The Act New Zealand leader, who could not leave well enough alone, brought a Bill to the House which he knew was unresolvably contentious.
A proposed law change which, as 40 of the country’s most distinguished lawyers pointed out on Wednesday in a letter to him, aims to upset well settled law in a manner which has profound constitutional ramifications.
National’s senior MPs, many of whom were absent from the House, should have exerted leadership long before yesterday.
This Bill should never have been allowed to be a bottom line in coalition negotiations, and no matter how daintily National’s speakers danced on the head of a pin their words could not disguise the fact that they knew voting for it at first reading and against subsequently is farcical and a waste of Parliament’s time and taxpayer’s money.
New Zealand First is complicit in this charade as well, although at least its speaker, Casey Costello, had the somewhat solid footing of New Zealand First’s long standing opposition to Treaty principles to ground her speech on.
Labour had arguments to make against the Bill, but its vociferous barracking did it no favours, nor did senior MP Willie Jackson being ejected for refusing to back down after calling Mr Seymour a liar.
The spirited and passionate speech of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel was diminished by her colleagues’ actions.
The Green Party, too, made a strong contribution courtesy of co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, but it too was tarnished by association with the disruption in the House.
But by far the most egregious behaviour, conduct from which it will not resile one jot, came from Te Pati Maori.
The contempt which Te Pati Maori has for the House is grounded in generational grievances, and its leadership regularly speaks of establishing its own system of exerting mana motuhake. It is entirely entitled to have those views and to express them forcefully, as co-leader Rawiri Waititi did in his strident speech yesterday.
But they have been elected to a House of Representatives, a dignified place which, as several speakers pointed out yesterday, is in its modern demographic a living demonstration of the partnership which te Tiriti has come to mean.
The pre-planned stunt to disrupt voting on the Bill was unwelcome but probably understandable in the highly charged circumstances.
However, the actions of haka instigator Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and her party’s co-leaders to cross the House and confront Mr Seymour went entirely too far.
Challenge him with your words by all means, but such physical intimidation is plain bullying and does nothing for the Te Pati Maori argument, no matter how valid it might seem.
Te Pati Maori expresses an important viewpoint in our Parliament and makes it a more representative place.
It now faces sanction which will likely remove several of its voices from the House for some length of time, and debate will be the poorer for it.
But the offender at first instance remains Act New Zealand.
While there is some validity to its argument that Parliament, as a sovereign institution, did not draft the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand is a common law country and the common law has come up with language and concepts which the majority have accepted and lived with and by.
Even allowing for the fact that a Bill can be amended before becoming law, rewriting those principals arbitrarily was only ever going to be inflammatory.
Another means, possibly a parliamentary inquiry on the subject, would have allowed the conversation Mr Seymour wanted and been a more measured approach to have taken.
But at this point in time all the conversation amounts to is a lot of indecorous shouting which will achieve absolutely nothing.
