Parliament set for showdown as Greens' co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick refuses to apologise for comments
Speaker Gerry Brownlee on Tuesday,
barred her for the rest of the week
, unless she said sorry for suggesting coalition MPs lacked a spine during a debate on the war in Gaza.
Speaking to RNZ on Wednesday morning, Swarbrick said she had no intention of doing so, but would be turning up to the debating chamber for Wednesday's 2pm Question Time regardless.
"I am returning to work," she said.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was barred from Parliament for a week due to her Gaza speech on Tuesday.
Photo:
Screengrab / Parliament TV
Swarbrick said the party had received correspondence from legal experts and the public pointing out "far worse" things had been said by other MPs, where the Speaker had chosen not to intervene.
"It just doesn't really wash."
Swarbrick said she would prefer Parliament's attention was focused on the "real issues of the day" and re-iterated her call for more action against Israel.
"New Zealanders want action, and if our House can come together on the point of sanctioning Israel for its war crimes, then that finally would bring us in line with our legacy of standing for human rights and justice."
Otago University professor Andrew Geddis told RNZ it was unusual for Swarbrick to be asked to withdraw and apologise, given many MPs had made similar comments in Parliament before without consequence.
Professor Andrew Geddis said Swarbricks ban was "unusual". (File photo)
Photo:
RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
He said the standard penalty for challenging the Speaker's authority was to be ordered out of the House for one day.
A week-long punishment, Geddis said, was inconsistent with other rulings made by Speakers in recent times.
"If the Speaker is starting to almost make up the rules as he goes along, he puts at risk the preparedness of other MPs to accord him his authority.
"MPs might start asking, 'well, if the Speaker is just going to do their own thing with no regard to precedence, do we really trust them to have that sort of power?"
The incident occurred during an urgent debate on Tuesday afternoon which was called after the coalition's announcement that it would come to a formal decision in September over whether to
recognise the state of Palestine
.
As Swarbrick came to the end of her contribution, she challenged coalition MPs to back her member's bill allowing New Zealand to apply sanctions on Israel.
"If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history," Swarbrick said.
Almost immediately, Brownlee condemned the remark as "completely unacceptable" and demanded she "withdraw it and apologise".
Speaker Gerry Brownlee ordered Swarbrick out of the chamber on Tuesday. (File photo)
Photo:
VNP / Phil Smith
Swarbrick shot back a curt - "no" - prompting Brownlee to order her out of the chamber for the remainder of the week.
"Happily," Swarbrick said, as she rose to leave.
Green Party whip Ricardo Menéndez March later stood to question the severity of punishment, saying Parliament's rules suggested Swarbrick should be barred for no more than a day.
Brownlee later clarified that Swarbrick could come back to the debating chamber on Wednesday, but only if she agreed to withdraw and apologise.
"If she doesn't, then she'll be leaving the House again," he said.
"I'm not going to sit in this chair and tolerate a member standing on her feet... and saying that other members of this House are spineless."
Swarbrick was not the only MP to run afoul of the Speaker during Tuesday's debate.
Labour MP Damien O'Connor was told to either exit the chamber or apologise after interjecting "bloody gutless" while Foreign Minister Winston Peters was speaking.
O'Connor stood and left.
Brownlee also demanded ACT MP Simon Court say sorry - which he did - after Court accused Swarbrick of "hallucinating outrage".
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsroom
2 hours ago
- Newsroom
‘Insulted' Wayne Brown and council tell Govt to stick its local government reform
'The cheek,' exclaimed Mayor Wayne Brown, as he led criticism of a Government bill that tells councils what they should focus on and how they should behave. 'The temerity.' Brown is not only angry at Wellington trying to force councils nationwide to act the same, he's irritated ministers don't recognise how distinct Auckland Council is from the rest, and boiling over at an attempt to impose a state-declared code of conduct. He's threatening to write a code of conduct and send it to Parliament to bring MPs' behaviour under control. Auckland councillors voted by a large, voice majority on Thursday to tell the coalition in a submission to Parliament that it cannot support the Local Government (Systems Improvement) Amendment Bill and doesn't need Beehive politicians telling Auckland what to do. The Government has given councils and others just four weeks to submit on the bill, despite it recasting local government's main focus, setting out 'core' services and eliminating 'four wellbeings' such as cultural, community and environmental priorities. It argues the rules are needed to make councils provide better core services of roads, rubbish and water and stop spending on nice-to-haves, thus limiting the chance of rates increases. Councils nationwide argue the real driver of high rates is the cost of infrastructure they are being forced to shoulder. As well as the 'core services' edict, the bill contains a range of changes including removing a requirement for six-yearly service delivery reviews, adding new principles on openness of information for elected councillors, and requiring councils to report on use of contractors. In Auckland, the strength of the pushback, from almost all political persuasions around the council table at a policy and planning committee meeting, was compelling. For the mayor and the policy committee chairman Richard Hills, who have worked hard to find ways of cooperation with Wellington, the bill has caused disappointment and frustration. There was much criticism of a coalition of political parties that had promised devolution and deregulation ending up attempting to regulate local government and take away its decision-making and flexibility. The committee passed a motion, inspired by the mayor's strong rejection of the bill, that read: 'The policy and planning committee oppose this bill as it does not adequately acknowledge that Auckland Council has special legislation that applies to Auckland Council and any new legislation that affects Auckland Council to this degree should be negotiated with us in partnership.' The partnership wording plays back to the Government its own reputed desire to have Auckland Council support its initiatives in housing, infrastructure and planning reforms – and in an upcoming City Regional Deal. Two councillors abstained, citing concerns about the current lack of definitions for the 'four wellbeings' in the Local Government Act and council policies. One, Maurice Williamson, backed the overall motion opposing the bill but voted against officials' proposed submissions on specific aspects. Retiring councillor Chris Darby renamed the proposed law the 'Local Government (Especially Auckland and its People) Neutering Bill because it neuters this council and its communities'. He said it was an insult it had got this far without proper consideration of the international city of Auckland and had been put together by 'Johnny-come-latelys that are so badly informed.' He defended the 'four wellbeings' as dynamic considerations that guided him in decision-making. 'There's a lot in this bill that is kicking mud in the face of not just this council but the people of Auckland.' Manukau councillor Lotu Fuli said the move was 'real overreach. We've said all term long we don't want Wellington to be running Auckland and this is an attempt to do that.' She argued 'core' council business was people and communities. 'It's what makes us human, our music, our dogs we keep at home … and therefore they are core to what we should do.' Wayne Brown took particular umbrage at Auckland's special status, with 30 percent of the population and its own special statute, being ignored by the one-size-fits-all approach to constrain councils nationwide. Worse, ministers had not consulted Auckland Council before introducing the bill in July with a deadline for public submissions by August 27. 'We are a product of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act and we are not like the others. 'For instance the standardised code of conduct: The problems of Gore are not the problems of Auckland. 'The very fact that a Government whose standard of behaviour inside their own thing is appalling should have the temerity to tell us about standards of behaviour is a bit rich,' Brown said. 'This is a third of New Zealand. We don't really need any of this actually. We'll decide what wellbeings for Aucklanders are. 'The whole point is that we are different… the cheek of them to suggest that we are going to do something by the 27th of August for a third of New Zealand without even coming to talk to us is a good enough reason for us to oppose the whole bloody thing.' He said right at the start of its submission Auckland Council should say: 'Where are you? How dare you post us a letter and tells us we've got to behave. It's insulting. I'm quite prepared to put in there that we'll form a group here for a code of conduct for their behaviour and send it down to them and see how they like it.' Another retiring councillor, Manurewa's Angela Dalton, said the bill was a 'one-size-fits-all. This is just so far away from localism it isn't funny.' She was mystified how central government came to think removing the 'four wellbeings' would lead to rate decreases or constraints on rate increases. 'There seems to be a view there's some mamby pamby stuff going on and we're all sitting around hugging each other.' Many things the council did were forced on it by other legislation. 'We have a role to be leaders for our city and our people. If that means giving a damn then we will give a damn. Because if we don't, central government won't be there. They're actually proving that at the moment. They are not there for our people. 'I just want to see the evidence, the data and the analysis that says the four wellbeings is costing us more.' Measures in the bill such as removing a requirement for councils to consider tikanga Māori in appointing council company directors were 'just appalling.' Dalton said she'd love to throw the bill back at the Government and say 'you've got to be kidding.' 'For a Government that is right into people being in control of their own destiny and removing regulation and rules, look what they're doing to the councils: 'This is what you will do and we are going to take this power off you.'' Councillor Julie Fairey said of the Government's moves: 'It's not supposed to be a parent-child relationship … It should not be the case we have this parent coming in over the top all the time.' Recalling repeated rejections of Auckland's advocacy for a bed night levy to fund development and destination functions, her message to Wellington was: 'If you are worried about rates, let central government give us some power to raise funds in some other ways.' Committee chair Hills noted all the accountability demands on councils that didn't apply to central government like having to consult for six months on annual budgets. 'And we have to provide a balanced budget every year, by statute. They don't have to do that. We do.' He defended the consideration of the four wellbeings as having highlighted and helped address issues like homelessness and public safety. 'It's annoying to have to get told how bad we are,' he said. 'I hope the Government can come back to us and look at a different model.' The council will submit against the overall bill, opposing specific measures on the grounds of unclear policy rationale, unclear definitions and risks that alternative paths to improve efficiency might be negated.
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Govt confirms how much scrapped iRex ferries cost
KiwiRail and the government have confirmed how much it has cost to breaking the contract with South Korean shipbuilders of the scrapped iRex Ferries. political reporter Russell Palmer spoke to Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira.
RNZ News
5 hours ago
- RNZ News
Why has trust in news fallen? The answer is more complicated than we thought
By Greg Treadwell, Merja Myllylahti of In April only one in three people said they trusted the media in general - a slight fall from last year. Photo: Supplied / Stuff / NZ Herald / Newsroom / ODT / TVNZ We live in an age of declining trust in public institutions: Parliament, the health and education systems, courts and police have all suffered over the past decade, both in New Zealand and internationally. And, of course, trust in the news has declined precipitously, according to regular surveys, including our own research. So, it might be tempting to roll declining trust in news media into this wider decline of trust in public institutions in general. But this is where our research disagrees . News isn't just another institution like the state, a corporation or a non-profit organisation. Ideally, it's the democratic expression of the public interest in these things. An institutional approach may help us explore the structural issues democracies face (for example, critiquing the nature of media ownership). But it also generalises, and risks obscuring the specifics of the trust problem public interest journalism faces. Nor does it recognise the distinctiveness of the " social contract of the press " - the necessary bond of trust between journalism and its audiences, which is key to the success of the wider social contract between the public and its institutions. Our research shows trust in news has plummeted from 58 percent of New Zealanders agreeing they can trust "most of the news most of the time" in 2020, to just 32 percent in 2025. Survey respondents tell us they perceive the news to be politically biased (both left and right), and because too much seems to be opinion masquerading as news. These seemed very different from the trust issues faced by government, business and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Declining trust in those institutions has been driven more by wars, financial crises, the rise of populism and the Covid pandemic. To differentiate journalism's trust issues, we explored whether falling trust in news was (or wasn't) linked to declines in trust in other social institutions. We looked at research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the global Edelman Trust Barometer , as well as our own research. We found the trajectories of trust levels for other social institutions - governments, business, NGOs - showed clear links to each other as they rose and fell, more or less in sync, over time. Trust in news, however, has been in its own lane, perhaps influenced by the others, but clearly not tethered to them. A fall in trust in government and politics, in other words, is not a predictor of a fall in trust in news. Globally, we found trust in government, business and NGOs fell and then rose, roughly together, from 2020 to 2024. While not tracking each other exactly, there's a clear grouping of data points. From 2020, trust in all of them (including media in general - television, internet, radio and movies) fell rapidly and levelled out in 2021 before rising again slightly by 2024. Trust in news itself, however, behaved in almost exactly opposite ways, rising from 2020 to 2021 before falling again and levelling out in 2023. Global trust in media, news and social institutions has dropped since the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: The Conversation Given its impact, the global pandemic is likely a cause for these changes in 2020. However, as trust in government fell, news media - to which the public has historically turned in a crisis - actually rose. In Aotearoa New Zealand, things were very different. While it fell globally, trust in institutions in New Zealand rose from 2020, before falling in 2022. Trust in news, however, was not rising in the early days of the pandemic as it was elsewhere. It was falling. And it continued to fall steadily until 2023. (In 2024, it would fall even more dramatically, but that data was not captured by this study.) A drop in trust in the media needs to be addressed separately from the drop in trust of government and non-government institutions. Photo: The Conversation Both sets of data - global and local - show trust in news doing largely the opposite of what trust in government and other institutions has been doing, rising when they were falling and vice versa. When journalism does its job well and exposes failings in government, we would indeed expect one to rise and the other to fall. So, we can see there may well be links between changes in levels of trust. But we can also see trust levels are not responding in unison to external socio-political pressures. In focus groups, we explored if there were connections between trust in news and trust in government. Older New Zealanders who didn't trust the news told us there were institutions they mistrusted: banks, insurance companies and universities, some to very high levels, and mostly born from personal experience. But they did not particularly mistrust government as an institution. And we found no direct link between their mistrust of news and their mistrust of other social institutions. Which supports the evidence we found in the global and local trust data trends. It seems the trust problems democracies have with their news services need to be addressed on their own terms, not as part of an overall picture. This story was originally published on The Conversation.
