New Zealand’s Parliament voted on June 5 to hand historically tough suspensions to the three dancing, chanting lawmakers who made a scene last year to protest a bill that’d been under consideration.
The three lawmakers, members of the indigenous Māori people, performed a Haka dance last November to protest a bill that they alleged would undermine the rights of their people.
New Zealand’s parliament agreed on historically lengthy suspensions for three Indigenous lawmakers who last year performed a haka, a traditional Maori dance, disrupting the reading of a controversial bill. pic.twitter.com/l3SF1p8BbO
— Eugene (@BreakingNews4X) June 5, 2025
In defending the suspensions, which ranged from seven days to three weeks, government minister Nicole McKee stressed that they weren’t targeting the Māori lawmakers over their dance but rather over their “grandstanding,” according to The New York Times.
“This is not about the haka, it’s about process,” she said. “It’s about grandstanding at the expense of this House and how it operates. It’s about just being arrogant and ignorant about how we do laws in New Zealand.”
The dance disrupted parliamentary proceedings, leading to the temporary suspension of the session and the ejection of the Māori lawmakers.
Lawmakers Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, reportedly the co-leaders of the Te Pāti Māori party, each received a suspension without pay for 21 days. A third lawmaker, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, received a seven day suspension.
The suspensions were the toughest of their kind ever handed out.
Is this a fitting punishment?
“The longest prior suspension that a lawmaker had received was for three days, a punishment handed down in 1987 when a former prime minister, Robert Muldoon, had criticized the speaker in a statement,” according to the Times.
Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer have both made it clear they won’t apologize for their behavior:
“We don’t apologise”
🔥Set to be suspended from Parliament for an unprecedented three weeks following their haka in the House during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill last year, severely censured Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi sit… pic.twitter.com/GNC9LbwzEy
— Kelvin Morgan 🇳🇿 (@kelvin_morganNZ) May 15, 2025
A parliamentary committee recommended the suspensions in April because of the way the three lawmakers acted during the dance — namely, the way they walked toward other lawmakers while dancing.
“Judith Collins, the committee chair, said the lawmakers’ behavior was egregious, disruptive and potentially intimidating,” the Associated Press noted.
Maipi-Clarke previously performed the dance before the New Zealand Parliament but reportedly wasn’t suspended at the time because she didn’t walk toward the other lawmakers:
21-year-old Mäori MP performs haka before parliament speech in New Zealand pic.twitter.com/wRhvaqJ9UV
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) January 7, 2024
Maipi-Clarke has for her part denied that there was anything intimidating about the Haka dance, reportedly noting that there have been other instances where lawmakers left their seats and approached opposition party members without a problem.
“I came into this house to give a voice to the voiceless,” she said. “Is that the real issue here? Is that the real intimidation here? Are our voices too loud for this house?”
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