New Zealand’s Parliament will debate suspending Māori lawmakers

A New Zealand parliamentary committee has recommended the unprecedented suspensions of three Māori lawmakers for performing a protest haka in the debating chamber last year.

The haka is a chanting dance of challenge of great cultural importance in New Zealand, and the three lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori party, performed one to oppose a controversial bill that would have redefined the country’s founding document, as per an AP report.

A committee Wednesday recommended record suspensions and severe censure — the harshest penalties ever assigned to New Zealand parliamentarians — after finding the trio in contempt of Parliament.

Government bloc lawmakers, who hold the majority, are expected to endorse the penalties in a vote Tuesday. But Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee took the unusual step Thursday of saying he would first allow unlimited debate before the vote due to the severity of the proposed punishments.

The recommendations were the latest twist in the fraught saga over the bill, now defeated, that opponents said would have provoked constitutional havoc and reversed decades of progress for Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people.