MAORI MPs BANNED FOR HAKA

THREE Maori MPs have been banned from the New Zealand parliament for performing the haka during a protest. 

The haka is a traditional war dance of the indigenous Maori people - popularly used by the country's All Blacks rugby team.

Last November, Te Pati Maori or Maori Party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer voiced their opposition to a bill that sought to strip protections for the Maori during the country's founding treaty with the British in 1840.

The Treaty Principles Bill has since been voted down 112 to 11 after nationwide outrage - and more than 40 000 people protested outside parliament during the bill’s first reading. 

But that didn’t stop the parliament from suspending the trio on Thursday,  after a parliamentary committee ruled last month that the haka could have “intimidated” other lawmakers. 

Maipi-Clarke copped a seven-day ban, while Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer were geskors for 21 days - the harshest penalty ever handed down to an MP. 

There were tense scenes outside parliament, with Foreign Minister Winston Peters being asked to apologise for calling Te Pāti Māori a “bunch of extremists” and saying the country “has had enough of them”.

Ngarewa-Packer told the BBC that they were being “punished for being Māori”. 

She added: “We take on the stance of being unapologetically Māori and prioritising what our people need or expect from us.

Maipi-Clarke said: “We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost. 

“Are our voices too loud for this house – is that why we are being punished?”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who leads a conservative faction, has rejected accusations that the committee's ruling was “racist”. 

He said it was “not about haka”, but about “parties not following the rules of parliament”.