Te Pati Māori MPs given harshest sanctions in Parliament’s history
Thursday, 5 June 2025
Te Pati Māori MPs given the harshest sanctions in Parliament’s history have vowed to keep fighting against coalition policies they believe sideline Maori rights - and they haven’t sworn off performing a haka again in protest.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke had their bags packed as they left Parliament after the House agreed to suspend them following a fiery debate over whether to accept the sanctions recommended by the privileges committee for the viral haka that interrupted the first Treaty Principles Bill vote in November.
When asked if they would do it again, Waititi said a haka was not something which was rehearsed, before adding “there are many tools in our tikanga basket, other than haka, that we can use”.
What happened in the debate?
Committee chair Judith Collins on May 13 said the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori should be stood down from Parliament for 21 days, and Maipi-Clarke for seven days, after finding their haka could have “intimidated” other lawmakers.
No MP has ever been suspended for more than three days before.
It had been expected that the committee’s recommended suspensions would be accepted by the House because government parties have more seats in Parliament, but House Speaker Gerry Brownlee said the punishments were “severe and unprecedented” and urged MPs to attempt to reach a consensus through a debate.
Parliament last month sought to debate and decide whether to follow the committee’s recommendation, in what could have turned into a filibuster, but National’s Chris Bishop adjourned the vote so Parliament could consider legislation related to the May 22 Budget instead. Only Bishop and Labour leader Chris Hipkins spoke on it before it was adjourned until June 5.
The debate was picked up again Thursday from 3pm, and involved fiery exchanges across the House until after 6pm.
Labour’s Willie Jackson told Te Pāti Māori he loved them, but asked them to compromise and apologise.
Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters also described Te Pāti Māori as “a bunch of extremists and New Zealand and the Māori world has had enough of them”. But he had to apologise to the House after calling Rawiri’s moko “scribbles on his face”.
Ngarewa-Packer said the Privileges Committee had “lost its way” and was biased, and suggested this was the reason she and her colleagues did not attend the committee’s hearings but wrote to it instead.
Waititi said: “You can bench my body from this House for 21 days, but you can never bench this movement.”
Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand’s youngest MP at the age of 22, said she joined Parliament to give “voice to the voiceless”. “Is that the real intimidation here,” she asked. “Is that the reason why we are being silenced? Are our voices shaking the core foundation of this House?”
Waititi called for the debate to close, and Opposition parties sought to vote down the sanctions but did not have the numbers.
Waititi said afterwards the three-hour debate “got pretty ugly and sad”.
'My message to everybody out there is we must continue to hold on to the taonga of our ancestors, whether it be haka, whether it be moko whether it be our reo and not to allow old kind of colonialist views that we are any thing or anybody less than anybody else.”
They also said that while Government MPs had urged them to apologise as a way to reduce the punishment, this was never offered by the Privileges Committee as an option during their five appeals.
“Nowhere was it offered. Nowhere was it given. In fact … we’ve made five appeals, so that was never given as an option,” Ngarewa-Packer said. Maipi-Clarke also noted she had already apologised to the speaker, but was still being sanctioned.
What happens now?
The trio head back to their electorates and encourage voters to submit against the Regulatory Standards Bill.
The severe rulings may also shape behaviour in the House going forward.