Free Speech Champions ACT wanted to imprison Māori MPs for Haka
ACT asked for advice on range of punishments for Te Pāti Māori MPs – including imprisonment
The ACT party asked for advice on the full range of possible punishments for Te Pāti Māori MPs following last year’s Treaty Principles haka – including imprisonment.
Trust the Free Speech Champions at ACT to seek imprisonment of Māori MPs for protesting with a Haka against their race baiting redneck Treaty Principles Referendum hate jamboree.
Who would seek imprisonment for the exercising of Free Speech?
Why the ACT Party, that’s who.
They aren’t a political party, they are a Lynch mob minus the noose.
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Free speech doesn’t mean rudely shouting over someone else.
Nor does it mean ACT quietly assaulting democracy.
It does mean government not attempting imprison those exercising free speech – quite literally …
Just another example of colonialism and might is white racialism in parliament. The haka should be enshrined in the political dialogue. That much is clear. A right to Haka in parliament is clear ….To all the world. Who see it performed before every football match all the time, and never question its legitimacy.
Liam Hehir (The Blue Review) has produced a very erudite exposition on parliament’s power to imprison.
However he winds up by arguing that “the idea modern New Zealand MPs would be clapped in irons over even the worst breach of privilege is risible. It would be constitutionally nuclear and politically insane”.
It might be “constitutionally nuclear and politically insane” but so was the Treaty Principles Bill, and that made its way through the House into a second reading.
What we do know for sure is that at least some government members wished to consider the option of imprisoning some members of the opposition.
This is not risible. It is no laughing matter. It should be a cause for serious concern.
New Zealand’s pseudo-democratic “constitutional monarchy without a constitution” is a stack of cards vulnerable to the slightest change in the political winds, and when the government is even thinking about the indefinite imprisonment of its political opposition we should be thinking even harder about the need for radical constitutional reform. In fact, revolution.