A tense and intriguing political chess game is currently being played in Parliament’s Privileges Committee, explains Peter Dunne.
On the face of it, the issue at hand was whether the spontaneous haka performed by three Te Pati Maori MPs during the vote on the First Reading of the Treaty Principles Bill last year was a breach of what is quaintly referred to as ‘Parliamentary Privilege’.
The concept of Parliamentary Privilege dates back hundreds of years and devolves from the procedures of Britain’s House of Commons, devised to enable Members to speak freely in Parliament without fear of legal consequences or loss of freedoms (or their heads at that time). Anyone who inhibits in any way Members of Parliament from freely expressing their opinions in Parliament or going about their normal Parliamentary business is in breach of Parliamentary Privilege and is therefore subject to the judgement of the Privileges Committee – effectively Parliament’s court – for their actions.
In this instance, by performing a haka while the vote was being taken on the Treaty Principles Bill, the Te Pati Maori MPs were disrupting the free expression of Parliament’s views on the Bill at that time and were therefore breaching Privilege.
However, the issue now runs more deeply than that. Te Pati Maori’s ill-informed dismissal of what it calls Parliament’s “silly little rules” about Privilege, potentially poses an even greater challenge to the system. They say their actions highlight Parliament’s lack of recognition of tikanga [Maori customary practices or principles] and that simply must change.
On the other hand, Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee in a somewhat rare and unusual intervention on a matter condemned by the Privileges Committee has described Te Pati Maori’s position as “complete nonsense.” He says a distinction must be drawn between Parliament’s rules and procedures and upholding tikanga.
Brownlee says separate work is already underway through the cross-party Standing Orders Committee to see how tikanga can be more fully integrated into Parliament’s rules, with a report due before the end of this term of Parliament. For that reason, he dismisses Te Pati Maori’s haka actions as “grandstanding”.
But Te Pati Maori rejects the notion that the broader work around tikanga should be treated separately from the haka protest. According to co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer the question of tikanga was central to the three MPs’ decision to perform the haka. Therefore, she argues, they must stand up to the Privileges Committee, which she feared wanted to “criminalise the haka and criminalise our tikanga” by finding against them.(1)
For its part, the Privileges Committee had to steer a careful course. The Committee is made up of senior MPs from all parties and is chaired by the Attorney-General Judith Collins who is also a KC. Its focus was on whether the three MPs’ actions breached Parliamentary Privilege, and it found this to be the case. The committee was unlikely to delve too deeply into the wider question of ‘tikanga’, leaving that to the Standing Orders committee work already underway.
For the sake of Parliament’s integrity and credibility any penalty had to be significant – it could not look like a slap with a wet bus ticket. However, at the same time, it cannot be unreasonable, which would simply inflame the current situation further and embolden Te Pati Maori’s line that it is the victim of a repressive, racist system. In short, Collins and her committee had to apply a judgment of Solomon.
What was at stake here is the credibility of the body of Parliamentary practice and the protections of Privilege built up over hundreds of years. Therefore, the Privileges Committee could not act in a way that would have been interpreted as arbitrarily weakening that long-standing strong tradition for contemporary political convenience. Should it have done so, the institution of Parliament would have been the loser.
Ironically, the situation is a little easier for Te Pati Maori. The adverse finding from the Privileges Committee is certainly a blow to the Party’s credibility to work within the system (in the same way as is its ongoing failure to provide proper accounts to the Electoral Commission in breach of the law). At the same time, however, it confirms Te Pati Maori’s narrative that the whole system is geared against them, and that in Ngarewa-Packer’s words: “This is the cost of standing up. We’ve had this before, and, you know, we just have to pay it again.”
In the end, this issue has been less about the Treaty Principles Bill haka, which is sideshow puffery, and more about achieving a reasonable balance between Parliament’s historical traditions and contemporary tikanga. That will only be achieved through constructive engagement by all sides, not more of the game-playing seen so far.
FOOTNOTES
(1) The committee’s Government members decided co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer should be suspended from Parliament for 21 days and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to face a seven-day suspension.