Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi’s questions in House may have breached Parliamentary rules
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi may have breached Parliament’s rules by making comments about court proceedings.
During Question Time in Parliament on Wednesday, Waititi raised a supplementary question, referring to a matter before the courts.
ACT leader David Seymour responded, saying Waititi had “speculated that a particular individual has name suppression and is guilty of heinous crimes – both of those are in contempt of court and due to the long tradition of comity between this House and the courts, to make such statements are deeply disorderly, bring the House into disrepute, and should face very severe consequences”.
“I can’t believe, frankly, what I’ve just heard – the tikanga of this house is well known and should be respected.”
Speaker Adrian Rurawhe said he would go back and “look at everything that’s happened in Question Time today”.
“I’d like everyone to calm down, thank you,” he said. “I have … allowed questions, supplementary questions to be asked – including [by] the the member himself on this very question today that have been out of order – almost completely out of order.”
We can’t talk about what Rawiri said under the privilege of Parliament.
But we can make some speculative guesses that remain well inside the draconian legal powers that would rip me to pieces if I re-quoted Rawiri.
In short, shit just got real.
What Rawiri is doing here is making a very clear statement that Jacinda’s rules of kindness engagement are no longer respected.
This is going to be a rough election and a political battle whose stakes are so high, any and all tactics are on the table.
Shit.
Just.
Got.
Real.
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Are the Act party…
P ompous
A rrogant
E vil
D angerous
O utrageous
S ickening?
Yes it will be a bruising election, and how could it be otherwise when the likes of Act are proposing a Referendum on Te Tiriti no less! Seeking to overturn the foundation document of Aotearoa NZ and strip Māori of their long standing Parliamentary electorates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Māori_electorates
Such an approach is exactly what “tyranny of the majority” looks like, whereby a larger cohort of non Māori get to tell Māori what they must do. For those blinded by distaste for all things Māori, another example of parts of a population imposing their views on another, is men via the Republican Party and US Supreme Court, dictating to half the population (women) on their reproductive health–although to be technically correct the US example is more like “tyranny of the Patriarchy & Christians”.
If Act expect Māori to go quietly on their white supremacist policies they are in for quite a wake up call–Rawiri Waititi was just first off the mark. This country suffers from significant post colonial fall out in all major statistics and they will only get worse under a NActFirst Govt.
I don’t think parliamentary privilege extends to court suppression orders, so I’m looking forward to his contempt of court conviction.
I am pretty sure that parliamentary privilege does protect MP’s from criminal action relating to what is said in the debating chamber. That is what absolute privilege means. However, breaching a Suppression Order would almost certainly be a breach of Standing Orders of Parliament, hence a likely reference to the Privileges Committee.
If a fella wears a cowboy hat, then he’s probably a cowboy.
Old saying’ he who pisses into the wind gets his own back’.
When you use toxic weapons you are inviting the enemy to retaliate in kind so you better make sure your defences are ready and all vulnerable points well protected.
Just Saying……What this space.
No respect from this leader for the countries laws. If this party gets power in any way it will be a sad day .
TPM will definitely get 5 perhaps 6 seats.
Hey Trevor, at least you know where you stand with The Pati Maori. The Arrogant Cynical Terrifying party is untrustworthy in the extreme.
Seems weird to report it if you can’t actually report it…
Capitalists got your tongue? Coz they sure got mine.
Just you wait until the anti-free speech brigands get their legislation through Parliament and tongues become redundant. You might be able to bark safely, but that’s about it.
We ask the judiciary to respect Parliamentary privilege so that government can function independently and impartially for the people, without outside influence or interference. We understand that name suppression is a legal mechanism which is often appropriate for a privileged few rich connected folk, and ask that you break these shackles of legal malfeasance to grant MP Waititi immunity from persecution.
Why should Rawiri suck up to the Epsom clown for a millisecond?
Act is a member of the ‘filthy few’ of world politics. Chicago School economics that eventually lead to authoritarian govt. Though Pinochet’s Chile dictatorship got there straight away!
Rawiri doesn’t have to. It’s a free country, precisely what David Seymour and Act stand for.
Ah, Jacinda’s rules of kindness. Notions around those got chucked out frequently over the years.
Like when nasties stomped all over Ardern, jumped all over her face in jackboots (metaphorically speaking) and someone stood up for Ardern the same nasties spewed out, “What happened to kindness? I thought Jacinda wanted kindness.”
Jacinda was a failure. That is all
Ordure is referred to. But a ‘dirty’ challenger must also know when to pull their head in. The French Revolution came from acute dissatisfaction and despair, started in bloodshed against those deserving it so they thought, (the fighting warriors) and then having been blooded, those warriors looked round at their own leaders, having lost all discretion. And Voltaire keeps being quoted about his wide-ranging ideas about speech but that was a false, mistaken quote and his name a pseudonym which he adopted for his safety. So thought, a reasoned plan and restraint will take a new idea further, likely to be more effective.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire, was a writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, historian and polemicist of the French Enlightenment. The diversity of his literary output is rivalled only by its abundance: the edition of his complete works currently nearing completion will comprise over 200 volumes.
About Voltaire
University of Oxford https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk › about-voltaire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire 1694-
Arouet adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille…
Voltaire’s works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: “écrasez l’infâme”, or “crush the infamous”. The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy. He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of Jean Calas and François-Jean de la Barre. He stated in one of his most famous quotes that “Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.”[129]
The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with writing, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” These were not his words, but rather those of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, written under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre in her 1906 biographical book The Friends of Voltaire.
All his 200 volumes didn’t bring violence and class obsession to an end. However he had a lively mind and opened up those of others to new ideas that led to a different approach to politics in France and other countries. He lived all over Europe taking an interest in science and critiquing religion. In his personal life having a loving and sexual life with a number of women, he often offended patrons and notables with his outspoken ideals. In 1778, thinking he was dying he pronounced “I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.” He had decided that year to embrace Freemasonry and was accepted into it, in preference to established religions of the time. He became ill, lived for a month longer and died in Paris.
I take it that he decided that belonging in a group of people committed to standards of behaviour and each other is of value to a person and society seeking to live a life of meaning and of worth individually, and to society.
MTP may do well for a while with its present leaders but they will have to consider method and practicality and not yell from the corner and refuse to go along with time-honoured rules that provide some RESTRAINT. That is the word to keep to the forefront in these trying times when all our nerves are frazzled and tempers will reach boiling more often as the real climate heats up!! Voltaire was not facing the end of our familiar climate and ordered ways; our hard-won civilisation, our known and understood world, altogether.
100% stevie
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