true.

This person who hates Western values and wears cowboy hats in this Parliament is, as I say, an extremist, and the Māori world has had enough. In a poll recently, the majority of New Zealanders massively said that either the select committee’s finding was correct or it should be more severe—not less severe, more severe—and out there, in ordinary New Zealand, they understand what we’re doing. New Zealand is a democracy, whether Te Pāti Māori like it or not, and using Māori culture as an excuse for their disgraceful behaviour is an insult to Māoridom.

Tākuta Ferris: You’re allergic to rationale.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Some of us were working for Māori before you were born. They’ve got no record of doing one thing. Not one of those people can rise up in this House and tell you one thing they’ve ever done for Māori apart from bleeding Māori resources in a marae up in Auckland, apart from fleecing the Māori people out in South and West Auckland. It’s all there—hundreds of millions of dollars fleeced off the Māori people. But I’ll tell you what: the teat has just run dry. We’re not taking that sort of behaviour anymore. You’ve got the law coming for you, and you can shout as much as you like, but your day in court’s going to be coming.

No ordinary Māori—Māori or non-Māori—should accept the behaviour or the intent of this party of absolute extremists, screaming out that everybody else in the Parliament is here only by their behest. Have a look in the mirror. Mr Ferris, look in the mirror. What is the majority of your DNA? What’s the majority of your DNA? Well, if you’re disgraced by your European DNA, we over here are not. We are proud of all sides of our background because we are New Zealanders first and foremost. As for blood quantum, if the cowboy hat wearer is an example of blood quantum, I’m going to a new biology class. I’m heading off a new biology class.

Rawiri Waititi: Grow up. And you’re trying to garner some laughs over there?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Ha, ha! He can’t help himself—see? On the marae, they hear you out. Their so-called epitome of Māori behaviour—he can’t even keep his mouth shut for five minutes. He’s been minimally trained on the marae. It just shows you what little they know about the marae. On the marae, you hear the other side out. Don’t just shout your stupid head off, all right? They don’t want democracy; they want anarchy. They don’t want one country, they don’t want one law, and they don’t want one people; they want separatism, division, and laws based on race. And they state it specifically, day after day, but ordinary hard-working Māori are finding them out.

The high-tide mark for these people has come and gone. I go back and think of 1867, when the first Māori arrived in this Parliament. They all came here all down those decades, over centuries, to Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia and Te Ururoa Flavell. They all came here and understood that Parliament’s got a protocol, which they respected, until this bunch turns up. Sheer, utter contempt. Sheer, utter contempt for the whole institution—sheer, utter contempt. This is the product of feeble minds and bad sociology classes at university. They are the advocates of Marxism and every other darn thing to deal with what’s wrong with this country, and out there, Māori who’ve got two or three jobs have had a gutsful of them. You watch—you watch the polls as they go forward.

Look, some conservative Labour MPs must be having cold sweats every night because where do you go now? You can’t go there, and you can’t go there, because if you go there and there, you won’t be over here. Get that part right. You can’t go there, and I hope that some sober, conservative, right-thinking Māori people in the Labour Party wake up before it’s too late. These people are a nightmare. They have no idea that politics is about, in the end, compromise to get as much as you possibly can and far more than you can get collectively than you would have got individually. They don’t understand the most rudimentary things. Their party has left middle New Zealand a long time ago, and the Labour Party is going to leave them hanging in the wind, too.

Today, I want to hear from the Labour Party what they intend to do on this matter, because the excuse made by the member of the select committee panel was the most lame excuse I’ve ever heard. These people wouldn’t even turn up to the select committee. They demand that they control the whole process of the Privileges Committee. They even demanded that they have their own process and that they’re going to have their own hearing. It was all bulldust, of course. It was all bulldust. When was their hearing? They never had it, and then they go on TV, and for a long interview, they’re almost crying into each other’s faces. Can you remember that?

Look in the mirror, Ngarewa—what is your DNA? What is your DNA? Mr Ferris, what is your DNA, because it ain’t by a majority Māori. Stop bull-dusting your people. [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tangi Utikere): Order! Members, it’s getting a little bit too noisy for my liking, so if we could just keep the dulcet tones down a bit.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Since 1867, Māori have been elected to Parliament, with just four winning a general seat until the introduction of MMP, when we saw the exponential growth of the number of Māori MPs. Right now, we have a record number of Māori in Cabinet—of any Government; and far more than the Māori Party’s got over there—all in our Cabinet at this point in time. Right now, we have, as I say, a party of extremists who act with utter contempt and ignorance of the process that has been accomplished. A lot of us have striven a long time to see a far greater and balanced representation at Parliament. But we never thought we’d see, as a consequence of all that hard work, of all those Māori members going back over a century, that these people would turn up, and unlike the origins and the birth of their own party, have contempt for their own party leadership. This new bunch that has just turned up here now—where did they get their licence from?

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke: Māori voters.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Ah, ah, ah! No stumbling through it. They have no licence, and they’ll find very shortly that they’re going to be out of this place. They are trying to tear all that down for their own ignorant and misguided political gain. Can I just say this: that we had, in the last few years, a very extensive international travel itinerary. I travelled extensively, more than any other Foreign Minister, but, let me say, I still spent more time in Parliament than all those Māori MPs all together. I want to tell their voters that their MPs are bludging off them. They’re not turning up in Parliament. They’re not being responsible, and the sooner you know, the sooner you’ll be able to hold them to account. I can see what the end is—I can see what the end is for that party, and it’s not long.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Oh well, that wasn’t the best, was it?

Tuatahi e tautoko i te poroporoaki ki a Edwin Perry. He tangata ngāwari, he tangata pai, nō reira e Edwin, moe mai, moe mai rā.

[First, I support the eulogy to Edwin Perry. He was an amiable person, a good person, and so Edwin, sleep well, rest in peace.]

I just wanted to support that mihi to Edwin Perry. He was a good man. He probably should have been a Labour man, rather than a New Zealand First man. He supported us quite a lot actually, Mr Peters, so he will be sadly missed.

It was very sad listening to that kōrero. I don’t think we need it today, and I want to kick off by congratulating Te Pāti Māori. I want to congratulate—[Interruption]—and I know that’s a bit hard for some of the House. I want to congratulate Te Pāti Māori for the greatest exhibition of our culture in the House in my lifetime—in my lifetime. It was the greatest exhibition because we had in the Treaty principles bill the greatest threat to Māori-Crown relations in my lifetime.

It was a disgusting, disgraceful bill from the ACT Party and our people were stunned by it, but they were stunned by that haka performance, and I want to say and put on record: I’m glad the ACT Party were intimidated. I think that’s the whole point of doing a haka. The All Blacks don’t do the haka so that the Springboks feel good afterwards. That’s why you do a haka. So if the ACT Party were intimidated, good, because the Māori nation felt intimidated by the disgusting Treaty principles bill—and New Zealand First need to get that.

I want to mihi to Te Pāti Māori. I want to mihi to Hana Maipi, who will go down in history with one billion followers in terms of the internet—well done. She was nearly going to be as famous as her Nanny Hana, who presented the Māori Language Petition. So I want to mihi to Te Pāti Māori.

Now, I want to say to Te Pāti Māori, after all this kōrero today, you know I love you—you know I love you guys. You know I love you, but a little bit of compromise could help the situation. I know, I know—I get it. I get the tino rangatiratanga stuff; I know it better than anyone, but a little step back—you know, a sorry—wouldn’t go amiss. Like, why not say sorry for Rawiri Waititi abusing the Privileges Committee? Why not say sorry for leaking stuff to social media? Why not say sorry for not turning up to the committee?

I know it’s hard to apologise, but I want to say to you, Te Pāti Māori, that not every single Māori in the country supports you and they don’t support some of this strategy. They love you, I love you, but some of this stuff is not going down well.

This is a tikanga Pākehā place. There ain’t no tino rangatiratanga here—there ain’t no tino rangatiratanga here. This is the centre and a celebration of the Westminster system, and I think our challenge—I think, as you know—is that we have to imbue some of our Māori culture into the system. We have to get a partnership going, and I don’t think the kōrero so far is going to help with the partnership. You know, we have to get the House to embrace some of our values.

Rawiri Waititi: There’s no partnership here, Willie.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: If we’re being fair, Mr Waititi—if we’re being fair—over the last 20 years, various Speakers have had a shot at it. Trevor Mallard had a shot at it, Jonathan Hunt had a shot at it, Lockwood Smith had a shot at it, Gerry Brownlee is trying to do it, and the best of them has been Adrian Rurawhe. The reality is, if you want to kōrero Māori you can speak Māori all day and night. You want to sing, if you want to do the haka, you can do all of that. Is it enough? No, it’s not enough. But in terms of tikanga Pākehā, I think we have to accept that that’s the reality of this place.

Our challenge is to get the House to embrace us as a partner, and that just hasn’t happened—that hasn’t happened enough. But the House is trying, and I would say to Te Pāti Māori, these people on the other side—they’re not all Ku Klux Klan members, as I’ve heard mentioned in different speeches. Some of them are quite good. Some of them make an effort, and I don’t think that we help the situation by saying that everyone’s a racist and everything is racist.

Tākuta Ferris: Stop calling them KKKs, Willie.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I think we need to take the right strategy here, Mr Ferris—my whanaunga. You know, there’s got to be a bit of concession, a bit of compromise, because there are good people all around the House who want to embrace some of our values. Look at some of the stuff we’ve done through the years. Yes, we’ve been under attack. We’ve been under a considerable attack over the last few months. But we’ve got to find a way through, a compromise, and that debate between yourselves and Winston Peters ain’t going to help anyone. It ain’t going to help anyone.

Finally, to the Privileges Committee, the recommended punishment cannot be. It is the worst punishment in the history of the New Zealand Parliament. Heck, we had an ACT MP saying the “c” word, and the Speaker didn’t say a word—they didn’t say a word. We’ve had Rob Muldoon intimidating MPs. The magnificent Marilyn Waring used to come to this House vomiting—vomiting. We’ve had homophobic attacks from Rob Muldoon. We had Peeni Henare’s relation out there—Tau Henare—losing a fight to Trevor Mallard.

Rawiri Waititi: Ha, ha! Disgraceful!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, so there have been disgraceful things that have happened in the House, and I think we need to find a way forward. I didn’t mention Peeni Henare—I want to mihi to him for what he did, and I think it’d be nice to take a leaf out of his book. I might not agree, but have a think about it.

I want to say the world is watching—the world is watching—and this type of punitive punishment will enshrine and entrench in world political commentators, and certainly the Māori Party, that this place is indeed racist and that there’s no hope for this place. That’s how bad that decision is.

I implore the Privileges Committee and this House to take on board the recommendation from Labour, which has been well considered and presented by our leader, Chris Hipkins, and by Duncan Webb, and that is that Hana Maipi has already served her sentence and to give Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer a day off, even they don’t think they should get one minute off. But I’d give them a day off, and I think that sort of sanction’s the best sanction. But to punish them how you are trying to do would entrench the view around the world that this place is absolutely racist.

How can you punish our people like this when there’s been so much abuse in the House over decades, there’s been so much racism in the House over decades, there’s been so much homophobic behaviour in the House for decades, and communities have been attacked over the decades. The Māoris get up and do a haka—heck!—and then they’re gone for three weeks. Can you imagine if Hana Maipi had said the “c” word in the House? They would have locked her up in jail for five years. That’s what they would have done. But the reality—[Interruption]. It’s about perceptions, and the perception here that Te Pāti Māori jump on all the time is that the place is racist and has no respect for Māori values. That’s why I implore this House today to take on board our Labour Party amendment and recommendation.

I also ask the House today to consider Adrian Rurawhe as a chair for a tikanga committee that all MPs can work on as we work through our processes in terms of tikanga Māori and tikanga Pākehā—which is what this House is. We need MPs who respect tikanga Pākehā as much as tikanga Māori and who are to debate robustly and come up with a sensible way and strategy going forward.

I implore this House to go down this track. The world is watching and the wrong decision will entrench the view with people all around the world that this House is indeed racist, which I think it is not. Kia ora tātou.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. This would be a joke if it wasn’t so serious. Just to bring all of us back to the actual substance of the debate that we are having today, which I think that we lost with the co-Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and his contribution earlier: what we are talking about and what we are debating as a House right now, is a completely unprecedented punishment, handed down by a committee that is operated in such an explicitly partisan way, departing substantially from the convention that this House is currently saying that it intends to try and uphold—so riddle me how we try and make sense of that logic.

I also find it absolutely galling to hear, effectively, from members of the Government all of the handwringing about the waste of this House’s time that is this debate, when they are indeed the ones who forced this debate and, indeed, invited the Speaker to make the point that this should be a broad-reaching debate, because of the fact that this is such an unprecedented situation that Government members themselves have created by handing down such a partisan—such a punitive—punishment without any meaningful logic. I say to members of the Government: get an absolute grip.

We have also heard from the so-called “party of free speech” that they intend to try and curtail the freedom of speech that is the expression of the lore—that is the l-o-r-e—of this very land. What we’re debating today is also—I think it’s really important to note—history-making, but not in a good way. It is history-making in the sense that the Privileges Committee have made their punitive, their partisan nonsense so utterly obvious, and this House has an opportunity to reject that. I just want to actually point to some of the comments that I’ve heard from the likes of our Prime Minister in the public sphere about how this has been a matter for the Privileges Committee solely to deal with. That is no longer the case. The fact that this is now on the floor of this House means that all 123 members of this Parliament are personally directly responsible for whether this historical punitive, partisan nonsense continues any further.

To make that explicit, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, is personally responsible if his side of the House votes to continue and to move ahead with these punitive, partisan punishments. As was alluded to by my co-leader, the Hon Marama Davidson, the historical precedent for punishment and for suspension in this House is so far out of whack from what has been handed down by the Hon Judith Collins and the Privileges Committee. The longest suspension previously was for three days, for Rob Muldoon, for comments that he made about the Speaker. We are talking about three days versus the 21 days for each of the two Te Pāti Māori co-leaders and seven for Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who has already been punished. This is ridiculous.

I also need to make the point—because we heard from the co-Deputy Prime Minister earlier, when he took his seat in the Prime Minister’s chair. But when he was speaking about contempt and contempt for the House, I think it’s really worthwhile to actually inform the House of the time that the last time, as I understand it, that the Privileges Committee did not make a consensus-based decision, in fact it was—and here I am reading explicitly from the Privileges Committee report back then—“for the Member, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who knowingly provided false or misleading information on a pecuniary interest”. That was the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who has the gall to stand up in this House and to talk about our code of conduct, or the way in which we conduct ourselves, and the standards that we set.

Once again, and time and time again, we see members of this Government invoke convention and invoke rules and the regular standards of conduct that we all expect, but we do not see those same rules applied to themselves or to their behaviour. Interestingly, just to finish that story on the co-Deputy Prime Minister the Rt Hon Winston Peters and his Privileges Committee complaint, the last time that we had the Privileges Committee not operate with consensus was because New Zealand First defected on those punishments being held down. Here we have a totally different circumstance, where it is solely the governing parties who are deciding to use their power of the bare majority to force this unprecedented, punitive punishment against the opposition of three Opposition parties.

To be crystal clear, what we are talking about here is unprecedented for three key reasons. The first is the scale of the punishment. It is plucked, seemingly, completely out of thin air, and it’s fascinating to read through the report from the Privileges Committee, where they speak, for example, about how the committee needs to be guided by the precedents established by previous Privileges Committees, but then decides to hand down a punishment that is seven times harsher than the worst punishment that the Privileges Committee has ever handed out before, without any explanatory rationale.

They also speak to, on page 7 of the Privileges Committee complaints, and here, I quote, that “members are expected to conduct themselves appropriately and in a way that is befitting of elected representatives”. I don’t know about you, but I saw the power of 100,000 people outside of this place, who were demanding that their voices were heard in here, against the inflammatory, intentional nonsense of the Treaty principles bill that was intended to divide.

Further to that point, we have a lot of hot air about the notion of certain members feeling intimidated or otherwise, and there’s a very spurious reference to “finger guns”. I would just draw the House’s attention to the facts that the Hon James Meager, earlier in this debate, was offering those same finger guns to me, as he was heckling in the House. So I’d just really asked members to—

Hon James Meager: Point of order, Madam Speaker. The speaker has totally misrepresented my actions in the House, and I’d ask for her to withdraw and apologise.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is stating that he didn’t do that, so I think it’s probably a good idea for the member who is speaking to—

Ingrid Leary: Speaking to the point of order, I saw what the member did, and I think that it is open to any kind of interpretation. Some of us did see it and did question it. I’m not saying that I thought it was threatening, but the member did do that action and some of us, on this side of the House, did raise eyebrows.

Hon James Meager: Speaking to the point of order, that member also misrepresents what happened, and I’d like to ask her to withdraw an apologise as well.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no, no, no. If the member contends that he didn’t do what other people thought he did when they saw it, maybe the member would like to explain what was intended.

Hon James Meager: I pointed at the members.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK—so he pointed at the members, right. Carry on, Chlöe Swarbrick.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Absolutely. I am so grateful for that interjection from a member of the Government to precisely prove the points that we are making here, which is that the kinds of things that the Privileges Committee has come to—

Hon James Meager: Point of order, Madam Speaker. The member made the claim that I made the finger guns action, which is quite clearly outlined in the Privileges Committee report and is evidenced in that report. That is not what happened. That misrepresents the actions in this House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has made it quite clear that he was pointing at the other side and not making the finger guns. I have accepted that. Look, what I hear, the member who’s working her way through her speech at the moment and has made reference to what we think we see sometimes may not be what was intended, and that is the point that the member is trying to make. I accept that the Hon James Meager did not intend to make finger guns at people.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Ngā mihi nui, Madam Speaker, because I think that is indeed precisely the point, which is that when we have a tyranny of a bare majority deciding to interpret—

Jamie Arbuckle: Point of order. The member needs to withdraw and apologise.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No—the member’s making a point of principle and interpretation about what people think they see. We’re very much cleared up that the Hon James Meager did not do a finger gun, right? Carry on, Chlöe Swarbrick—end of matter.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Indeed, the point is that the things that we do in this place, the points that we make, the directions that we point our fingers in, are open to interpretation. And the spurious, punitive interpretation that the Government members on the Privileges Committee have chosen to take, without any meaningful evidence or rationale, is unfair and deeply, deeply partisan.

If I may continue on outlining that rationale, of just how unprecedented this is, it is not only that the scale of the punishment has been plucked out of thin air, it is not only that this is so incredibly hyper-partisan and, therefore, dangerous in the precedent that it is setting, but I also think it’s important to note the utter psychological warfare with which Government members have decided to conduct themselves on this matter.

On the day prior to the Budget, we were all anticipating that we would be having this debate, and indeed, members of the Government allowed, for that debate, for certain contributions from the Chair of the committee and from the Leader of the Opposition, but then decided, without any notice to anybody else in this House, to move to suspend the debate, ostensibly for charitable reasons. That rationale simply does not wash, because, again, if you look at the rationale within the Privileges Committee report, this is all about partisanship and using the might and the power of the bare majority to ultimately bully. And we in the Green Party, along with our colleagues in the Opposition, are proud to stand in opposition to that. Just to make that—[Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a barrage. Points of interjection are OK, but that’s a barrage.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: If the Government of the day can decide to pick a punishment out of thin air with next to no rationale or any meaningful historical precedent that they can point to, and to use their bare majority to force that punishment onto the Opposition, we are in incredibly dangerous territory. That is not democracy, which members of this Government so frequently cite as the ostensible aim of all of this legislation that they are ramming through at a rate of knots, without any care for the convention or the rules that they say that they want to uphold.

I guess that’s the point that I’m really getting to in all of this: that no logic washes with this Government. No evidence washes with this Government. Indeed, the needs and the wants of the people outside of these halls of power—it does not wash with this Government. And what we are left with, at the end of the day, is that it is crystal clear who they work for, and it is not the regular people of this country, because as they consistently show us, they have utter disdain for regular people’s engagement and participation in the likes of our select committee processes, and, in fact, at times, they’ll refer to them as “bots”. The haka is celebrated by this place when it is convenient. But the haka is a challenge, it is a reflection, and it is the lore of this land.

I have been silent on this kaupapa for a long time. It is now my time to speak. I came into this House to give voice to the voiceless. Is that the issue here? Is that the real intimidation here? Are our voices too loud for this House? Is that the reason why we are being silenced? Are our voices shaking the core foundation of this House, the House we had no voice in building? Our voices sent shock waves of emotion to every nation throughout the world. Is this why we are being punished?

I’m actually a quiet person by nature, but after being in this House for a year and a half, we have had no option but to voice the 100,000 who walked to Parliament, the 300,000 signatures, the 90,000 against the Treaty principles bill in submissions. They were kept outside this House and now that side of the House decides to remove us too. We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost.

I mean, this is ridiculous. We can’t even do a haka and celebrate our culture at the Aotearoa Music Awards in peace. Since when did being proud of our culture make you racist?

Taku patu, taku patu, taku mana Māori motuhake

Taku patu, taku patu, taku mana Māori motuhake

Taku tū, taku tū, taku hīkoi

Taku tū, taku tū, taku hīkoi

Kei hinga aue, kei mate aue

Kei hinga aue, kei mate aue

[My weapon, my weapon, my Māori self-determination

My weapon, my weapon, my Māori self-determination

My stand, my position, my march 

My stand, my position, my march 

Lest I fall, lest I die

Lest I fall, lest I die]

Taku rōpū haka, taku Kuīni Māori.

Kei taku arikinui, Kuini Nga wai hono i te po, te whare kāhui ariki whānui, rire rire hau, pai mārire.

[My haka group, my Māori Queen

To my monarch, Queen Nga wai hono i te po, the entire royal family, peace and goodwill.]

These words were the first words of a chant I made on the footsteps of Parliament a year before making it into the doors of Parliament. My closing remarks were: “Aotearoa New Zealand, are you ready?” Clearly, the people were ready; just one party and 8 percent of the country was not. Let’s be really clear here: the issue is not our response to the problem. I will repeat that again: the issue is not our response to the problem. It was “unruly”, “disorderly”, “uncivilised” to bring in a Treaty principles bill. It was a dishonourable vote.

To make it very clear to the whole House and everyone listening, not even 24 hours after the Treaty principles bill reading, myself, our co-leaders and our matarau had a kanohi-ki-te-kanohi hui with the Speaker. There were many kōrero stated in this hui. I said to the Speaker that I recognise that I disrupted the vote that he had to conduct that day. I took accountability. I apologised directly to the Speaker, accepted the consequences made that day, which was a 24-hour suspension, docked pay, and being named. But I will not apologise for my actions.

The ruling I was given that day encapsulated everything I did by inserting the words “behaviour” and “actions”, which brings me to question why am I even here—why am I being punished twice, eight months later? A member can swear at another member, a member of Cabinet can lay their hands on a staff member, a member can drive up the steps of Parliament, a member can swear in Parliament, and yet they weren’t even given five minutes of suspension. But, no, when we stand up for the country’s foundational document, we get punished twice with the most severe consequences in the world—and that’s actually a fact.

Suspending the Māori seats of Hauraki-Waikato, Waiariki, and Te Tai Hauāuru is equivalent to suspending 18 general seats. I just want to repeat that again: 18 general seats. That is 210,000 voices being silenced. The Māori seats encapsulate six general seats and one electorate—[Interruption]—to be very clear to Mr Meager.

I just want to mihi to Te Pāti Reipa and Te Pāti Kākāriki. E kore ngā mihi e mutu ki a koutou.

[My thanks to you will never end.]

The problem isn’t the haka or our kākahu, or even the Treaty principles bill itself—like our wannabe Matatini judges over here. The system itself causes the issue. MPs are not legally required to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi. There are no provisions in the Constitution Act 1986 for Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This gap allows harmful bills like the Treaty principles bill and the Regulatory Standards Bill to be introduced.

The solution is clear: a legal duty for MPs to respect and protect Te Tiriti o Waitangi and a provision of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the Constitution Act 1986. This is my member’s bill, which I introduced last week, or the last time we were supposed to get suspended. Taku ture tuatahi ka whakatau ki te Whare Mīere.

[My first legislation introduced to the Beehive.]

It is the duty of members of Parliament to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi Legislation Bill—Te Pire mō te Here ki te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Without our having this law in place, that is what’s continuing to allow members of this House to silence the voiceless and slam the door on them. Nā ngā mema o tēnei Whare i whakaaetia nei te here ki te Tiriti o Waitangi. Mā mātou koe e here, ā haere ake nei te wa.

[It was the members of this House that approved the obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi. We will bind you from now until for ever.]

This is not a country issue; this is an in-House issue. We have no option but to be the opposers and proposers at the same time, and actually address the core problem that these systems represent so that another generation doesn’t have to come through these doors and be silenced.

We can have this debate for days; actually, we have been for 185 years, and we’re still debating on te reo Māori “Go” and “Stop” signs. Get over it. The pathway forward has never been so clear. This isn’t a left or right issue. This is about getting the foundations right first, to move forward as a country, and to move forward as a country this House must recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi in our Constitution Act and members of this House must have a duty to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This House must acknowledge the laws of this land.

I tore a bill that divided our country. I am now presenting a bill that honours our relationship as a country. In the words of our late King, “Let’s keep pushing forward.” While we are currently facing a storm—and there was a storm last night—there is no need to worry in this bill. We are stronger together, the wind in our sails of kotahitanga, and with that we will reach our final destination. Tēnā rā tātou.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to start my contribution by thanking the Privileges Committee for their patience in coming to a decision on this matter, especially as it took them six months and various attempts in order to try and have all members who needed to speak at this being able to do so.

This is not about the haka—it’s not about the haka at all. It’s about the rudeness and the disrespect that was given to this House, to the Speaker who sat in that Chair, to all the elected colleagues around this House, and it’s about the invasion on a process that we call democracy. That’s what the privileges complaint was about.

When I listened to what Opposition members have said, I’ve heard them talk about episodes where fights were taking place outside, where there were indiscretions with a Green member and a National Party member, where there were other indiscretions that happened in here. In fact, where a Labour Party member also stood and apologised to the House—stood in front of the Privileges Committee and listened to them. Even though he stood by what he did, he did man up, turn up, and took respect of the House when he did it.

When I listen to what has been said across the room, I am hearing that there’s no Treaty without Māori, and that’s correct. There is also no Treaty without the Crown. In this room, we are here as representatives of the Crown. In this room, we are sitting amongst a memorial: a memorial of wars, a memorial of deaths—that we come into this place every single day, because those people that fought in every one of those battles around this room, no matter what their nationality is, they did it for New Zealand and they did it so that we could be a democracy. And a democracy is something that we should all be proud of. But it’s not universal around this House, and there are excuses being made for bad behaviour.

Because in this room, we are here to make laws, to not make laws, to debate, to have the discussions. And this place is so sacred that we can’t even have the King in this room. We’ve got the green carpet here. We can’t have them because the elected people of this country sit in this room to have debates. This is not about the haka—it’s not about the haka. It’s about process. It’s about grandstanding at the expense of this House and how it operates. It’s about just being ignorant and arrogant about how we do laws in New Zealand. You do not have to agree with every single law, but we do have a process when you do not.

And when—

Tākuta Ferris: Oh, go back to the Treaty part. Tell us more about that.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: Well—“Tell us about the Treaty part.” What I would like to see from Te Pāti Māori is where we look to unify as a country. Where we look to come together to find solutions. But we don’t hear that from Te Pāti Māori. All we hear is aggression. All we hear is bullying. All we hear is yelling.

The other thing I’d like to point out is that when it comes to these two-fingered guns, I sat there and had that pointed at me while I was told, “kino”. Now, as a licensed firearm owner, if I were to do that to anybody either in this House or out on the street, I would lose my licence. Why? Because I’d be deemed as no longer being fit and proper. I have just—

Tākuta Ferris: Ha, ha!

Hon NICOLE McKEE: They think it’s funny. They think it’s funny to point fingers and pretend to kill someone. Now, I don’t—I don’t. I take that quite seriously. And when I listen to the Green members talking about disproportion when it comes to the recommendations of the Privileges Committee, I don’t think that it is disproportionate. And if we listen to the members of Te Pāti Māori, they’ve just told us in their speeches that this is the beginning. They have no intention of complying to the rules of the House. In fact, they’ve just gone on and said that they’re getting rid of the Treaty for 21 days—they’re putting it on hold—like they have the power to do that.

The power for this nation comes from this House. It comes from this room. And the people put us here to speak to them. Not to get out of your seats and start going up to other members of the House and trying to intimidate them with your stupid little fingers. Why don’t you put your brain into gear, get some words in your mouth, and start debating. Because that’s what you do in this Whare. I’ve heard that we are bullies over on this side, but we’re not the ones that are yelling comments to other people and other members continuously—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, I’m just going to make a point at this point that yelling is coming from many areas, and it varies depending on who’s speaking. So carry on, Minister Nicole McKee.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. What we’ve heard from Te Pāti Māori—and I’m trying to look for good ideas, but I’ve not found any because I’ve not heard any. What I hear is just a constant barrage of everything that they don’t like and that they hate. And when things continue to go along that way and they do not get their way, then they jump out of their seats, they cross the floor, and they go up and intimidate other members in their faces.

Now, that’s not something that should be done in this House. We all know that that’s not how you behave in this House. And because of that, we are seeing the decorum and the respect of each other, of members, of process, and of democracy absolutely eluding itself, and it should not happen here. Not in this Whare.

It took six months for the Privileges Committee to even get to a point where they could give a recommendation to the House. They tried very hard to have the other side be a part of that conversation, but they refused. This is not a disproportionate recommendation that’s been made, especially when you look at what actually happened. So the Privileges Committee decision was not about the haka; it was about Te Pāti Māori bullying their way to change. What the Privileges Committee have said to the House is that behaviour should not stand. They will have a disproportionate punishment because of it, and because of the ongoing behaviour.

I fully support what the Privileges Committee are recommending to this House and request—

Kahurangi Carter: Jail time!

Hon NICOLE McKEE: No—that the members over there grow up and start learning how to debate issues and be a part of a solution, instead of making stupid statements like, “We’re going to suspend the Treaty for 21 days.” If that’s the case, I hope you all give up all your wages. I hope you all give up everything that you take from the Government in order to then trash the rest of New Zealand. Because that’s a disappointment to Māori. That’s a disappointment to a lot of Māori who tell us they don’t support your extremist ways. Utter contempt—utter contempt—not only for the Treaty but also for the process. I hope the 21 days gives the party time to sit down and think about how they behave in the House and how they actually will get action and get things moving. Because it is possible, but not with that bullying, aggressive attitude. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I stand in support of the amendment moved in the name of the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, and I do so for a number of reasons. Before I get to those, I just want to make a few comments, actually. There are no winners in this debate. Each party in this House might think they’re winning by talking to the people that support them, but there are no winners in this debate—none—especially not this House.

My colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb talked about the Privileges Committee being one of the most senior committees of Parliament. Let me say that again: a committee of Parliament—not a committee of the Government; a committee of Parliament—that should be holding to account actions of members of Parliament as the Parliament, not as the Government. It’s demonstrably clear to me that it is the Government that is punishing the members today, not the Parliament, because if it was the Parliament, we would have the support of every party in this House, like we have had many other times when members have been referred to the Privileges Committee. That is a dangerous precedent, and I’ll tell you why. It’s most dangerous for the future of the Privileges Committee—

Steve Abel: Kangaroo court.

Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE: People need to calm down—seriously. This is a serious matter. They should keep their interjections to themselves.

The Privileges Committee of the future will have a new precedent, without a doubt—a new range of penalties against members who err in the future. You can guarantee that. You can also guarantee that Governments of the day, in the future, will feel very free to use those penalties to punish their opponents. This is what we are doing in the House today. Just because you hold those benches today, it does not mean that those three parties will hold them in the future, and when they don’t—and I can guarantee you that you will not endure for ever. For the last 90 years, that has been the case. The first Labour Government: 1935. The first National Government: 1949. Those two parties have led Governments ever since 1949. Let me tell you, let me tell the House, that is the precedent—more than anything else we’re doing—that we’ll be doing today if we act on it as reported by the Privileges Committee to this House.

To my colleagues in the National Party: there was a time when, if the two largest parties in this House were on the same page, that’s what happened, and for a lot of different reasons, and colleagues in other parties—the Green Party, the ACT Party, New Zealand First, and Te Pāti Māori will know this—were left out. That’s a fact. I implore colleagues in the National Party to think twice about accepting the motion that’s on the Table. I also implore Te Pāti Māori to actually think about what the Hon Willie Jackson has suggested. It’s not for me to tell colleagues to apologise but, as he said, it might go a long way, and one would need to think clearly about what the long-term strategy is.

I’m going to say this because I knew her, better probably than anyone in this House: Tariana Turia would never have agreed to that, never. When she came in here as the leader of the Māori Party in 2004, she worked harder than any other MP in here, and I say that because she never missed a vote and she spoke on every single bill before this House, and she was just one member all by herself. Te Pāti Māori has the opportunity to have a huge legacy in this place, not now but into the future. But that’s the choice of Te Pāti Māori.

There are a lot of people out there watching right now who will be agreeing with the narrative that you are saying—they will absolutely, 100 percent agree. I say to them that when you come into this House, you swear the oath, whether it’s on the Bible or on your word. You agree to the rules of this House. You can’t have it both ways. You have to use the mechanisms of this House and, in this instance, the Standing Orders Committee to change those Standing Orders. Te Pāti Māori have been here for 21 years and have had ample opportunity to do that. So has the Labour Party, by the way, and we haven’t, either—not to the point where I’d be happy.

Tākuta Ferris: How long do we have to wait?

Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE: I’ll answer that interjection. You’re here; you’re in this House. You have the opportunity to change it—absolutely change it. You can’t change it by not turning up for a vote in the House. That ain’t going to change anything.

I totally agree with the leader of the Labour Party and the speech he gave the week before last, and with Dr Duncan Webb as well, with our differing view on the Privileges Committee report. I think that in order for this to move forward, two parties need to change their position: Te Pāti Māori and the National Party.

I refer to a time when John Key showed leadership on an issue that the Labour Party in Government was struggling with, and he resolved it. He showed leadership, changed his position, and resolved that issue. Why would you do that? Because you’d be speaking to not only your own audience but someone else’s, and I suspect he knew that. It’s a time for us to decide whether we want to do that or not. If the answer to that question by either party is no, then we’re wasting our time in this debate.

I say to colleagues in my party: do we really need to be saying anything more if that’s the case? We’re just delaying the inevitable, and we need to move on so we can discuss the things that actually count. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. First of all, what I would like to do is take the opportunity to do what we couldn’t do in front of the Privileges Committee. Nothing that we ever do as Te Pāti Māori is accidental. It is very purposeful, very measured, and very deliberate. So when we have a situation, in this case—and I love what my whanaunga has shared—but what we’re confronting here is a Government who has a very anti-Māori, anti-Tiriti, anti-women, anti-rainbow agenda. We need to, as a party, put up what it is that we were contending with, and actually show what power really did when it saw that we weren’t reacting the way they wanted us to. We have a Prime Minister, a National-led Government, who traded with Te Tiriti for the principles bill, even though it wasn’t a bottom line. We have an ACT Party with a leader whose values match and align with the Atlas agenda, who silence the voices of indigenous people.

So I want to be like this. I want to turn up and know that we can fight for our party and it’s going to get a fair go. But it doesn’t in this space, and nor is the rest of Māori that are having to contend with the clawing-back, the dismantling, of your own services that Labour put out. This isn’t Te Pāti Māori having its tantrum. This battle started here, by the very people who are crying, “Poor me, woe is me, help me.” The Government used their legislative might in this House to takahē our w’akapapa and our Tiriti. We didn’t. And they didn’t like it when we used our w’akapapa and our Tiriti to hit back at the might of the legislative power. That was not a battle Māori decided to start. This is not about disorder; this was just about us standing in our truth. And you can see the dynamics of te ao Māori; like everyone else, we don’t agree on everything, but we have a generation coming through that I don’t see in any other party, including Labour. Absolutely, we’ve got our whaea that tell us we should be “like this, like this”, but we’ve also got our rangatahi, tapping at us saying, “Where am I fitting in this place? Where does Hana belong?” You don’t have that burden, you don’t have that responsibility, because none of you are bringing anyone else through.

We were referred to a system and a committee that was already known, and was already outspoken, in its public opinions of Māori. Let me just bear with that. We had a committee made up—the Privileges Committee, who we were referred to—who have a public record of anti-Māori sentiments. Judith Collins, the chair, has called Māori health equity “segregation” and attacked Māori wards as “undemocratic”; Winston Peters, who questioned whether Māori are even indigenous, mocking our identity and indeed our w’akapapa; and Louise Upston, who’s busy penalising the poor. The truth is, the court of law would never have let this crowd through to predetermine and prejudge us, because it would have been called a mistrial. They wouldn’t have made it. So we have a Government majority committee—and I agree with what my whanaunga said in Labour: the committee has lost its way. It is Government-agenda’d, Government-driven, and we went in there knowing this bias. We went into that process knowing this bias. You could google what I’m saying. No one has to be in Parliament to know this bias.

We went in there, and so we asked Parliament to hear us. We asked for tikanga experts tonight. We asked that Hana-Rawhiti not face double jeopardy. We actually went to meet with the Speaker, as she quite rightly said: ignored. We asked to be heard together, as a party: that too was refused. We asked for legal counsel to be properly included: blocked. Do not tell me that Te Pāti Māori wasn’t sitting here trying to meet you halfway, three-quarters of the way, all of the way. Every time we asked to be measured in a way that we knew the bias wasn’t going to be predetermined and the judgment made, it was refused. I refuse to sit here and pretend that we didn’t make five appeals, knowing the Government’s bias. And you ask why we didn’t attend.

Instead, what we confronted was a Government who allowed its comms spin to falsely go out and say the vote wasn’t completed, the bill couldn’t advance. There was no delay. What they were really trying to say is we disrupted the comfort of this Government, who’s had a free run. Sit there and do an urgency, we’ll sit there and have an urgency run on this, we’ll do crazy timing on this, we won’t have a discussion and public consultation on this bill. Then we had the demonising: the demonising of Māori, the demonising of my wiri, the demonising of my fingers, and we were made to look violent, on purpose. Yet you’re the ones—this Government’s the ones that’s doing the gun laws and doing the bootcamps and reinvesting in military might and trying to mine to be able to sit there and give more blinking military weight. The hypocrisy of this place!

I want to tell you really why Rawiri and I made our decisions: because we saw the bullying of our youngest MP. And I don’t care how you live with your truth: we saw you humiliated because she went viral. Billions of views saw what this place was about. You were so cruel to our youngest MP. The chair actually had her in tears one time in here because she spoke in English, her second language. She referred to her iPad and that got interrupted. We saw. We’re not stupid. You don’t get to become descendants of resistance and not know and see what’s happening to her. We saw language deliberately being used, and I want to sit there and make sure I get this right. The chair of this committee said the haka lacked “civility”—the same term used in Atlas, the same term used in 19th century debates when Māori were called “savages”, unfit for parliamentary order. In fact, in the 1860s, colonial MPs argued that Māori could not participate in Parliament because they lacked the civil capacity to engage with proper legislative conduct. The violence—I mean, I am the least violent of us all. We were cast not as just representative of our people but agitators, extremists, emotional, unruly, intimidating, with weaponised fingers. This was all a blinking payout for everyone else to see. You can do that to Rawiri and I, but not to our youngest, beautiful, respectful rangatahi.

What we then saw was the racial profiling, where even the haka, after all its years of representing this nation, had a whole ‘nother second meaning. This was a masterclass in how power reveals itself under pressure, and how we resort to what we know, because everything we threaten is everything that this place is comfortable with. This House needs to change. This House needs to represent the people it was put here for, and it doesn’t. We’ve got a Government that can’t tell the difference between tikanga and crime; a Government that treats Māori defiance as disorder and abuse of power; a Government that fears Māori unity. This committee is not fit for purpose, and that is the proposition by Te Pāti Māori. There is a tikanga committee that should have enacted this decision, these discussions, and look for this feedback. And I put that challenge back to my whanaunga. We would not be in this vote if the tikanga komiti and the Standing Orders Committee truly addressed what was going on and were able to make room for when we have such an extreme right-wing Government, as we do now. Where are the safety mechanisms for Hana? Where are the safety mechanisms for a marginalised party? Where are the safety mechanisms for a party that doesn’t agree and, in fact, is under attack by the very Government that is ruling it, judging it, deciding its fate?

We came in and we told our people we are not the moderate, we are not the incremental party; we are the transformational party, because our people are hurting so much and so are our communities. We don’t have the luxury of time to do this incrementally. We all came in and said that we would be the unapologetic Māori Party. And you know, when you know that the foundations of your house are rotten, you’ve got to stop trying to build on those rotten foundations. If this is the cost of peace, and this is the cost of Te Tiriti, and this is the cost of what we have to endure now so we make it better for the next generation out there coming through, ka pai. We wear it. We didn’t ask any of you to do anything different, and nowhere is this recommendation telling us to do anything different. So stop introducing other views: “If you’d got on with each other, if you’d have got a mihi atu.” We were stitched up and we’re used to it, and we will wear this unapologetically. And I really don’t care what the right-wing Government says, because it overused and abused its power in this committee, and it used it for political purposes. Kia ora rā.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I actually don’t stand here with pride today to talk on this issue, and I actually thought long and hard today about whether I should. I’ve listened to the speeches across this House, and the hate and the anger that’s been chucked from both sides of this House, and it actually really saddens me—it really saddens me. Somebody can say that I don’t have the right to stand here and speak, but that’s what this place is about. You can have the interjection from that side of the House and say, “I’m not going to stay here.” and “I’m not going to listen to this.”, but four and a half years ago, when I had the privilege of being elected into this place, I felt that burden of what was expected of me when I came to this place, to represent the people that I wanted to come here to make a better life for.

I’ve fought my whole life. I’ve fought my whole life to be respected. I’ve fought my whole life to know my worth. I’ve never felt less than since I’ve been in this place. I have spent three years in this place having my identity ripped apart, having my whakapapa questioned, having my right to have an opinion questioned, but I don’t get up, out of my seat, and stand in front of those who disagree with me, and try to use stand-over tactics to get what I want. What I do is I go away and I work really hard to make sure that I know the decisions that I’m making are the right ones for the people who I promised I would stand for when I put my hand up to be elected.

Now, for the other side of the House to make accusations that people on this side of the House do not understand what it’s like to be oppressed; I tell you, Mr Speaker, I do. I’ve spent my whole life being oppressed. Even when I put my hand up to stand in this place, in Parliament, I was told by loved ones of mine that people like me do not get into a place like this. So when I came to this place and I took the oath, I promised to abide by the rules of this House. I may not agree with all the rules of this House, but I agreed to that when I stood here four and a half years ago and took that oath.

There are ways that we can make changes in this place, but using stand-over tactics and bullying behaviour is not the way to do so. The debate here is about breaking the rules of this place. I think people—when they watch speeches on the TV or listen on the radio to Parliament—often forget that this is our workplace. This is a place we come every day to do our work. At every workplace, people have the right to feel safe; people have the right to walk the corridors in their job and feel safe. In any other workplace, if a staff member breaches the code of conduct, there are repercussions for breaching that code of conduct. In this place, it’s kind of a special place where there is no ability for a boss to sack you or fire you for breaching the code of conduct. We are put here by the people of New Zealand. So the only way that we can maintain order and decorum in this place is by having the rules that have been put in place.

This is what the Privileges Committee is there for—sort of like our HR, where we sit down and we discuss what the issue was and, hopefully, can come to a medium ground where there is a little bit of contrition shown from those who have had the accusations brought to them, and then a simple apology could be enough. We’ve seen this in the past, where behaviours in this House have happened, everybody’s taken part in the process, and we’ve been able to stand in this House respectfully, speaking towards each other, showing a bit of contrition, and apologising when we’re wrong. Now, we haven’t seen that from the members that we’re talking about today. There is no contrition. They’re refusing to show any sign of remorse whatsoever for the behaviour that we’re discussing today.

Now, all the other discussions around tikanga, around te ao Māori, around all those other issues—yes, they may be an issue that needs to be addressed in the future. But right now, what we’re addressing is conduct within the House. The haka was conducted while a vote was being conducted. That is all we’re discussing today. The anger and the hatred being chucked across this House is heartbreaking. I have never seen this place so low since the moment I started.

Now, we talk about cruelty. We talk about accusations of cruelty. I listened to the speeches, I felt the pain, I felt the tears, and I understood that pain and those tears. What would be cruel is if one of us took that video, put it up on Facebook, and rolled our eyes and said, “Fragility is real.” That is cruelty. So we can talk about one side of the House bullying another side of the House, but two wrongs don’t make a right. We need to address the actual issue that is happening here.

Quite frankly, when I came here, I wanted to be able to set an example. We don’t understand how powerful our voices actually are in this place, how people listen to what we’re saying in this place, and how it reflects that behaviour back in society. We need to show leadership in the way of having proper, meaningful debate; not using aggression and stand-over tactics to get what we want. We want to teach our next generation that you can sit around a table, you can have a debate, and you can disagree, and walk away, agreeing to disagree, without slinging insults at each other and without using bullying tactics to try and get our own way.

I would really rather not be standing here, but I did think it was important that we brought the tone of this debate down and made sure we were actually debating the issue that’s on the table. I would rather be doing what I was elected to do when I came to this House, and that is deal with the issues that are out in society, not talking about other parties within this House. We have issues in our communities where families are losing their babies, where our people are becoming victims of crime, where our people are suffering, and we’re debating this. Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. I’m really embarrassed for everybody today, because the previous speaker was right: nobody wins here.

If the party that we’re discussing today had shown a little bit of compassion, had shown a little bit of a sign of “Yeah, we did something wrong. We apologise.”, then we may not still be standing here debating this. But the fact of the matter is that Te Pāti Māori has made it very clear that this is just the beginning, that they don’t think that they’ve done anything wrong, and that they would do it again. So that is why we’re still standing here debating this. It’s an absolute shame, because we should actually be discussing the real issues in this country, and, especially, in my portfolio space, where we have children dying in our communities. We should be coming up with solutions on how to protect our children and our communities, not standing here debating another party. So I’m going to leave it at that. But because there’s been no sign of remorse and no sign of contrition, I will actually commend the recommendations.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens as the Green Party member on the Privileges Committee, and I am astounded by the last three ACT Party speakers, who seemed far more offended about alleged finger guns than actual gun violence, children living in poverty, or workers being exploited. I found it extremely shameful being a migrant to this country, being here by virtue of Te Tiriti, and having a fellow migrant in the Privileges Committee actually continue to scapegoat Māori communities and flirt with the idea of imprisoning Te Pāti Māori members of Parliament—so shameful, and brings our migrant communities into disrepute. But I think rolling out their token migrants to do these tactics is a sign of fear that more migrant communities are working with Māori to honour Te Tiriti and stand against the politics of division that they represent.

The Privileges Committee is, as others have talked about, a senior committee that is supposed to be, you know, ruled by consensus. But in this debate it has been shown that the members of the Government would rather show their performative tears and outrage over this issue that they themselves inflicted us with. They chose this punishment; they chose to say that they find it unprecedented. They chose to hand out a punishment seven times bigger than what has been given before. I am sick and tired of members of the Government and their performative outrage about the so-called dropping standards of this House when it is the former Deputy Prime Minister who continuously asks out-of-order questions in the House and challenges the Speakers on an almost weekly basis. It’s always those that are complaining the loudest about the so-called dropping standards that are lowering the standards themselves.

I just heard the previous ACT Party speaker talking about cruelty when, actually, we have had members of the Government using terms like “sick idiots” to refer to other members in the House—idiots, actually, just up until recently—and constant slurs and languages and literal anti-migrant rhetoric in this Chamber. They should look in the mirror. The ACT Party members may want to tell their leader to stop driving up Parliament steps before they start their crocodile tears about the lowering standards of the House.

For those lecturing Te Pāti Māori about how they should behave, let them be reminded that Te Pāti Māori, the Greens, and any of us are not here to represent the Government members of the House; we’re here to serve the voters who elected us. Those voters who elected us into this place; they knew what we stood for. Te Pāti Māori voters knew what Te Pāti Māori stand for, and they’re accountable to their voters, not to you.

The Green Party does not support the recommendations of the Privileges Committee, because they are indeed unprecedented, and I found it ignorant of the members to actually be conflating the haka with intimidatory behaviour. That’s on them, because, actually, the world is watching us, and, in fact, many around the world, including in my homeland of Mexico, are watching with pride. Indigenous communities in my homeland are watching us with pride and with hope about what happened in the House last year, because it served as a reminder of the power that indigenous peoples across the world can tap into to seek justice. I was flooded with messages from people in my homeland feeling pride about our Parliament, and yet these Government members seek to completely misunderstand the sentiment around the world that was of hope and it was about inspiration and what is actually possible.

Indeed, there are rules in this House, that are actually completely made up, often a vestige of a British Parliament, that actually—[Interruption] They are made up. All rules are made up. All rules are made up by humans. That’s what rules literally are—like, rules are made up by humans, and humans can change the rules. I do welcome the call from some other members that it is time to review the rules of Parliament to better incorporate tikanga into this place. I actually find it weird that out of all the things that I’ve said, the thing they find the most offensive is that I just said that rules are made up, because literally, like, every time they put up a bill in this House, a lot of the times it’s made up, actually. They have no evidential basis for most of the legislation that they push through, and now they seem to be most outraged by the fact that I just reminded them that we have the power to make and change the rules of this place.

So, once again, I want to remind the members of the Government, particularly those that had representatives on the Privileges Committee, who chose this unprecedented punishment, that they had a choice. They had a choice between choosing performative outrage and an unprecedented punishment or to reflect and stand back on the fact that the world is watching us and we could be leaders in how we choose to have a democracy that actually represents our foundational document and, indeed, as representatives of the Crown in this place, to actually honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Instead, we have a Government that uses this performative outrage to distract from their anti-Māori legislation to create this theatre. They were the ones who chose for us to have this debate, and then the Greens—we did take this decision collectively. I have a feeling that the Government members who were in the Privileges Committee probably didn’t even talk to their colleagues about the unprecedented punishment that they were handing out. I have a feeling that they were driven by their own personal ideological vendettas. I have a feeling that they completely ignored and did not take into account the repercussions, that, actually, our Parliament could be brought into disrepute, potentially internationally, because the world is also watching this debate and the punishment that is being handed out.

Indeed, this is setting a precedent. It’s setting a precedent because future Governments—and if we have future sessions of the Privileges Committee under the current membership, what we now have is a precedent of (a) acting in an incredibly partisan way, and (b) now creating a new threshold of suspension that will lift, basically, any future considerations that we make. Again, you know, I want to remind those members that were so outraged about the cruelty of this place that they want to maybe talk to their colleagues about their constant breaches of the Standing Orders, their constant disregard for the House, the constant insults, and that perhaps, as they’ve said, if they’ve got more important things to debate, they want to actually introduce legislation that fixes the issues that we face instead of, for example, having Budgets that allow child poverty to remain at staggering levels.

I genuinely wish that they would bring this kind of energy and so-called heart on to the issues that matter, but instead they’ve chosen to do a sideshow of distraction. And you know what? I’d rather be debating this than debating bills that will leave more people in poverty. I would rather be here talking about the self-inflicted debate that they’ve created than actually debating bills that will cause harm in our communities. I don’t care for the bills that they bring into this House because they’re causing harm in our communities. So be it. If we have to spend time scrutinising the decisions they made, then so have it.

I support the amendment by my co-leader Marama Davidson to actually change the punishment from suspension to censure. Why? Because, actually, if it was completely up to us, we would have paused the Privileges Committee process and not had this debate altogether, to allow for a review of how tikanga can be incorporated in this place and then look at this issue with fresh eyes. But right now, what we have is an opportunity, and the Government members have an opportunity, to reflect on what they have done and to change their minds—it’s never too late. It’s never too late to realise they made the wrong decision, that they’re setting an unprecedented threshold that now Government members will keep using to punish other MPs, to, basically, prevent them from participating in the House.

Te Pāti Māori was right that countless voters will be missing representation in this place as a result of this unprecedented punishment. I found it staggering that when the ACT Party member justified the decision, she didn’t explain why; she just said it was justified. But that’s seven times as much as we’ve had before. I don’t think it’s justified, and I challenge members of the Government to actually give us an actual justification as to (a) why they find the haka intimidatory, because I think most New Zealanders wouldn’t agree with that; (b) to explain to us why they thought setting a punishment seven times higher than it’s been set before is justified, because so far they haven’t. We’ve had crocodile tears, we’ve had performative outrage, but we haven’t had an actual debate on this issue. We have the former Deputy Prime Minister rambling throughout his contribution in this debate without offering any meaningful substance to this issue. If they think it is so serious, then they would treat it as such, but for them it’s a convenient platform to attack Māori, to push through the politics of division that they stand for.

We think that there’s an opportunity here for some actual common sense—that they seem to claim to stand for—to, actually, change the motion in front of us to not create this unprecedented punishment that would actually be a terrible, terrible thing for us to have in future Privileges Committee meetings, because this will now be used. This is history in the making. This will now be used every time we consider something in the Privileges Committee as the bar, and I think that’s shameful. I invite the members of the Government to use their common sense and their wisdom rather than their politicking to actually change the motion in front of us and to accept our amendment.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Speaking to the amendment moved by the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, I want to speak to every National MP in the House, who I know believe that this House belongs to the people and it must reflect the voices, values, and cultures of those that we serve. I know every electorate MP believes that. I know that everyone who has had to front up at a townhall meeting or to meet the principal outside the school before they do an assembly believes that—that we have a democracy that we can be proud of. I believe that they know that that includes a rich history of 200 years of Māori protest, in all of its forms, that we, as a country, can be proud of—of our indigenous people not only taking to the street but engaging in lively debate within our media, within our public forums, and within this place. That includes the place of tikanga Māori, and I’m proud that this is a Parliament that does recognise that in some way.

Today, we’re debating a privilege from the 1600s, designed to protect MPs for speaking up for the people that they represented to the Crown. It was designed at a time when MPs’ lives were literally on the line for doing exactly that. It’s not a privilege that was designed to shut down Opposition; it was a privilege that was designed to promote it. This is something that we can be proud of in our system, and it’s not codified by the Standing Orders or the rule book or McGee on parliamentary procedure. This is something that is fundamental to all Westminster Parliaments around the world. So when we have a Privileges Committee that has made a decision to limit the privilege of parliamentarians in this way, where the Crown can exercise its power in Parliament by use of its Government MPs on such a committee making this sort of decision, we have made a precedential decision about the way the privilege operates in New Zealand, which is unlike any other Western democracy, and it is being used against a minor party, a party that opposes the Government’s agenda and is an unprecedented attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is a constitutional document.

This is unlike anything that other Parliaments have to deal with. We are, on the world stage, pretty unique in having a debate like this. We’re also debating what kind of Parliament we want to be in the future. We can be one that punishes opposition—and there are many of those in the world—or we can be one that makes room for it in all of its forms. We can celebrate haka, waiata, and karakia when it is beautiful—and it is beautiful—or we can shut it down when it challenges power.

Parliament is not stuck, and its practice evolves over time. Something that I really enjoy about New Zealand’s democracy is that we can change it and that we are the masters of it. Every parliamentary term, we have a formal process and an informal process for changing our own rules. They need to change like that because they reflect the values and the cultures and the languages of the people that we serve, and we couldn’t do this job that we do if we had something that was more codified than that. But shifts like this, represented in the report of the Privilege Committee, which I have on my desk here—it’s not long—these should be things that we carefully consider together. They are designed to be agreed in what was a bipartisan, and is now a cross-partisan, way.

It is conventional that we do these things with cross-partisan support, because we all need to agree on what our job is. The fundamental responsibility of MPs in this House is to represent the people who put us here, and so we have to have a modicum of respect for those people who put the elected representatives here, even if they do not agree with us.

This decision of the Privileges Committee is wrong because it doesn’t do that; and it didn’t even claim to do that. There was no trying to capture the views of not only the minority parties but the major Opposition party too. And when I speak to the National MPs on this, I am speaking to you because the two major parties should always agree on these things. There are minor parties in this House who we will both disagree with. There are minor parties in this House who we think are testing the limits of the public tolerance for democracy as it is now, and I know the National Party MPs who are listening to this believe that too.

If we do things like this, if we use our institutions in this place to make decisions that benefit the Government at the expense of minority views and Opposition views, then we cannot continue in this way. We will need to fundamentally rethink how this democracy works. If the centre can’t hold that power, then nobody can, any more, and there is no natural limit to the power of an executive in this country, and that is not a democracy that we have designed. It is not something that anyone in this House sees as a future for Aotearoa.

Let’s come back to where privilege comes from. The idea that privilege is a living protection for members of Parliament is a useful one for us to start with, but it’s not about the members themselves; it’s about the form and the function of this place. Privilege isn’t about the feelings of the people here; it’s about the ability to conduct our work and to debate with each other in the way that this place is designed around. Using this privilege to shut down opposition, even though it was factually interrupting a vote, is just another way to shut down what was theatrically voiced opposition, which should have a place in our democracy now.

The Speaker and the House need flexibility to respond to new forms of expression and protest. We need to be able to adapt to that. What counts as disorder has changed in both our society and Parliament over many, many years, and in the time that there are people in this House who have seen. We inherited this system from Westminster, but we’re making our own choices now. I think New Zealand’s Parliament is the most vibrant and exciting of any in the Westminster system. Our question time is the only one where everyone comes, when Ministers and Opposition members all have a go, where we have lively debates that are well attended, and we can be proud when there are visiting diplomats and guests in the gallery. This is a great Parliament—the Privileges Committee has issued a report which hurts it. Every member from a major party should be concerned about that.

I want to make the point about proportionality and precedent, which has been well put by my colleague the Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe. Suspension is not symbolic only; it removes elected representatives and silences those people who brought them here. The suspension doesn’t just punish the member; it means their constituents—who in this case are Māori; many of them are young, many of them are marginalised, and most of them do not agree with this Government—will lose their voice in Parliament. Much has been made of the attendance of those members, but what we are debating here is a precedent going forward about how members from minor parties, representing marginalised communities and marginalised views, can have their say in this place. That’s something we should all be very, very defensive of, because it’s something that not only is really important to any Westminster democracy but is important to this particular democracy. We have a good one. We have something we can be proud of here. We should all be hesitant to touch it.

Twenty-one days is seven times longer than the longest suspension ever recorded. It’s disproportionate to the offence, and that is why we oppose it. In over 160 years, only two MPs have ever been suspended: one for a single day, the other for three. Not one, not even in cases involving misuse of public money or serious breaches of trust, have faced 21 days. These punishments have to make sense to the public. What we do in here has to make sense to the public at some level. It has to be fair and it has to look fair, and this doesn’t.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was already named and suspended, and so we do not support further punishment for her. She was immediately named on the day of the incident. She has come to this House today. Some members have said there is no remorse—that was a speech of remorse. That was a speech of honesty and moral clarity.

Tikanga in this House is something that is important to me. It is important that we use it and important that we celebrate it, to me. Tikanga is not mentioned in the Standing Orders, despite its significance in all of our public life. Standing Order 109 recognises te reo Māori, but not the broader practice of tikanga at all. McGee, on parliamentary procedure, notes that tikanga is often woven into speeches but its formal standing is unclear. We can do better than that. This should have been an opportunity to do better than that. This was the most senior committee of Parliament, with some of its most respected members. It had an opportunity to codify some of the use of tikanga and haka, and it did not do that and so it failed. I think we can all do better.

Labour supports accountability here. We also support haka, waiata, karakia, and proportionality and fairness and the right to protest for minor parties. Parliament should not punish haka or the interruption of a vote more harshly than behaviour that shuts down debate in the free exchange of ideas. And let’s be honest, this debate isn’t just about disorder; it’s about that discomfort that happens when Māori protest in a way that the House hasn’t learned to accommodate. So let’s learn to accommodate it. Let’s have the conversation about how we make this a part of our practice. Willie Jackson said the world is watching. That’s true, but all of our families are watching us conduct ourselves in this way.

This is a dark day for Parliament. This is not the standard that we hold ourselves to. But let it not be the unravelling either. Let’s learn from this. Let’s bring tikanga into our practice. Let’s do our best to understand it, so that we can represent the people who need us.

Tēnā koe, te Pīka. Tēnā tātou. We’ve heard a lot about the situation that we’re here for in terms of this Privileges Committee decision. In this House today, we have heard people who have no experience about the meaning of haka and what the tikanga of haka is and what the whakapapa of haka is. It is an absolute insult to te iwi Māori to hear people’s interpretation of what they believe haka is. Whether they believe it disorderly, whether they believe it violent, it is an absolute insult to sit here and listen to people’s interpretation of haka.

We know the Privileges Committee and those who made the complaints rummaged through the select committee books to find how they could punish us and find something against their privilege to punish us on. Because it’s still unclear why we are being punished, sanctioned. Why? Was it the haka? They say it’s not the haka, but I’ve heard a lot of kōrero about haka.

Gun gestures. Being on the floor. You don’t know—sorry, not you, Mr Speaker, but the Privileges Committee and the Government that supports them actually doesn’t know why we are being punished. And not one Privileges Committee member has explained to us where 21 days came from—not once. We have six MPs here to represent the near on million Māori that sit outside this House. And don’t worry. You say, “Oh, you only got 3 percent.” Kei te pai tēnā. You’ve had 180 years of practise. We’re getting there in this democracy. I heard 21 years for Te Pāti Māori in this House, but we’ve only been here for four elections. As we mature in this democracy, we demand that this democracy is fair on us. But it is not. It is not.

The six of us can take the hits. Talking about scribbles on my face and cowboy hats: I wear this hat as an acknowledgment to my grandfather and the many korouas that went to fight in the great wars. The C Company were known as “Ngā Kaupoi”—the cowboys. This is why I wear this hat. And I took the hat off my grandfather’s coffin. So now you know. And the scribbles on my face represent the many of our ancestors that have been the victim of State-sponsored terrorism from this House. This is a constant reminder that we are still here.

Today, we are ordered from the Chamber for 21 days because we dared to meet the Treaty principles bill with a haka. This House calls it disorderly. We call it an elevation of our indigenous voice, a declaration that Māori will never surrender the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This punishment is not about noise control or Standing Orders. It is a warning shot from the colonial State that cannot stomach indigenous defiance. This is the full machinery of the State, swinging its hammer at three Māori bodies. The hammer may fall on three MPs, but the echo is meant to intimidate an entire people into submission. Let the record show why the hammer is so heavy.

The Regulatory Standards Bill—a Trojan horse designed to chain every future law to corporate profit and to annihilate Te Tiriti o Waitangi. A direct threat to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And the Waitangi Tribunal—the very room where truth about injustice is spoken aloud—heard and legitimised a plan to strip Treaty clauses from 28 pieces of law. Page by legislative page, erasing Māori presence from the statute book. This is not reform; it is a proactive repeal of our rights as a tangata whenua. And the history tells us that when Māori refuse to play ball, the coloniser reaches for the maximum penalty, just as this House does today.

Make no mistake: this Government’s agenda is a war on many. It is a war on Māori. It is a war on wāhine, who refuse to be silent. It is a war to takatāpui, who will not shrink. It is a war on many families living in poverty, and a war on any community that refuses the colonial mould. If we do nothing, Aotearoa will sprint towards the worst fractures of other nations—division, fear, and resentment—faster than we can say “Kia ora.”

We have a saying in te ao Māori “Iti matakahi maire, ka hinga te rākau” [“A small wedge of maire will fell the tree].

This speaks to the small wedge of Māori—although small, it can fell the biggest trees. It speaks to an individual or group—although small, they can overcome the greatest of adversities, and, in this case, bring down the largest of institutions. Today’s prevention proves our Matakahi maire has struck at the very core of this institution.

So I turn from this floor to the floors of every marae, church hall, union hall, and rainbow community centre in the land and I say, te iwi Māori, our tīpuna endured muskets, land wars, the theft of whenua, and being beaten for speaking our reo—a 21-day benching is nothing on their sacrifice. To our wāhine, the heartbeat of our country: the mantle of your kuia, your grandmother, sits on your shoulders. Wear it with unapologetic pride. To our takatāpui whānau: your identity is a taonga to our nation. Let its colours lead the march. To our tangata Tiriti: Te Tiriti is your promise too. When you defend it, you do not stand behind us, you stand beside us.

We do not ask for sympathy; we demand participation. Flood select committees with submissions defending Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Turn our rage into power and make this a one-term Government. Enrol! Vote! If you hear the haka outside these walls, add your voice. If you see injustice trending online, amplify the truth. If you feel fear, remember fear is the coloniser’s last currency. Spend it into worthlessness by standing up. You can bench my body from this House for 21 days, but you will never bench our movement.

In my maiden speech, I talked about one of our tīpuna who was hung from the gallows of Mt Eden Prison for being wrongfully accused, for being harakore. He uttered the words, as the noose [Holds up a noose] was put around his neck, “Tangohia mai te taura i taku kakī kia waiata au i taku waiata.”—“Take the noose from around my neck so that I may sing my song.” The silencing of us today is a reminder of the silencing of our ancestors of the past, and it continues to happen today—21 days of silence.

This may be confronting, but this is a reality for our whānau. This is the reality for the people who descend from tīpuna who are wrongfully accused because you interpreted something. Interpretation is a feeling; it’s not a fact, and so you’ve interpreted different things to mean that we were violent and you’re making this out to your voters that we’re violent. We haven’t created the violence here, and now you’ve traded the noose for legislation.

Well, I’ve got a message for you all today: we will not be silenced, we will not be assimilated, we will not be subjugated, and we make no apology for being absolutely unapologetically, unfettered, unbridled Māori human beings. Kia ora tātou.

I am honoured to speak in this House. I am honoured to speak in this House every time I stand. I am honoured to be a representative of the people that voted for New Zealand First, and I am honoured to be able to take the oath when I first walked into this House to serve this House, to serve the King, to honour our democracy, and to honour our laws. It is through showing up in this House, it is through participating in this debate, that we will move our country forward. It is truly an honour to be able to facilitate change. I acknowledge members across the House for their words, for their passion, and for their commitment to their issues. But, as we see in this debate today, we have the ability to debate, to disagree, to contest each other’s ideas, to heckle, and to be upset, but we do it within the rules of this House so that we can protect the ability to speak.

Let’s not make this debate about something it isn’t. This debate is about the rules of this House, and if we need to change the rules in this House, then we do so within this House. We do it within the process that we have. We have the rules in every one of our pigeonholes. We have the rules, we have the orders, and we have the conduct expectations that we should be abiding by.

Let’s make it very clear why we are here. We had to suspend the sitting of this House in order to bring it to order. We have accommodated karakia, waiata, and haka.

Hon Members: Accommodated?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: We have accommodated it within this House, within respect, because that is the honour of this House. And, yes, accommodate. Yes, we accommodate all of our different views. We accommodate all of our different opinions. That’s what we do in this House. It is important that we know how we do that. It is important we know how the rules work, because if we have a risk of silencing a voice in this House for fear of putting something wrong, for fear of being intimidated, and for fear of the disruption of this House, then we lose our very democracy. We have to be able to say safely what we want to say and pass bills that we want to pass. We have heard so many words. We have heard about the need to protect our young MPs.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke is a glorious individual, but she was put forward in this issue. She was put forward, and they stood behind her as this occurred, and now we cry tears about the need to protect. Choices were made in that. This was not a spur-of-the-moment issue. This was an orchestrated attempt, and that could have easily been facilitated within the rules of this House. And that is true.

We can disagree on legislation. We can disagree, but we cannot disagree on the rules by which this House abides. We have to effect change through the process. We keep hearing about the issues about legislation we disagree with, but that’s the part of democracy. This is the part of the democracy that we are here to defend. It is really important we remember, and exactly the point that I’m trying to make is being reiterated now: the haka was not the issue; it was the breach of the rules under which we conduct ourselves in this House. And now we are having this indignation about the rules of this House; the indignation of the process under which we apply these rules. This is not about a personal attack. This is about defending the process under which we defend our democracy. It is so important.

We’ve heard talk today about the need to effect change; the need to protect those—we had the Green Party talking specifically about how we’re leaving people behind in poverty. And yet a small bill today—a very small bill—that was about to put money in the hands of pensioners was voted down by the two parties that say we’re doing nothing to help people. It was voted down today.

So this is the point. No matter what we do, no matter what initiative we give, no matter what token, we have the ability to vote down something so good and then get criticised for not doing what they wanted. Well, that’s democracy. That’s fine. But don’t come into this House and say that we should be doing other things rather than this debate. “Performative outrage” was the term that was used; that we are expressing performative outrage. That was exactly what occurred in this House: performative outrage. It was not about the haka. It was about performative outrage to make a point, and this House was suspended as a result. Now, that is the point.

We talked about this being unprecedented. Is it unprecedented that we had to suspend the sitting of this House? The Speaker tried to bring it to order. It would not bring it to order, and we had to suspend the sitting of the House. That is what we are debating here. We are debating the fact that we have rules. We are debating the fact that we need to know those rules in order for us all to operate.

These rules can be changed—we’ve talked about it. But you change it from within the system. That is why the legacy of the Māori Party exists today: because they came into this House to change the rules. They worked with the National Party to bring about better outcomes. That is the legacy. And now they complain that they’re a different party to the Māori Party that came forward before. They are turning their back on the legacy that brought them to this House. They are turning their back on the legacy that brought them to this House and saying that they are a different party. This is the part. We are so tragically disappointed by the fact that we need to work together and we need to ensure that we are fully appreciative of the rules that give us the opportunity to be in this House.

Let’s come back to the very point I made at the beginning. We walked across this carpet, we stood at that desk, and we took an oath. We took an oath. Whether you swore on the Bible, whether you swore on your own word, whether you swore on your own taonga, you swore an oath. And therefore, you have to be able to know what the rules are.

This is what the tragedy is. This debate has been shifted from what it’s actually about. It’s about the protection of the rules. And this is the challenge that we need: if we are to conduct this debate, if we are to conduct this House, if we are to pass legislation, if we are to deliver outcomes for those that need it, we need to know the rules by which we conduct ourselves, we need to know how to conduct ourselves, and we need to know that there are protections in this House to make sure that we all abide by the same rules. That is what the equality of this system delivers. Whatever you are, you enter this House under the same expectations, the same conditions—and it is really important that we return this debate to what it’s about.

This is the part that I want to ensure is protected as we conclude this debate. We want to make sure we can continue to conduct the business of this House, and we need to make sure that we respect the legacy of the path that was forged for us to be on this very carpet today. This is the part that we can attack each other individually and we can make all the noise and narrative, but the point is on this floor, we have an equal voice, we have an equal stance, and we need to protect that equal stance. And that is the important part. We need to know what the rules are, and when those rules are breached, there is a proportional punishment for it. We support the original report and recommendations from the committee.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have been listening to the debates across the House today and this issue is much more important than the emotion that it is being guided by. The emotion from the Privileges Committee feeling victimised, feeling like they had been takahi-ed on—their emotion has carried into this unprecedented recommendation from the Privileges Committee. This is an issue that is far too important to be carried by emotion.

We saw Ministers of this House, we saw members of this House, playing the victim over and over again and imploring our side of the House to be reasonable when they are the exact same people who are making decisions that are putting the boot to our most vulnerable tamariki with no regard for tamariki safety, putting this into legislation against the royal commission of inquiry, but yet standing there and claiming the victim.

I want to talk about the recommendations of the Privileges Committee report under Standing Order 417. There are many consequences to this 21-day stand-down period, to this absolutely ridiculous punishment. We’ve heard a lot about tikanga, we’ve heard a lot about the haka, we’ve heard a lot about hurt feelings. What is really, really key here are the consequences for the people outside of this House—the people that we are here to represent.

In the coming days and weeks it is expected that this Parliament is scheduled to debate the second reading of the Mental Health Bill, a bill that is critical for reform in this country, and we all agree that this is critical. This is a chance to begin undoing decades of systemic harm inflicted through coercive mental health laws. He Ara Oranga: Report of the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction says, “Despite the current level[s] of investment, [we are] not getting the outcomes we want for our people. The outcomes for Māori are worse than for the overall population, and Māori are [also] subject to much greater use of compulsory treatment and seclusion. There are also unmet mental health needs for Pacific peoples, disabled people, Rainbow communities, the prison population, and refugees and migrants. The estimated reduction in life expectancy of people with severe mental health or addiction challenges is 25 years. Our persistently high suicide rates are of major concern.”

Laws have disproportionately impacted Māori because of stripping away agency and often hope, and yet if this debate occurs as planned, the House will be missing the voice of Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—the very person who sat on the Health Committee, who upheld the voices of Māori clinicians, advocates, rangatahi, and iwi leaders. What does it say when a critical time comes, a moment to consider reform on this scale that will affect Māori and so many people in this country, to grapple with a system that has caused so much pain, and the voice of my colleague here, Debbie—who helped shape that reform—is not only missing, but deliberately excluded?

The impact of this exclusion will have ripple effects. We might not even be able to comprehend these now. The suspension recommendations—and let’s be clear: the 21-day ban for Debbie and Rawiri are without precedence and absolutely ridiculous, and they carry consequences far beyond this Chamber. They deny the people they represent the ability to be heard on an issue that cuts to the heart of wellbeing and rangatiratanga and justice.

Māori experience mental distress at higher rates and are more likely to be subjected to compulsory treatment and face worse outcomes in the mental health system. We need Debbie’s voice on this debate, but this Government is choosing to exclude such an important Māori voice who speaks for so many strongly. This House has chosen—these Government Ministers have chosen—to go beyond what was expected, beyond any kind of justification. If the point of the Privileges Committee is to protect the integrity of Parliament, we must ask: what is the integrity of a Parliament that silences those who participate in the select committee process and are best placed to speak to systemic injustice? We have to do better.

Recently, I was very lucky to represent this Parliament at the Inter-Parliamentary Union, along with colleagues from Labour and colleagues from the National Party. As a representative of this House, we had the privilege of participating in debates that carry across the world. We were in Uzbekistan, and across almost every conversation I had, whether it was with members from the Pacific, from Africa, from Scandinavia, from Latin America, or from Asia, there was a consistent thread of awe and deep respect for Aotearoa New Zealand’s foundation and, in particular, for te reo Māori, for tikanga Māori, and for our haka as a powerful symbol of identity.

I walked into one of the rooms that we were debating in and someone came up to me and was like, “Is this you? Is this you?”, pointing to Hana doing the haka. Now, of course, it was such an honour, at 41, to be mistaken for someone in their twenties, but the point was that this rippled across the world, and the world is watching us. That moment—I think Hana’s got about 200 TikTok fans, and maybe this punishment—

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: 200,000.

KAHURANGI CARTER: 200,000 TikTok fans—thank you. Oh my gosh. I wonder if the green-eyed monster is really strong on the other side, because they wish they had that kind of reach. They wish they could reach the rest of the world and how proud they are of Aotearoa for respecting our indigenous communities.

I am proud of that. I am proud that we as New Zealand have such an incredible reputation on the world stage for how we treat our indigenous people. The world is watching, Aotearoa is watching, and the decisions that are made here in this Parliament will ripple around the world. I think we need to really focus on that disparity, on that gap between how the world perceives us and the actual reality here on the ground. We have worked hard for that reputation, and this could swipe it away just because this Government is caught up in making decisions because of emotion instead of fact. This is way too important to be making your decisions based on your emotions and based on your crocodile tears.

So let me be clear: the world is watching this House. The international community is witnessing how we in this Parliament treat indigenous expression, particularly when it is used to challenge power or hold the State to account. What message do we send when a haka performed in this House is not met with understanding but with punishment, unprecedented punishment? The public in Aotearoa sees this, too. Across communities there is growing unease at the disproportionate nature of the proposed suspension. There is a growing kōrero about the double standards, about what behaviour gets silenced and what gets excused. This Parliament is a place of contest and debate. I urge members to consider what legacy we leave behind in this House and how we are seen, both at home and internationally.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I move, That the motion be amended to replace the words “intimidating a member of the House in the discharge of their duty” with “expressing their tino rangatiratanga”.

I agree with Louisa Wall, who said the “punishment is not only unprecedented—it is disproportionate, procedurally flawed and democratically dangerous.”

I note the speech, particularly, of Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, which I found very moving, and the speech of Adrian Rurawhe. I want to note that during both of those speeches, the members on the opposite side were silent. During Adrian’s speech, they, in fact, lowered their heads at times, because I think they know full well the truth of what was being spoken—that this punishment unfortunately taps into a long and sad tradition of this House to disproportionately punish Māori members.

This Parliament—not this House, but this Parliament—has been in place for 171 years, and it, sadly has a terrible history of facilitating, condoning, and justifying the worst atrocities against Māori: shameful and undeniable horrors and injustices and crimes against humanity—theft, plunder, murder. We frequently stand here in this House and earnestly apologise for that. We earnestly acknowledge the fact of that history, and we say it was wrong and it should not go on like that. The simple principle at stake is that this House is not sitting on the banks of the Thames in London. This House is sitting in the South Pacific Ocean in Aotearoa New Zealand, and not a board in the House could stand but for that consent of tangata whenua Māori for the settlers to come and settle here in 1840 by agreement that we would uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that we would uphold the tino rangatiratanga of tangata whenua Māori.

The disorder that was created in this House was not by Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke; the disorder was not created by Te Pāti Māori standing and doing the haka. And may I add that, so far as I recall, every member on this side of the House stood and joined in the haka—including myself, though I’m not a great haka performer; I do know the words of “Ka mate! Ka mate!”—and there was no penalty for us. The Speaker stood. I knew full well that when the Speaker stood, the rule is you sit down. I did not sit down, and I know that my fellow colleagues from Te Pāti Kākāriki did not sit down, nor did many of the Labour members. What is the penalty for me? I have not said sorry. I have not been asked to. What is the double standard in this House? No one’s asked me. This is the point. There is no penalty for me.

The disorder that was brought to this House was not brought by the legitimate response to an egregious piece of legislation; the disorder was brought by the Treaty principles bill. The ACT Party brought a bill to this House that had the effect of nullifying tino rangatiratanga for Māori. It had been designed in a manner to misinterpret the actual language on our founding constitutional agreement in such a way as to treat Māori as if they had no independent identity from tangata Tiriti. That is what caused the disorder, not just in this House but in our nation. That is what mobilised the biggest protest march that we have ever seen. That is what mobilised the largest ever number of submissions against a piece of legislation that we have ever seen. And that party that did that knew what they were doing. They knew they were sowing division. They knew they were poking the bear.

They knew what they were doing, and they knew they would elicit a response and a reaction, and they got a response and a reaction. When that reaction manifested in this House in a highly orderly and familiar way—because I don’t believe any member in this House is not familiar with “Ka Mate”. It manifested in a very familiar way and we knew what it meant. It was an expression of dissent and protest against this egregious piece of legislation.

Then they cry the crocodile tears. Then they go, “Oh, I’m so intimidated.” It treats not only the House with disdain and the public with disdain but also that agreement to which we are bound as a nation.

I also want to speak to Mr Rurawhe’s point about the problem of the precedent set by this. I am deeply troubled that there is a double jeopardy on Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. As she has already outlined, she did apologise, she was suspended, she was named, and she took a day. Now, how was it that there is another punishment meted out that is more than twice as great as any previous punishment meted out on a member of this Parliament in 171 years? The double jeopardy is not just, by any means. What’s more, the egregious scale of the punishments being proposed to the two leaders of Te Pāti Māori are just off the charts—so many days that we can’t even get our head around the logic of it.

I believe that under the leadership—and here I’ll make a critique. We’re not supposed to critique the courts, but I guess this is a court of our Parliament. The Privileges Committee represents the Parliament. We have two of the most senior members of this Parliament on that Privileges Committee, the then Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, and the Attorney-General, Judith Collins. Two of the most senior members, both lawyers, have egregiously punished one of the newest members of this Parliament.

What is the message that that sends to young people watching about the justice of this House, to newcomers to the House? What is the message that it sends about a young Māori woman who has come and spoken with such certainty of the people she represents? I think it sends a very bad message and I believe it renders the character of the Privileges Committee under that leadership as something of a kangaroo court. I disdain this proposed finding and I encourage all people to vote against it for the good of this House and for the good of our nation. Kia ora.

Rawiri Waititi: Madam Speaker.

Rawiri Waititi—you can’t have a second speech. Are you moving a motion?

Rawiri Waititi: It is a point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order. Oh, there’s been an amendment. Sorry, my mistake. There has been an amendment. Yes, you’re moving a point of order, right?

Rawiri Waititi: I am moving a point of order, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK. That’s OK.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Motion agreed to.

We will take the votes that are put down, including the first amendment. The question is that the amendments in the name of the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins be agreed to.

The question is that the amendments in the name of the Hon Marama Davidson be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye, to the contrary No. A party vote has been called for, please Clerk.

Point of order, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, can I just complete that vote before you take a point of order?

RAWIRI WAITITI: Well, you can’t, because he wasn’t in his designated seat to make that vote.

Mr Andy Foster, would you like to repeat your vote from your designated seat.

Andy Foster: Eight votes opposed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, so that lines up with what I have here. Thank you—protocol is very important.

Members, so that everyone is clear on the process we will follow, there will be a separate question on each member referred to in the original motion.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke therefore is suspended from the service of the House for seven days, starting from today. [Interruption]

Sorry, can we please have voting in silence. I understand the emotion, but it’s important that we hear what’s being said.

Steve Abel’s amendment is ruled out of order under Standing Order 124 as not being relevant to the motion on the Privileges Committee recommendation.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer therefore is suspended from the service of the House for 21 days, starting from today.

Rawiri Waititi therefore is suspended from the service of the House for 21 days, starting from today.

The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 24 June 2025.

The House adjourned at 6.08 p.m.