Why contempt needs to be met with contempt

It is clear Te Pati Maori holds Parliament in contempt. I don’t just mean in the technical sense of breaching the rules of the House, but in the more general sense of behaving with contempt.

To publish the draft Privileges Committee report on the actions of three of their MPs on their social media feed is a provocation that should result in consequences.

Radio NZ reported:

Te Pāti Māori has apologised for posting a draft report from the privileges committee on Instagram, which breaches the rules of privilege.

It comes ahead of the committees meeting tonight to discuss complaints against three of the party’s MPs who conducted a haka in the House in November.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the Instagram post was a mistake made “internally”, and the party was reviewing it.

“We were aware that an Instagram put up last night created a little bit of tension for the chair of the Privileges Committee.”

She said no MP, including the co-leaders, were responsible for that.

This is just mendacious bullshit. There is no way a staffer would publish a confidential privileged draft report from the Privileges Committee, without authorisation from an MP and/or the leadership. In fact no staff should even have had access to the report.

Te Pati Maori think the rules don’t apply to them. No matter what decision the Privileges Committee makes, they will claim it is racist and unfair.

The only thing that will result in a change of attitude, is serious consequences. They should not be rewarded for treating this as a giant joke and PR exercise.

I have no idea what the Privileges Committee has or will decide, but I hope it along the lines of a 28 day suspension for the three MPs involved.