Penalty proof Maori MPs facing disproportionate scrutiny
When Judith Collins accused Te Pāti Māori MPs of a "lack of civility" for their haka in Parliament she drew 185 years of colonial racism down upon their heads.
It was grotesque. And entirely expected.
Collins, who chaired the privileges committee, argued that their decision to impose the harshest penalty in the Parliament's history against Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was based on "fairness".
It was vengence, not fairness.
Her public statements about Te Pāti Māori and the excessive sentence belong to a colonial bias that maliciously targets the Māori presence in the House.
The government has well-signalled its intention to force a confrontation with Māori in the Parliament.
At every opportunity, the government has chosen the worst behaviour and the most offensive route.
When Maureen Pugh refused to allow a karakia from a rangatira after the passing of Whakatōhea Claims Settlement legislation, the Speaker was unapologetic and defensive, relying on their own rules to justify this insult to kaumatua.
The Treaty Principles Bill was another way to do the same thing — threaten Māori people and their Māori MPs with a legal tool to eliminate te Tiriti rights, justified on the basis of "process".
The Parliament, in the grip of the coalition government, has been anything but civil where Māori are concerned.
It was right then for Te Pāti Māori to reject the privileges committee request to appear without collective representation or tikanga expertise. There was no civility to be found among the government members of that committee.
The MPs would only have used the opportunity to harass and denigrate the MPs, their representatives, their communities and tikanga Māori.
The problem that incites the government MPs to such tumult is that Te Pāti Māori are not sorry.
They are not sorry for expressing tikanga in the Chamber. They are not sorry for being Māori. That act of defiance infuriates and embarrasses the government.
The haka humiliated the coalition. It has now been watched over 700 million times across the globe.
That single act of indigenous strength has led literally millions of people to support Māori cultural expression that challenges colonial violence.
For government this is abhorrent. Māori must comply, must concede, must assimilate, and must make no fuss.
If we are to perform our culture it can only be in accordance with the rules they set to tame and domesticate it. If we insist on being Māori, we are treated like criminals.
The privileges committee has done exactly that in its ruling. It has declared that being and expressing Māori in the Parliament is a crime, weaponising the Parliament's rules against Māori MPs.
Māori MPs now face disproportionate scrutiny and excessive punishment for an act of cultural resistance.
The privileges committee does not operate in a vacuum. New Zealand's political landscape has seen a rise in anti-Māori rhetoric, particularly from right-wing factions.
By leading the committee's biased enforcement of the privileges committee rules, the government drives a culture where Pākehā MPs are held to different, lower, standards and Māori MP's are disproportionately punished.
What a familiar story.
The lack of integrity in the committee's process means that Māori MPs are judged not the rules, but by a Pākehā-dominated interpretation that reinforces inequities.
If Parliament refuses to address this, it further erodes respect for an institution already, and rightly, considered a relic of colonial power.
Next week, when the House resumes, we will see whether the Parliament as a whole is prepared to pull back on its rules-based racism. That is one of the constitutional struggles here.
The privileges committee's historical practice of reasonableness and collegiality was captured by the coalition government's political agenda, exposing a deeper hypocrisy in New Zealand's democracy.
The committee became a tool for the government's political retribution.
New Zealand's political institutions are rooted in colonialism. The privileges committee, in overseeing parliamentary conduct, still operates as if Māori should not exist.
First the Parliament needs to reject the vicious recommendations of the privileges committee.
The rules governing the privileges committee now also need an overhaul. The government should not be able to use it for vengeful purposes. A bare majority should never be enough for a censure recommendation.
Tikanga Māori needs to be safeguarded against the racial bias we have witnessed.
Without some change, the committee will continue as an arm of the state's assimilationist agenda, punishing those who dare to be Māori in that place.
■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
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