Sydney, Australia, Nov 14 (EFE).- New Zealand’s parliament was disrupted by shouting, a haka and an expulsion on Thursday during voting on a contentious bill that sets out to reinterpret the principles of the country’s founding treaty between Māori and the Crown.
Voting on the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, tabled and supported only by the libertarian ACT party, was disrupted when Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke ripped up a copy of the bill before leading a haka with members of the party as well as opposition MPs and many in the public gallery, prompting Speaker Gerry Brownlee to take the unprecedented step to suspend parliament for an hour.
Brownlee said Maipi-Clarke’s behavior was “grossly disorderly” and took the rare step of “naming” her, a form of severe punishment, and suspending her, leaving her unable to vote.
In addition, opposition Labour Party’s Māori development spokesperson Willie Jackson was ejected from the House for calling bill promoter and ACT leader David Seymour a “liar” and refusing to withdraw his comment.
Jackson said it was a “message from the hikoi,” referring to the huge nine-day protest march currently being walked from the top of the North Island to Wellington’s parliament by thousands of New Zealanders in rejection of the bill.
Despite the disruptions, the bill passed its first reading and was referred to the select committee for six-month public hearing process.
Seymour was the only MP to speak in favor of the bill. Coalition partners National and NZ First voted in favor as per their agreement, but have ruled out further support for it, along with all opposition parties, meaning the bill will likely fail in its second reading next year.
The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was signed between more than 500 Maori chiefs and the Crown, and the document is crucial to upholding Maori rights.
Seymour says the treaty principles are problematic as they “afford Māori different rights from other New Zealanders,” including co-governance arrangements, such as a “separate healthcare authority.”
Critics of the bill say it undermines the treaty and its principles, threatens Māori rights and promotes divisiveness. Some have expressed concern that the principles Seymour has devised are inconsistent with the treaty itself.
More than 40 King’s Counsel lawyers also wrote to the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Attorney General Judith Collins, urging them to abandon it.
Luxon on Thursday called the bill “divisive” and said it was a distraction.
“The National Party point of view, and I’ve said this before, we don’t agree with this bill, we don’t agree with it for a number of reasons,” he said.
“You do not go negate, with a single stroke of a pen, 184 years of debate and discussion, with a bill that I think is very simplistic,” he said.
Opposition Green party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick referred to Seymour’s claim the bill was about equality.
«Pick almost any statistic that you like. Housing, incarceration, health, life expectancy: Māori get unfair and unequal outcomes because of unfair and unequal treatment which started with the Crown’s intentional violent actions to dishonor Te Tiriti o (treaty of) Waitangi,» she said.
Māori make up about 20 percent of New Zealand’s population of more than 5 million, and experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, incarceration, illness, domestic abuse and suicide, among other issues. EFE
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