The Lie of the Sanctity of Parliament

A response to the attack on Māori culture in Parliament.

By Dr Harpreet Singh | drhsinghnz.substack.com | FB: @DrHSinghNZ

Author’s note: This article is written as a speech in response to the recent attacks on Māori culture within Parliament and the targeting of Oriini Kaipara by politicians such as Shane Jones. These events are not isolated. They are part of a long and deliberate pattern of colonial violence. The idea that the old Westminster system is sacred is a lie. That chamber has never been a place of protection for Māori. It has been a site of destruction, where laws were passed to steal land, suppress language, and erase identity. We must not be blind to this history. We must not forget the harm that was inflicted from within those walls. To forget is to allow it to happen again. To remember is to resist.

We gather today beneath the shadow of a building that calls itself sacred. Parliament. A place draped in ceremony, guarded by tradition, and spoken of with reverence. But let us strip away the velvet curtain. Let us speak plainly. Parliament is not sacred. It is not neutral. It is not benevolent. It is a weapon.

Since its establishment, Parliament has been the architect of dispossession. It has been the machinery through which Te Tiriti o Waitangi was betrayed. It was Parliament that passed the Native Land Acts, slicing communal whenua into fragments for sale. It was Parliament that sanctioned the raupatu, the confiscation of millions of acres of Māori land under the guise of law. It was Parliament that turned the ink of colonial ambition into the blood of Māori resistance.

Do not mistake legality for justice. The laws passed in that chamber were not divine decrees, they were tools of conquest. Parliament did not protect Māori, it prosecuted them. It did not honour Te Tiriti, it hollowed it out, repurposed it, and used it as a mask for assimilation.

And even now, in the so-called age of reconciliation, Parliament remains a fortress. Māori voices are still marginal, Māori aspirations still diluted, Māori tino rangatiratanga still denied. The sanctity of Parliament is a lie told to silence dissent. It is a myth designed to elevate the institution above critique, above accountability, and above truth.

But we are not here to bow before myths. We are here to speak truth to power. To remind this country that Parliament is not the pinnacle of democracy, it is the site of its greatest betrayals. And until it reckons with its past, until it transforms its foundations, it will remain a monument to colonial violence.

Parliament does not stand above history, it stands on it. Its foundations are laid over scorched earth, over villages razed, over land stolen and promises broken. Every stone of that building rests on the displacement of Māori, on the suppression of their language, their law, their sovereignty. It was never designed to serve Māori, but to dismantle their authority, their systems, their futures. Even today, its foundations remain rooted in that legacy. Until that truth is confronted, Parliament will remain not a house of democracy, but a monument to colonisation. Māori sovereignty does not threaten the nation, it exposes the lie it was built upon.

ਦੇਗ ਤੇਗ਼ ਫ਼ਤਿਹ - Deg Tegh Fateh - Victory to Charity and Justice