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New Delhi:
New Zealand’s youngest MP Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, who shot to viral fame after she performed a haka during her maiden speech in parliament last year, is back in the limelight after once again staging the traditional Maori dance and ripping up a copy of a contentious bill during a House session.
A viral video of the vote on the Treaty Principles Bill shows the 22-year-old Te Pati Maori MP interrupting the session by tearing apart a copy of the legislation before performing a haka. She is then joined by the people in the public gallery, prompting Speaker Gerry Brownlee to briefly suspend the House.
The ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the country’s centre-right coalition government, last week unveiled the bill, which seeks to change some of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi – a move opposed by many Maori.
First signed in 1840 between the British Crown and more than 500 Maori chiefs, the Treaty lays down how the two parties agreed to govern. The interpretation of clauses in the document still guides legislation and policy today.
The bill, however, is seen by many Maori and their supporters as undermining the rights of the country’s indigenous people, who make up around 20% of the population of 5.3 million.
As the proposed bill passed its first reading, hundreds of people set out on a nine-day march, or hikoi, from New Zealand’s north to the national capital of Wellington to mark their protest.
Coalition partners the National Party and New Zealand First are only supporting the legislation through the first of three readings as part of the coalition agreement. Both parties have said they will not support it to become legislation.
“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,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters before leaving for Peru to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
