Parliament debates punishment for Te Pati Maori MPs
te ao Maori politics 20 minutes ago
Parliament has been debating the proposed punishment for Te Pati Maori MPs who stood in front of ACT MPs and performed a haka in protest of the Treaty Principles Bill during its first reading. The proposed suspension is 21 days for the co-leaders, and 7 days for Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. Last month's debate was cut short and delayed when Chris Bishop moved to postpone it until after the Budget. Political reporter Lillian Hanly spoke to Lisa Owen.
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1News
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David Seymour defends role in Oxford Union 'stolen land' debate
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But Williams said there were risks in treating similar submissions created using 'tools' as one submission. 'Treating those ones as if they are all identical is not just wrong, it's actually undemocratic,' he said. 'It's been really concerning that, under the current parliament, they are trying to carte blanche, reject people's submissions, because a lot of them are similar.' AI should be used to analyse submissions and identify the unique points. 'Because if people are going to take the time and make a submission to Parliament, at the very least, the officials should be reading them or having them summarised,' Williams said. 'Every single case on its merits' Labour MP Duncan Webb is a member of the Justice Committee and sat in on oral submissions for the Treaty Principles Bill. He said he attempted to read as many submissions as possible. 'When you get a stock submission, which is a body of text that is identical and it's just been clicked and dragged, then you don't have to read them all, because you just know that there are 500 people who think exactly the same thing,' he said. 'But when you get 500 postcards, which each have three handwritten sentences on them, they may all have the same theme, they may all be from a particular organisation, but the individual thoughts that have been individually expressed. So you can't kind of categorise it as just one size fits all. You've got to take every single case on its merits.' Webb said he takes the select committee process very seriously. 'The thing that struck me was, sure, you read a lot [of submissions] which are repetitive, but then all of a sudden you come across one which actually changes the way you think about the problem in front of you. 'To kind of dismiss that as just one of a pile from this organisation is actually denying someone who's got an important point to make, their voice in the democratic process.'
