New Zealand parliament gives record bans to MPs over haka

WELLINGTON

New Zealand's parliament on Thursday handed record-long suspensions to three Indigenous Maori lawmakers who last year staged a protest haka on the debating floor.

Maori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were banished from parliament for 21 days, the longest-ever suspension.

Fellow Maori Party lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand's youngest current MP, was suspended for seven days.

The bans stem from a haka performed during voting in November on the contentious Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to redefine the principles of a key pact between Maori and the government.

Waititi held up a noose as he rose to speak in defiance of the ban yesterday.

"In my maiden speech, I talked about one of our [ancestors] who was hung in the gallows of Mt Eden Prison, wrongfully accused," Waititi said.

"Now you've traded the noose for legislation. Well, we will not be silenced."

Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier mocked Waititi for his traditional full-face Maori tattoo.

"The Maori Party are a bunch of extremists, and middle New Zealand and the Maori world has had enough of them," said Peters, who is also Maori.

Maipi-Clarke, 22, sparked the affair as parliament considered the highly contentious Treaty Principles Bill in November last year.

In footage widely shared around the world, she rose to her feet, ripped up the bill and started belting out the strains of a protest haka. She was joined by Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer.

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