Peter Dunne: Political commentator on Treaty Principles Bill debate chaos

Yesterday’s Treaty Principles parliamentary debate caught international attention. 

Labour MP Willie Jackson was ejected from Parliament during the debate, and Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was suspended following a haka. 

A number of countries have reacted, with Sky News Australia labelling the scenes a “temper tantrum”. 

US Fox News attempted a haka of their own. 

UK newspaper The Guardian described the “significant public backlash” the Bill faces, and international news agency Reuters reported on “shouting drowning out others in the chamber”.  

Political commentator Peter Dunne tells Heather du Plessis-Allan “Parliament is the highest court in the land and proper decorum and dignity should be a part of its proceedings.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the fallout from yesterday's Treaty principles debate in Parliament
has gone global. This was Fox News just a few
minutes ago.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Instead of boring speeches, they prefer tribal screeches as session
of the New Zealand Parliament game to a screeching hall.
Earlier today, when politicians broke out into a traditional ceremony
dance known as the hakka.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Sky News Australia has also called it a temper tantrum
in parliament. Peter Dunn as a former MPa now a
political commentator and.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Is with us.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Hey Peter, hi, Heather, what was your take on what
happened yesterday?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well? I was a bit surprised, not not so much
by the harker, but by the vehemence of it and
the way in which the whole drama unfolded. I thought
it was quite unbecoming and not something I'd seen before.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
What should Jerry do about this?

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I Thoty handled it quite well on the circumstances actually,
by adjourning the house, clearing the gallery and moving on.
I think that there needs to be some very clear
guidance given to all parties about how they behave in parliament.
It's not just a sort of a classroom or a
school hall. Parliament is the highest core from the land
and proper decorum and dignity should be a part of
its proceedings, and unfortunately that's now lacking, not just in

(01:06):
this incident, but I think there's a a gradual wearing
down over the years where people tend to treat it
a bit more informally, don't sort of acknowledge its history
and background, and I think that leads to the sort
of chaos that we saw yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Isn't the problem here that whatever punishment Jerry actually has
to hand is not sufficient to stop this because actually
the political reward for this kind of theater is quite big.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah. I think that's absolutely right, and I think that's
as I say, other parties have worked this out as
well over time, that they can portray Parliament's customs and
tradition as being fuddy duddy and out of date and
therefore not something that applied to them. The problem is
is it creates its own discipline, and when that discipline
breaks down, you see what happened yesterday as an example.
So I think there is that sense and for a

(01:51):
lot of people they'll say what the hell are all
the politicians on about. Good on the Mari Party and
good on others for stirring the pot. So there isn't
You're right, there is a sort of a The alienated
and the divided will feel very positive about what goes on.
The traditionalists will feel more and more upset.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Right, and so you have the ongoing polarization of politics happening. Though,
can you actually see this ending? Because if I look
at this, I look at the success of Trump, who
also offended kind of you know, norms and therefore got
himself elected by consistently offending norms. That's all the Marti
Party are doing here that they have no reason to stop.
They will continue to do this, and this will become ingrained,

(02:27):
won't it.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
I think that's right, And they'll be appealing in the
first instance to their core voters to make sure that
they get back in about the same numbers, if not
greater numbers at the next election than they've got now.
I thought it was a bit weird this morning when
Debi and Awa packet was an ambusting David Seymour He's
only got eight percent of the vote. That's that's considerably
more than Pati Mari got at the last divention. But

(02:51):
I think that that is the risk now, is we
ended up in a period where the extremes start to
become more dominant and the mainstream starts to weaken, and
then when you look to future government formation, you've got
coalitions that maybe two or three parties of roughly equal size,
and no one actually able to exert a sort of
a controlling influence over it.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, I think you're about right. Hey, by the way,
just can you recu brains tell me the last time
that you remember the public gallery being cleared.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
I have seen it cleared in the past, but not
on this level of protest. It would be back in
the I think probably the late eighties the early nineties,
and it was more more because I remember one incident
where a group of people try to stunt where they
tried to come down into the chamber sort of over
the parapets at various points, just to see if they could,
and they sort of one from one corner, one from

(03:40):
the other, and because no one quite knew what was
going on, it was clear at that point until they
were removed, clearly this was just a prank gone wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Interesting, Hey, Peter, Thanks very much as always Peter Done,
political commentator, former MP. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,
listen live to news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio