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.
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.
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.
I agree. That's why it's called "having the courage of one's convictions". The people who are protesting are willing to accept the consequences of their actions in order to shake up the system.
But when the system makes up and applies consequences retroactively, it starts a very slippery dilemma where a person can't protest for fear of "hypothetical" repercussions.
You can't have the courage of your convictions if you don't know what the consequences of those convictions are going to be. And you can't know what the consequences of your actions will be if they're just made up ex post facto and applied punitively in order to stifle debate rather than following an already established protocol.
As far as I know, this is pretty standard for that level of disruption and (by the design of a haka) invective towards another member of the house. If they had been suspended for more than a few weeks it'd be fishy, but they will be back. And hopefully it's a political victory for them and not the closet racists they were responding to.
Would it have defeated it if they hadn't performed their protest and maybe made a few other legislators rethink how unpopular of a bill it was? If they hadn't protested, would legislative complacency just allowed the bill to pass unremarked on.
The purpose of a protest is to draw attention to something so that other that have the power to do something about it might do something about it.
I'm not saying the bill failed specifically because of the protest, but to think the bill was guaranteed to have failed anyway even without it is naive thinking.
That's all conjecture. I'm not sure lawmakers would be particularly swayed by the Haka, particularly not the proponents of the bill (who probably care even less about it).
Even then, an impassioned speech tends to be far more effective in parliament than disruptive protests (historically speaking).
The bill was already fairly controversial, so it probably wouldn't have passed through legislative apathy.
Sure, if you're willfully ignoring context. These were legislators wearing suits doing it in parliament to make a political point, not armed warriors doing it on a battlefield. The only 'fear' was entirely dishonest and performative, not real.
I think you guys are being tough on the internet, actually. IRL a good battle display gets audience reactions, although I've never been around the Maori kind.
They all look like they're doing poker faces to me, actually. But I dunno, maybe kiwis get used to hakas.
You can substitute in any kind of menacing display you want - viking foot stomping, boo-rah and air punches - it's not really appropriate to spring on someone you don't like. Here there's a cultural component as well, but they can't really argue it was just that with the way they directed it.