Protests erupted inside and outside of New Zealand’s parliament this week as the country’s far-right ACT New Zealand Party pushed a bill to redefine a treaty outlining the rights of the indigenous Māori people.
The controversial Treaty Principles Bill would end the Māori right of self-determination outlined in a nearly 200-year-old treaty, opposition parties say. ACT leader and bill author David Seymour said he wants the bill to end the practice of granting Māori citizens "different rights from other New Zealanders.”
Seymour, who is Māori, heads up the minor party that formed a coalition government with other conservative parties in 2023. Introducing the maligned bill was a condition of ACT joining the coalition led by the center-right National Party and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
During a vote on the bill’s first reading on Thursday, the first step in passing a bill through Parliament, 22-year-old MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke led a haka in the chambers. After ripping up a copy of the bill in front of Seymour, Māori members who opposed the bill and some spectators in the gallery joined in the ceremonial dance.
this rules 🇳🇿 #nzpol
— Josh (@joshuadrummond.cynics.guide) November 13, 2024 at 11:24 PM
Parliament was briefly suspended due to the demonstration on Thursday. Maipi-Clarke was reprimanded and barred from the chamber for 24 hours, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Conservative leaders cracked down further on disruptions, expelling Labour MP Willie Jackson for calling Seymour a “liar” on the floor of Parliament. The right-wing MPs demanded an apology from Jackson, who refused in a post to X.
“I will not apologize for what is the truth. David Seymour has continually misrepresented the Treaty,” Jackson wrote.
The bill passed its first reading, Radio New Zealand reports, and will head to New Zealand’s Justice Committee for further consideration.
Luxon granted a first reading on the bill despite opposition from even those inside the conservative-led coalition government. Luxon himself called the bill “simplistic” and voiced doubts to reporters that the bill would go much further.
"You do not go and 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 on Thursday.
The haka in Parliament is one part of a wider outcry against the likely doomed bill. Reuters reports that an estimated 10,000 people joined a march across the nation toward the capital in opposition to the bill on Friday.
