NEW ZEALAND legislators voted to enact record parliamentary suspensions yesterday against three lawmakers who performed a Maori haka to protest against a proposed law.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke received a seven-day ban while the leaders of her political party, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, were barred for 21 days. 

The previous longest ban of an MP from New Zealand’s parliament was three days.

The lawmakers from Te Pati Maori, the Maori Party, performed the haka, a chanting dance of challenge, last November to oppose a widely unpopular Bill, now defeated, that they said would reverse Indigenous rights.

The action drew global headlines and provoked months of fraught debate among lawmakers about what the consequences for the lawmakers’ actions should be — and whether New Zealand’s parliament welcomed Maori culture, or felt threatened by it.

A committee of the MPs’ peers recommended the lengthy punishments in a report published in April, which said they were not being punished for the haka itself, but for striding across the floor of the debating chamber towards their opponents while performing it. 

Maipi-Clarke rejected the charge yesterday, citing other instances where legislators have left their seats and approached opponents without sanction.

It was expected that the suspensions would be approved as the government’s majority provided the necessary votes. 

But the punishment was so severe that parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee in April ordered a free-ranging debate among lawmakers and urged them to attempt to reach a consensus on what repercussions were appropriate.

No such agreement was reached yesterday. During hours of at times emotional speeches, government lawmakers rejected opposition proposals for lighter sanctions.

There were suggestions that opposition lawmakers might extend the debate for days or even longer through filibuster-style speeches, but with the outcome already certain and no-one’s mind changed, all lawmakers agreed that the debate should end.