A NEW ZEALAND parliamentary committee has recommended the unprecedented suspensions of three Maori politicians for performing a protest haka in the debating chamber last year.

The haka is a ceremonial dance of great cultural importance in New Zealand and the three politicians from Te Pati Maori, the Maori party, performed one to oppose controversial legislation that would have redefined the country’s founding document.

On Wednesday, a committee  recommended record suspensions and severe censure — the harshest penalties ever assigned to New Zealand MPs — after finding the trio in contempt of parliament.

MPs from the ruling National Party are expected to endorse the penalties in a vote next Tuesday. But Speaker Gerry Brownlee took the unusual step today of saying he would first allow unlimited debate before the vote due to the severity of the proposed punishments.

The recommendations were the latest twist in the fraught saga over the Bill, now defeated, that opponents said would have provoked constitutional havoc and reversed decades of progress for New Zealand’s indigenous peoples.

The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill sought to redefine New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 pact between the British crown and Maori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonisation.

The English and Maori language versions of the treaty differed and the crown immediately began to breach both, resulting in mass land thefts and generations of disenfranchisement for Maori, who remain disadvantaged on almost every metric.

But in recent decades, Maori protest movements have wrought growing recognition of the treaty’s promises in New Zealand’s laws, politics and public life.

That produced billion-dollar land settlements with tribes and strategies to advance indigenous language and culture.

Such policies were the target of the Bill, drawn up by a minor free-market fundamentalist party which denounced what it claimed was special treatment for the Maori as they tried to rewrite the treaty’s promises.

Video of the legislators in full cry drew global attention last November. The legislation they opposed was vanquished at a second vote in April.

However, some politicians from the conservative National Party government objected to the Maori Party legislators’ protest during the first vote and complained to the parliamentary speaker.

At issue was the way the trio walked across the floor of the debating chamber towards their opponents while they performed the haka.

“It is not acceptable to physically approach another member on the floor of the debating chamber,” Wednesday’s report said, adding that such behaviour could be considered intimidating.

The cross-party committee said the legislators were not being punished for the haka, which is a beloved and sacred cultural institution in New Zealand life, but for “the time at and manner in which it was performed” during a vote, according to the findings.

Opposition members of the committee disagreed with parts of or all of the decision but were overruled.

The three legislators didn’t appear before the committee when summoned in April because they said that parliament didn’t respect Maori cultural protocol and they wouldn’t receive a fair hearing.

“The process was grossly unjust, unfair and unwarranted, resulting in an extreme sanction,” Maori party spokesperson and MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said in a statement. “This was not about process, this became personal.”

The report recommended that Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is New Zealand’s youngest politician, be suspended from parliament for seven days. The co-leaders of her political party, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, face 21-day bans.

Three days is the longest an MP has been barred before.

Mr Waititi and Ms Ngarewa-Packer, the leaders of the party that advocates Maori rights and holds six of parliament’s 123 seats, have lambasted the committee’s process as intolerant of Maori principles and identity.

The pair received more severe sanctions than Ms Maipi-Clarke because she had written a letter of “contrition” to the committee, the report said.