Parliamentary proceedings in New Zealand once again screeched to a halt this week after an unsanctioned performance of the haka caused bedlam in the country’s normally genteel debating chamber, forcing the speaker to suspend the House.
The latest war dance took place on Thursday after a new MP, Oriini Kaipara, 42, of the nativist Maori party, finished her maiden speech in the House of Representatives with a deafening flourish. On cue, supporters in the gallery leapt to their feet and broke into a ferocious haka to show their support for the television presenter turned politician, with Kaipara herself joining in the ruckus.
The haka may generate online clicks, but for many New Zealanders scenes like this are a bit cringeworthy
‘No! Not that’, boomed the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, jabbing a finger in the direction of the new MP’s voluble supporters. ‘The guarantee was that would not be taking place!’
As the din continued, Brownlee suspended the House, later describing the incident as ‘contemptuous’ and vowing that his office will investigate ‘in the next couple of days’ whether the Maori party had a hand in arranging it.
In the meantime, footage of the ferocious performance has again been an online hit. The Maori party, which also goes by the transliterated ‘Te Pati Maori’, may have just six MPs in its ranks, but millions of viewers around the world rather enjoy their style.
For Brownlee, it’s a case of déjà vu, having gone through a similar episode last November. On that earlier occasion, three other members of the Maori party – Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke – did another unscheduled haka during a parliamentary debate on a controversial bill that sought to reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document signed between the British Crown and Maori chieftains in 1840.
For added effect, as the 22-year-old Maipi-Clarke stood for the performance, she ripped Seymour’s bill in half, another great YouTube hit. Last week, she was named by Time magazine as one of ‘the world’s most influential rising stars’.
The haka may generate online clicks, but for many New Zealanders scenes like this are a bit cringeworthy – all the more so because the Maori party, often described as left-wing but more often simply obstructionist, seems more adept at generating headlines than serious policy proposals.
Among the first to walk out of parliament last week was the country’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, a Maori himself who leads the New Zealand First party, a coalition partner in the current National-led government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. A stickler for parliamentary protocol, Peters has previously described his foot-pounding ethnic counterparts as ‘a bunch of extremists’.
Kiwis in general tend to be in two minds about the intense dance. On the one hand it’s seen as a powerful cultural enhancement to many state ceremonies, cultural events and, as British rugby fans well know, the start of matches with the All Blacks.
They are also mindful of its international cachet. Among the most-viewed clips from last month’s Unite the Kingdom march was a group of Maori Christians from New Zealand, affiliated with Destiny Church and smoothly led by the Auckland-based pastor Brian Tamaki, taking centre stage at the rally to deliver an eye-popping haka in tribute to the murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kirk was an activist putting forward a vision for the future. The perception remains though that the Maori party to date hasn’t moved much beyond the vision of a benighted past at the hands of British overlords.
Standing in the House on Thursday, Kaipara introduced herself in the familiar style, ‘not as a survivor of colonisation who made it in the pakeha [British] system but as the product of Maori resilience’. And the rest, as they say, was hysteria.
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