This story was originally published on Thursday, November 14, 2024, and is republished today as part of Te Ao Māori News' Ngā Hiranga o te tau 2024 series, highlighting an article from each month that caught your attention.

With the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti only halfway to Parliament, ACT leader David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill has gone through its first reading.

During the count of votes for and against the bill, Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke stood up from her seat starting a haka directed at Seymour, which her colleagues and MPs from the Greens and Labour joined. When people in the public gallery above joined in loudly, Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspended Parliament for an hour until the gallery was cleared.

This wasn’t the first time Brownlee had to intervene. During the bill’s first reading, he had earlier ejected Labour MP Willie Jackson for quoting participants at the Auckland hīkoi on Wednesday, who had called Seymour a liar.

Jackson refused to retract the comment and left the room.

Outside he spoke to the media, saying he had a duty to report what the people said.

“When you go on a huge hīkoi and you get reminded by people of all different races, that they are offended by him and they’re constantly saying he‘s a liar, I’ve got a duty and obligation to relay that,” he said.

Due to the haka, and the Speaker’s suspension the bill has yet to technically pass its first reading.

Read here for the full text of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill.

The hours before the first reading

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was not in the country during the first reading, heading instead to Peru for an Apec meeting.

Talking to the media before leaving the Beehive he called the Treaty complex.

“The National Party point of view, and I’ve said this before, we don’t agree with this bill, we don’t agree with it for a number of reasons.

“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.”

Seymour had a different spin: “Equal rights for all New Zealanders is a simple idea but also a very powerful one.”

National and NZ First will not support the bill after its first reading. During question time, National deputy leader Nicola Willis, on behalf of Luxon, confirmed to Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick that National MPs would not conscience vote. Rather the party MPs would vote together to push the bill to select committee stage.

Before entering the House, Te Pāti Māori co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, said the National Party found its coalition agreement more important than te Tiriti o Waitangi.

“I think his [Luxon] lust for power and to be the prime minister absolutely has exceeded his duty to uphold te Tiriti o Waitangi and his obligation to tangata whenua,” she told media.

Before the reading, many people were outside the Beehive protesting its first reading.

Iwi leader Helmut Modlik, who went head to head in a livestream debate on the Treaty with Seymour, was in attendance for the first reading in the gallery of the House of Representatives.

“It’s important on this historic day, where such a tremendous injustice is going to be attempted or the process to begin an unjust direction [for] our nation.

“It’s important that tangata whenua is here to ensure the eyes of our tūpuna through us, who signed te Tiriti in 1840, it’s important we are here to witness it and to mark through our presence the rejection of the legitimacy of it,” he told Te Ao Māori News.