On Wednesday, Parliament's Privileges Committee released its final report into the MPs who protested the Treaty Principles Bill with a haka in the House in November 2024.
There was surprise and shock over the recommended punishments for Te Pāti Māori MPs, which seemed both unprecedented and extreme.
In retrospect, considering this week's response from Parliament's Speaker, the advice now available from Parliament's Clerk, and Committee Chair Judith Collins' public defence of her own report, that the initial reaction was overly calm. The committee report now appears partisan, indefensible and open to attacks of racism.
On Tuesday, 20 May, Parliament's House will debate whether or not to accept the Privileges Committee Report and its recommendations for punishments, namely that Te Pāti Māori's two co-leaders be suspended from Parliament for 21 days and their junior colleague for seven days, all without salary.
Talking to RNZ's Morning Report, Collins gave her view of the actions and motivations.
"This is not about haka, this is not about tikanga. This is about MPs impeding a vote, acting in a way that could be seen as intimidating MPs trying to exercise their right to vote.
"After Te Pāti Māori had exercised their right to vote, they then stopped the ACT Party from exercising theirs."
That is not true.
ACT had already voted. Every party had voted before Te Pāti Māori did. As the smallest party in Parliament, Te Pāti Māori is always the last to be called on for their vote.
It has been that way all Parliament.
Judith Collins could not fail to be aware of that.
The vote tallies and outcome had not yet been declared by the Speaker, so the fuller voting process was incomplete, and disrupting it was disorderly behaviour; but the claim that the MPs were intimidating another party to prevent it from voting is entirely unfounded.
The answer Collins gave RNZ was either misinformation (perhaps Judith Collins mistakenly believes the MP's actions were more serious than they were) or it was disinformation (in the aftermath of the report, she might have felt it necessary to convince the country the incident was more serious than it was).
Whatever the reason for the untruth, the claim suggests that Collins has a more jaundiced view of the MPs' actions than is realistic or defensible.
Did she fundamentally misunderstand the MPs' actions during the investigation (which would cast the committee findings into doubt), or did political or other prejudice make those actions appear worse than the evidence showed?
Research has repeatedly found that in any justice system, dark-skinned defendants are treated more severely based on ethnicity.
Findings based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the sequence of events would be highly embarrassing. Findings tainted by political or other prejudice would bring both the committee and the Parliament into disrepute.
