New Zealand set to suspend Maori lawmakers over protest haka

SYDNEY, Australia: Indigenous Maori lawmakers have decried a push to temporarily banish them from New Zealand’s parliament, after disrupting the reading of a contentious race relations bill with a protest haka.

Maori Party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, 22, derailed parliament in November when she ripped a copy of the proposed laws in half while performing a spirited traditional chant.

She was joined by party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, who strode on to the chamber floor chanting the Ka Mate haka famously performed by the country’s All Blacks rugby team.

A parliamentary committee on Wednesday evening recommended suspending Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer for three weeks, and Maipi-Clarke for seven days.

The Maori Party said it was one of the harshest punishments ever doled out in New Zealand’s parliament.

“When tangata whenua resist, colonial powers reach for the maximum penalty,” the party said in a statement, using a phrase for Maori people.

“This is a warning shot to all of us to fall in line.”

Deputy prime minister Winston Peters described the trio as “out-of-control MPs who flout the rules and intimidate others with outrageous hakas”.

Parliament will vote on the suspension next week, although it is widely expected to pass.

The “Treaty Principles Bill” sought to reinterpret New Zealand’s founding document, signed between Maori chiefs and British representatives in 1840.

Many critics saw the bill as an attempt to wind back the special rights given to the country’s 900,000-strong Maori population.

Parliament resoundingly voted down the bill last month.