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.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    If you have 1 seat you have political power.

    Well, until you conveniently get the longest suspension in history right as parliament is about to decide the budget, anyway.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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      2 days ago

      Maori people arent only a single party. This is 3 MPs from a single party being temp suspended. Maori are 27% of parliament and have MPs in all majority parties. They will still be represented.

      • theolodis@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        The problem is that even 27% couldn’t stop the colonizers from further destroying the nature.

        • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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          2 days ago

          I’m not sure what you are getting at with that comment.