The New Zealand Parliament has voted to impose record suspensions on three lawmakers who did a Maori haka as a protest. The incident took place last November during a debate on a law on Indigenous rights.
New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who disrupted the reading of a controversial bill last year by performing a haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi — were suspended for 21 days and one — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, from the same party — for seven days.
Before now, the longest suspension of a parliamentarian in New Zealand was three days.
My legislative body has the filibuster and I think it has a useful function, so yes!
BTW, there’s no good reason whatsoever the NZ parliament couldn’t have resumed business after the haka. None at all.
The only reason they didn’t was because the leadership decided to feign performative fear and end the session in order to manufacture an excuse to punish the native legislators and exclude them from influencing the budget.