New Zealand MPs who performed haka in parliament given unprecedented punishment

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/15/new-zealand-mps-haka-parliament-suspended

29 comments

  1. Make politics boring. Proposals and debates on laws, statistics, policies, ideas, expert reports. Civil, honest and public voting on bills.

    Don’t start dancing and shouting in the hall during the vote, don’t try to disrupt the procedure with your theatrical performances. There should be no room for politicians who think that making the loudest noise is the way to do anything.

  2. I was giggling reading the article, for sure. I’m not from NZ, but can we just leave the parliamentary chamber for actual governing, please?

  3. I especially loved the “Me when my boss asks me to do something at 4pm on Friday” caption

  5. Suspended for 3 weeks from parliament if anyone doesn’t wanna click

  6. Being able to ban people from parliament for any amount of time when they have not triggered any actual danger, in exchange for their protesting incredibly shitty bills attacking their entire cultural group that’s 20% of your national population, when most of the other 80% stole their land, does not strike me as particularly democratic behavior. I can see why you might fine them but I don’t think you should be able to prevent them from voting and debating on behalf of their constituents. 

  7. Conservatives when people don’t take being attacked lying down.

  8. I just find the Haka so cringe but my bias aside, I do respect the right to protest

  9. The Haka is cool for Rugby, but it’s kind of odd in Parliament or at the office. It’s kind of off putting in polite company, sorry. I get it’s a tradition.

  10. Q. If Māori Had Won the New Zealand Wars, Would MP’s Be Punished for Saying the Lord’s Prayer ?
    A. Yes

    If the Māori had won the New Zealand Wars, maybe Judith Collins would be getting suspended for reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Parliament. Instead, in 2024, Te Pāti Māori MPs were hit with unprecedented suspensions — up to 21 days — for doing a haka in protest.

    Let’s be clear: this was not about “impeding a vote,” as Collins claims. It was about who is allowed to express dissent; whose history is considered disruptive.

    The protest haka took place during the reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, a piece of legislation rightly described as the most racially divisive of our time. Over 270,000 submissions were made opposing it. The Te Pāti Māori MPs stood, literally and symbolically, in the path of erasure. For that, they were sanctioned like criminals in their own whare.

    What’s criminal is this country’s ongoing denial of its own war dead. While Parliament enforces decorum, it still refuses to commemorate the New Zealand Wars on Anzac Day — despite acknowledging other foreign conflicts, including the Boer War and Cold War-era skirmishes.

    Why does Gallipoli get poppies and Rangiriri gets silence?

    We have Te Pūtake o te Riri, yes — but it’s underfunded, under-recognized, and not a public holiday. It’s the cultural equivalent of being told to keep your grief down to a whisper while others get national anthems.

    Professor Alexander Gillespie recently argued that expanding Anzac Day to include the New Zealand Wars is overdue. Over 2,000 Māori died fighting for their land and sovereignty. These weren’t rebels. They were patriots. But because they fought against the Crown, their sacrifice doesn’t fit the state’s preferred narrative of noble empire and foreign fields.

    So when Judith Collins says this isn’t about haka or tikanga — let’s not pretend. It’s always about tikanga. It’s about who sets the rules and who gets punished for breaking them. When ACT MPs grandstand about “mocking Parliament,” they ignore that Parliament was built on mocked treaties, broken promises, and a legacy of stolen land.

    And when Collins says she’s “never seen behaviour like this before,” maybe she hasn’t been looking very far?
    In the 19th century, Māori were imprisoned without trial for resisting land confiscation. Today, they’re suspended without hearing for resisting cultural erasure.

    This isn’t discipline. It’s a continuation of conquest.

    What Te Pāti Māori did was not disorderly: it was necessary. Because if a haka is now treated as a parliamentary crime, we need to ask: who does Parliament belong to?

  11. This is the coalition parties in government, deciding that the leaders of an opposition party shouldn’t be allowed to sit in parliament for way longer than has ever been done before. Whether you agree with the Haka or not, this is another clear abuse of power by the current NZ government. They should not be able to essentially remove a party that opposes them for that long a period.

  12. Sounds about right, intimidation in the workplace should not be tolerated.

  14. What are The Guardian playing at? The video on their site just shows the speaker sitting there looking pissed off; doesn’t use any of the footage of what was actually done. Feels off and a deliberate political choice to try to suppress it..

  15. Hey US Democrats – take note on what some actual resistance looks like.

  16. I still think this has been the best modern application of the haka and I respect that. That bill was/is trash and should be blocked any way possible. It was a dramatic point made about how it would affect their culture.

  17. Good!
    This haka performance for everything is by far the dumbest thing ever.
    Like in the final scene of guardians of the galaxy, these kiwis start doing a song-and-dance to settle disagreements.

  19. Those theatrics do not belong in official buildings. Its unfitting and considered misbehaviour

  20. Yeah i dont think these theatrical, attention seeking performances have place in a parliament, especially during a vote

  21. In the US, our politicians caught with little kiddies get punished by being elected president, like our orange carrot we have now

  22. You’re allowed to demonise minorities but being impolite and loud about racism? That’s punishable

  24. its one thing to protest a bill, its another to completely derail parliamentary proceedings

  26. Wait, isn’t the haka a traditional dance to either mourne the dead or begin a fight ( of some kind) ?

  27. So the MP pointed a figurative gun with their fingers at another member as part of a Haka as a means of protesting a vote? A vote which went their way anyway. It doesn’t say but was the person, who was pointed at, someone who was going to vote the other way? NZ has it pretty good if that’s the worst thing to happen in parliament in a long time.

  28. From the article:

    *The temporary suspensions are expected to be affirmed by vote during a sitting of all lawmakers on Tuesday. The three MPs will not receive their salaries during the suspension and will not be present during next week’s annual budget debate.*

Comments are closed.