Harawira's head on the chopping block

Hone Harawira. Photo / Northern Advocate

The Race Relations Commissioner says Hone Harawira may not have broken the Human Rights Act in his racially charged email.

The Te Tai Tokerau MP is fronting up to Maori Party officials today to discuss the language he used defending his trip to Paris.

Commissioner Joris de Bres says unlike students wearing Nazi uniforms or schoolboys bowing to a swastika Mr Harawira's comments are not a breach of the Human Rights Act, because he is entitled to freedom of expression.

But he says the issue should be addressed.

"It is something that the organisation that they represent or that they are a part of has a responsibility to address so in this case, it is important that the Maori Party upholds its values and its standards."

Mr De-Bres says as a member of Parliament, Mr Harawira is expected to uphold high standards in the public arena.

Mr Harawira's future with the Maori Party is on the line after he skipped official parliamentary business to visit Paris and then used offensive language in an email on the issue.

President Whatarangi Winiata said yesterday that the party was on the verge of disciplinary action against the MP, whose behaviour involved "serious breaches of the kaupapa and tikanga of the party".

It followed Mr Harawira's decision to skip a meeting in Brussels with European parliamentarians to go to Paris for the day with his wife, Hilda, and an email the Te Tai Tokerau MP sent to former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere.

Mr Mikaere had asked who had paid for Mr Harawira's wife to go on the trip.

The MP wrote back: "Gee Buddy, do you believe that white man bullshit, too, do you? White motherf***ers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bullshit."

Mr Harawira's comments in the email were described by Prime Minister John Key as "deeply offensive", and Labour leader Phil Goff also said the comments were "disgusting".

More than 20 complaints have been made with the Race Relations Commission about the email and Mr de Bres says each one will be looked at individually.

Maori Party officials are understood to be appalled at Mr Harawira's actions and concerned they could damage the party and undermine its core philosophy of respect for others.

The party's co-vice president, retired judge Heta Hingston, said Professor Winiata would talk to Mr Harawira this weekend and the leadership would meet next week.

He said Mr Harawira had sent an email to the party apologising "unreservedly" for any harm he had done to it in his "choice of words" in the email to Mr Mikaere.

The action compounds his previous controversies - including leaving a select committee's four-day visit to Melbourne to visit Alice Springs, and calling former Australian Prime Minister John Howard a "racist bastard".

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia would not comment yesterday afternoon, saying the matter had been handed over to the party council.

However, earlier she told Morning Report she was concerned Mr Harawira's decision to skip a meeting to go to Paris damaged the credibility of the party, and she doubted it would send him on overseas trips again.

Mrs Turia said she stood by those comments. She had believed Mr Harawira was ill on the day he went to Paris, but a spokesman in her office later said she had been told that by one of his family in New Zealand rather than by the MP himself.

Mr Harawira was yesterday understood to be with his family discussing what his next actions should be. As an electorate MP, if he leaves the party or is expelled, he could still continue as the member for Te Tai Tokerau.

He has previously admitted to having second thoughts about remaining with the party or in Parliament since it went into support with National. While he has so far ruled out leaving, he sometimes seems uncomfortable with the party.

- with NEWSTALK ZB