Te Pāti Māori perform a haka in front of ACT leader David Seymour during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament. Photo / Adam Pearse
Te Pāti Māori perform a haka in front of ACT leader David Seymour during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament. Photo / Adam Pearse
Opinion by Claire Trevett
Claire Trevett is the New Zealand Herald’s Political Editor, based at Parliament in Wellington.
Act’s Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in Parliament on Thursday with support from National, Act and NZ First.
National and NZ First have said they will not support it beyond the select committee stages
It will be considered by the Justice Select Committee, including public submissions, over the next six months
OPINION
There was always going to be anger, fireworks and haka but the dramas around the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill have ensured that all sides can declare victory – of sorts.
Act leader David Seymour’s victory will be the sixmonths ahead as the bill goes through the select committee process and the second reading when it will be voted out of existence. He faced jeering, calls of “shame” and “disgrace” and comparisons to the KKK – one label that got a reaction out of him. However, he has six long months to milk what he can out of it, and he is already predicting some kind of afterlife for it.
Te Pāti Māori will not give two hoots about the punishments that are likely to be handed out for starting the haka that interrupted the first attempt at voting on the first reading: including the rare move of a “naming” for MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clark, suspending her as an MP for 24 hours.
That was for Maipi-Clark initiating the haka while standing to cast her party’s votes, ripping up the bill, before being joined by her co-leaders and then pretty much all of the public gallery. It forced the Speaker to suspend Parliament and empty the public galleries: a very rare event.
The haka had been pre-planned – and it seemed everybody knew it was coming bar the Speaker. That said, it may have actually helped the Speaker in his efforts to ensure the debate prior to that point was relatively orderly and the public gallery abided by his instructions not to make noise. They were clearly careful not to get kicked out, lest they miss the fireworks show at the end.
The Speaker was not exactly a winner, standing red-faced as he watched his call for order be ignored. However, nor was he a loser, he simply waited it out and will dispense his own justice accordingly. The Privileges Committee will almost inevitably be called into service again to deal with the wider scenario, which saw Ngarewa-Packer right in Seymour’s face.
Labour MP Willie Jackson delivered an absolutely blistering speech, slating Seymour and PM Christopher Luxon for agreeing to the first reading.
He will also not give two hoots about being kicked out of Parliament for refusing to apologise for calling Seymour a “liar.”
Labour’s Willie Jackson told to leave the House after calling David Seymour a ‘liar’ as debate over Treaty Principles Bill rages on November 14, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Thus far, all sides on the political spectrum have made their points in the way they wanted.
Luxon got a tiny bit of victory out of it without even being there for it, thanks to the convenient timing of the debate clashing with his travel to Peru for Apec.
He left Parliament before the debate, but he did not leave without finally having a bit of spray at the man who put it on the table – Seymour.
Luxon did an impromptu media standup before he left and in the process, after a year of showing relative restraint in response to Seymour’s various jabs at Luxon’s position, Luxon finally clapped back.
He was asked about Seymour’s comment last week that National did not want a bar of the bill because it was afraid of dealing with hard issues.
Luxon noted with some edge that the “hard issues” were things such as the cost of living, the threat of people losing their jobs, rising crime and education.
“That is what the National Party is focused on. We are focused on dealing with the hard issues. Frankly, a Treaty Principles Bill that is simplistic, that hopes to rewrite a debate and discussion over 184 years through the stroke of a pen, is not the way forward.”
The subtext of all that is Luxon thinks it is a total sideshow, a waste of time and money, and is tarnishing what the coalition partners should be focusing on. He looked as if he was glad to get it off his chest at last.
The bill described as “divisive” from the start has indeed proved to be divisive – not least between National and Act, or at least the leaders of those parties.
The bill has been such a headache for Luxon that the second reading sometime next year may well be the best day of his political career as he watches it get buried under a tombstone of “no” votes – including his own. However, Luxon now faces the hīkoi arriving next week and six more months of indigestion before he can get rid of it altogether.
The only non-victor is perhaps National’s first-term MP James Meager, who chairs the Justice Select Committee which will consider the bill.
Meager’s chairmanship skills will clearly be put to quite the test if the submissions on the bill get as heated as the debate in Parliament was.
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
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