Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government isn't trying to silence the Māori Party

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Well, that ended up being a fizzer, didn't it?

I mean, wow, here we were. We were expecting this big debate over the Māori Party punishments to drag on for days, if not weeks, and overshadow the Budget - and the blinking thing didn't even last an hour. It got postponed to next month.

What happened was, in retrospect, very simple and very obvious, just a move from the Government.

It came to the Government's turn to talk about it - and up pops Chris Bishop, Leader of the House. He says - hey, I move it gets postponed, and guess what, it gets postponed because the Government has the majority in the House, so they simply voted for that, and there we go, clear air for the Budget.

Most relieved, I would say, would be the Government, because it means that they do get clear air for the Budget on Thursday.

Most bummed out, I would imagine, would be the Māori Party - who'd even gone to the effort of organizing a protest on the full court of Parliament.

So basically, what's happened is we put this thing to bed for a few weeks because of a checkmate move from Chris Bishop.

But while we've got this pause, can I just make an observation?

It's quite remarkable how quickly this has gone from being a thing about the deliberate flouting of rules consistently by a party doing it as part of a PR strategy to being a thing about the National-led Government using parliamentary process to banish MPs they don't like, thereby turning us into a "banana republic".

This is the kind of reportage that I'm reading at the moment. Suspending the Māori Party MPs threatens democracy.

It is a drastic step that looks, on the face of it, undemocratic. Those are two different articles, by the way - it seems to be a theme that's emerging.

But hang on a minute here, because it's going to take a lot to convince me that this is the case of a heavy-handed Government silencing innocent dissent - because I haven't forgotten how we got here.

I haven't forgotten that the Māori Party planned to disrupt Parliament that day. They planned to disrupt it - and then they carried out that plan.

I haven't forgotten that Debbie Ngarewa-Packer pointed her fingers in the shape of a gun at another MP and that the Māori Party refused to turn up to the Privileges Committee when they were asked to - and when they were supposed to.

I haven't forgotten that that the Māori Party refused to apologize and accept they've done anything wrong and that the Māori Party then leaked the recommendations of the Privileges Committee, which is against the rules, and that the Māori Party co-leaders have said that they will do this again - most likely with the Regulatory Standards bill.

I haven't forgotten any of that stuff. And it's remarkable to me how quickly people want to turn this into a bad Government story instead of a bad opposition story.

And it's also remarkable to me how quickly people have forgotten what this party did to end up here today.

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