Catherine Delahunty, a Green Party MP from 2008 until 2017, on the steps of Parliament Buildings: “I found the environment in parliament extraordinarily unpleasant, every day.” (Photo supplied)

The ruling of the Privileges Committee last week against Te Pāti Māori was a stark reminder that parliament doesn’t recognise the meaning of the relationships outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, writes Catherine Delahunty, a former MP.

I spent nine years in parliament, where I witnessed the Westminster system in all its petty adversarial splendour.

As someone who went to parliament to represent a community where most people try to be respectful and co-operative, I found the environment in parliament extraordinarily unpleasant, every day.

Some of the politicians now attacking Te Pāti Māori for the haka are among the most unpleasant and aggressive MPs in the House. Winston Peters, for example, was always calling people “Sonny Jim”, which is a weird 1950s put-down. It sounds ridiculous, but the intent was always to humiliate, and intent matters.

Humiliation is a daily experience in the House — and if you don’t like it, they tell you to toughen up. It’s reminiscent of an English-style private boarding school where you’re trained in the crude exercise of status and power.

Westminster culture doesn’t care about intent or the dignity of people — it cares about its rules.

And they are rules that privilege one culture. (Although not the one that the coalition government is trying its best to suppress, in its efforts to do away with the so-called “Māorification” of the country.)

The acceptable cultural rituals in the House include such anachronisms as a Serjeant-at-Arms entering the debating chamber with a huge golden mace, a weapon from medieval times, to lay in front of the Speaker each day that parliament is sitting. The mace is a symbol of the Speaker’s authority, a reminder of the days when violence was used to enforce order.

Serjeant-at-Arms Steve Streefkerk carrying the golden mace into the debating chamber in 2016. (Photo: NZ Parliament)

The Speaker upholds western definitions of oratory and debate and enforces the Westminster rules around the use of specific words. For instance, you can’t say someone is absent because you’d be implying that they’re not doing their duty. And you can’t call anyone a liar.

You can be as nasty and abusive as you like as long as it’s within these arbitrary rules. Mocking, laughing, and the like are fine unless it gets too noisy.

It is ritualised warfare — but only according to one cultural norm.

At one pōwhiri in parliament, some MPs from another party tried to persuade me and another Green MP, Denise Roche, that Te Atiawa protocol on where wāhine sit should be overruled because “parliament has its own tikanga”. We were disgusted by this, but clearly it’s a deeply held view and not just in the Speaker’s rulings book.

Let’s not forget that parliament is housed in buildings that stand on tangata whenua land, and the institution itself has been built on multiple breaches of Te Tiriti.

Many of my recent social media “conversations” include people telling me that MPs swore a solemn oath to the Crown, so they must put up with the rules as they stand or change them through due process.

I don’t subscribe to this theory of change. I went to parliament to fight for change, not to be an obedient servant of Westminster. I can’t speak for others, but the oath I swore each term consisted of an attempt to include Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which was always shut down.

These were depressing and far from sacred moments for me.

I will never forget when Hone Harawira tried to start his parliamentary oath by declaring loyalty to his people and Te Tiriti. A large group of whānau from the north were in the public gallery. They had travelled the length of the island, only to witness Hone being barred from giving his oath that day, because he wanted to honour Te Tiriti.

I’ve seen and heard haka and waiata performed in the public gallery at parliament many times, sometimes without the permission of the Speaker. The roof did not collapse. We did not descend into anarchistic barbarism.

Like many others, I watched the introduction of the Treaty principles bill and applauded Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke and Te Pāti Māori leaders for the ritualised expression of their truth in the face of a deeply provocative bill which attacks the fundamental relationships in this country.

Some Pākehā and other tauiwi people who’ve never learned our history or participated in the struggles against colonisation have little grasp of what these government attacks on tangata whenua are doing. They think it’s just another political game or an overdue reduction in “Māori privilege”.

Judith Collins claims the punishment must be severe for intimidating a member. David Seymour didn’t look particularly frightened. A little uncomfortable perhaps — bored, even — but far from intimidated.

How frail and vulnerable the Westminster system must be if it can’t handle a short haka in response to one of the most violent bills ever presented to the House: a bill that attacked not only Te Tiriti and every effort for Te Tiriti justice over the last century and a half, but, as lawyer Annette Sykes put it, “the very soul of this country”.

The fact is that many thousands of people celebrated Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke when she ripped up the bill. And many recognised that haka is a powerful and legitimate response to an abusive and “legal” attack.

But in the House of repressed emotion and toxic power games, the haka was deemed a “breach of privilege”.

The media statements of political leaders about upholding “standards” in the House remind me of headmasters lecturing wayward youth — full of performative outrage, and acting as if their own behaviour is beyond reproach, when we know it’s not.

It was a privilege to witness some MPS express tikanga through haka. It is a privilege to live on these lands.

Westminster colonial arrogance must be challenged — and the form of that challenge shouldn’t be determined by a privileges committee that doesn’t seem to recognise the meaning of the relationships outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Until Te Tiriti is recognised not as a threat to be managed but as a basis for constitutional transformation, there will be no justice and therefore no real peace in Aotearoa.

Catherine Delahunty is a Pākehā activist in environmental, social justice, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues. She is a writer and a tutor on social change issues, and a grandmother. Catherine was a Green MP for nine years and lives in Hauraki.

E-Tangata, 2025