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The 22-year-old Te Pati Maori MP disrupted the vote on the Treaty Principles Bill by tearing up a copy of the bill and then doing a haka, as seen in a widely shared video.
After performing a haka during her first speech in parliament last year, New Zealand’s youngest Member of Parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, went viral. Now, she is back in the spotlight after performing the traditional Maori dance and tearing up a copy of a controversial bill during a House session.
The 22-year-old Te Pati Maori MP disrupted the vote on the Treaty Principles Bill by tearing up a copy of the bill and then doing a haka, as seen in a widely shared video. Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspends the House for a moment after the members of the public gallery join her.
The ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the country’s centre-right coalition government, unveiled the bill last week with the intention of changing some of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Many Maori are against the move.
More than 500 Maori chiefs and the British Crown first signed the Treaty in 1840, outlining their agreed-upon system of governance. Legislation and policy are still based on how the document’s clauses should be interpreted.
However, many Maori and those who support them believe that the bill violates the rights of the nation’s indigenous people, who comprise about 20% of its 5.3 million inhabitants.
async=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js async=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js🔥Unprecedented & simply magnificent. That time in Nov 2024 when a haka led by Aotearoa’s youngest MP 22yo Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke erupted in the House stopping the Treaty Principles Bill from passing its first reading, triggering the Speaker to suspend Parliament.… pic.twitter.com/pkI7q7WGlr
— Kelvin Morgan 🇳🇿 (@kelvin_morganNZ) November 14, 2024
Hundreds of people protested by embarking on a nine-day march, known as hikoi, from the north of New Zealand to Wellington, the country’s capital, as the proposed bill passed its first reading.
Coalition partners the National Party and New Zealand First are only supporting the legislation through the first of three readings as part of the coalition agreement. Both parties have stated that they will not back its passage into law.
“You do not go negate, with a single stroke of a pen, 184 years of debate and discussion, with a bill that I think is very simplistic,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters before leaving for Peru to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.