The New Zealand Parliament has voted to impose record suspensions on three lawmakers who did a Maori haka as a protest. The incident took place last November during a debate on a law on Indigenous rights.
New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who disrupted the reading of a controversial bill last year by performing a haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi — were suspended for 21 days and one — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, from the same party — for seven days.
Before now, the longest suspension of a parliamentarian in New Zealand was three days.
I mean, personally I don’t really agree with people here saying this punishment is racism.
For me this falls into the same category as walking up to other members of parliament and yelling loudly at them, or breakdancing, or doing anything that disrupts the parliamentary process. I don’t think making exceptions for a Haka is reasonable. Parliament has these rules to ensure the room stays calm, collected and can do its work. The Labour party too believes some punishment is appropriate, though they suggested a censure instead.
Most articles refer to a previous suspension of 3 days, but I can’t find what that was for. I can’t judge if the severity of the punishment is therefore in line with precedent.
It should be mentioned, the bill they protested ultimately did not end up passing.
This comment right here is the essence of liberal thought
B…but much process! B…b…but muh decorum!!! Please abide the laws we set while we fuck you in the ass!!!
No honey, fuck you and your procedure. Instead of hiding behind a veneer of professionalism fuck off and fix the issue.
Liberals WILL always silence the downtrodden when they no longer play by their rules.
But that same procedure ended up defeating the bill? I’m not sure the protest really achieved much.
You can fight a bill like this in a 100 ways within parliamentary procedure. If they had announced the protest it would be allowed too I believe.
Protest is for when the procedure fails. But it worked just fine here.
Also, arguments about the protest aside, my main point was that it’s not racist to punish an unannounced disruptive protest, just because that protest happened to be a Haka.