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New Zealand parliament suspends Maori MPs who performed protest haka
Published On 5 Jun 2025
New Zealand legislators have voted to suspend three MPs who performed a Maori haka in the House to protest against a controversial bill.
The MPs from Te Pati Maori – the Maori Party – were handed the toughest sanctions ever imposed on legislators by New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday.
Te Pati Maori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were both suspended from parliament for 21 days.
Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand’s youngest legislator, 22, was suspended for seven days.
The length of the bans was recommended by parliament’s privileges committee, which advised the trio should be suspended for acting in “a manner that could have the effect of intimidating a member of the House”.
It recommended Maipi-Clarke be given a shorter sanction because she had written a letter of “contrition” to the parliament.
Previously, the longest suspension imposed on an MP had been a three-day ban.
Prior to Thursday’s vote, Maipi-Clarke told legislators that the suspension was an effort to stop Maori from making themselves heard in parliament. Advertisement
“Are our voices too loud for this house? Is that the reason why we are being silenced?” she said. “We will never be silenced and we will never be lost.”
The legislators had performed the haka in parliament in November. Their protest interrupted voting during the first reading of a proposed bill to legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the 1840 pact between the British Crown and Indigenous Maori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonisation.
The proposed law prompted widespread protests amid concerns it would erode Maori rights. It was later scrapped.
Maipi-Clarke had begun the protest by ripping a copy of the legislation, before she and fellow MPs approached the leader of the right-wing party that had backed the proposed law.
Their actions prompted complaints from fellow MPs to the parliament’s speaker that their protest was disorderly, and the matter was sent to parliament’s privileges committee, prompting months of debate.
A report from the privileges committee said that while both haka and Maori ceremonial dance and song are not uncommon in parliament, members were aware that permission was needed from the speaker beforehand.
Does it have some kind of significance in Maori culture?
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Edit
My 30 seconds of googling lead me to this.
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Rant
Google stop fucking showing me shopping shit. Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle.
maori tiki pendants -shopping -price -buyIn all the pics/vids I see a lot of the MPs are wearing similar but not at all identical pendants
(^^^ guy on the left wearing a kefiya?)
From very casual look it seems cool the strong sense of aesthetics which can be tied to the material. Like I read that having the lips tattooed (primarily among women) indicates one to be a fluent Maori speaker.
I hope I avoid any objectification or otherwise bad stuff.
Those tattoos are tāmoko
It's important because the white Christians that colonised New Zealand tried to wipe it out (sound familiar?)
I might be wrong, but the one women wear on their chin is said to "be something every woman carries with her on the inside from birth, but she will wear it on the outside when she is ready." But I'm sure there are people here that know more about it than I do.
It's ironic that my ancestors (Irish, Scottish) fled to New Zealand to escape persecution from British Christians, only to arrive in a place where someone else (the Maori) were being persecuted by the Christian British
~~If not - I don't know what to call it so I'll make up a term - it's solidarity clothing.~~
If not - it certainly has that vibe and it must be intentional.
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I like stream of consciousness. But I sometimes I need to remember to think just a bit more. Solidarity clothing? What the heck. At least I made myself laugh.
Those tiki and pounamu are traditionally passed down in the family for generations. They are very presious to some people.