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Liam Hehir needs to relearn his civics

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 22nd, 2025 - 17 comments
Categories: act, chris hipkins, crown, military, national/act government, Parliament, Politics, te pāti māori - Tags: , ,

Generally I like reading Liam Hehir over at the The Blue Review. He is usually interesting despite being a conservative religious lawyer. However sometimes he goes completely off track in his innate and unthinking deference to authority. The other day he asserted that “Of All the Principles of Democracy, This Is the Bedrock: Parliament Must Rule Itself”. Complete bullshit.

Of course parliament must control itself. But rule itself – no! The voters and the crown rule the limits of what Parliament can and cannot do. What parliament does is to limit the inherent stupidity of some of its members. Right now that doesn’t appear to be Te Pāti Māori MPs so much as some really stupid government MPs trying to change the role of the privileges committee into a punitive and unrestrained court.

The crown part of this was established in Bill of Rights 1688 Act about the respective roles of the monarchy, their roles of assent and control of the crown institutions like the armed forces. This fundamentally hasn’t changed since 1688. Just stretched, varied and enhanced into the modern systems and spawned off offspring to places like New Zealand.

The part played by voters has increased substantially with the expansion of the role of the lower house and its voting base plus the slow sidelining of an upper house. New Zealand abolished our Legislative Council in 1950.

This Bill of Rights Act of 1688 Act formed after a tumultuous period of British history that included several civil wars between 1642-1651, a parliamentary based republican dictatorship, and crown restoration in 1660. At the end everyone in Britain in the period was aware of deficiencies of both a crown that wished to be unrestrained and a parliament that wished to be unrestrained. Neither crown nor parliament nor the citizens caught in the struggle liked the eventual consequences of unrestrained stupidity, and formed a compromise. The Bill of Rights Act was enacted as part of the accession of William and Mary of Orange as monarchs in 1688.

This act is is still the core of our parliament system today, albeit modified by subsequent acts. For instance the protestant zealotry for instance has been somewhat abbreviated in the meantime. We lost the second house of parliament. Fortunately we also lost the 1688 oath of supremacy as well as relic of the wars of religious persecution.

Liam Hehir’s rant seems to try to say that parliament should not be criticised by voters and commentators on its performance.

Which is complete horse-dung, both in its excessive and unnecessary use of urgency or the excesses of the privileges committee or even in the ridiculous bypassing of the checks of regulatory statements and select committee processes. In the end, as citizens we owe no allegiance to Parliament nor its members. We swear our oaths and affirmations to the monarchy, and parliament is our servant. What we do is observe and comment on any foolish mistakes that they make, and the occasional and often rare evidence of group wisdom.

The reason that parliament have rules is not to provide a legalistic framework to persecute their members. It is because they need to retain the respect of the voters and for that matter the permanent crown entities to respect our representatives. It is desirable for all members that they retain a modicum of that respect because otherwise they will either be ignored or turfed out

Which makes Liam Hehir’s limited viewpoint, as expressed below, pretty irrelevant. Not to mention that all of his selected examples of self-administering assemblies. ‘Iroquois’ Great Council and the Asanteman council were non elected mainly aristocratic or warlord style chiefs, and not based at all on citizens voting for and against the records of the performance of their representatives on those councils. Which is why his statements read like a eulogy to the duties of aristocratic responsibilities or Greek/Roman citizens living off slavery.

Wherever people elect representatives to govern, those representatives must be able to regulate themselves. Without that power, the assembly is hollow. No legislature can be truly representative if its members are not subject to the same rules and bound to one another by common discipline—from within, not without.

Why is this? Francisco Suárez, a leading figure in classical natural law theory, argued that a legitimate political community must possess the internal authority to govern its own members and procedures. Institutional supremacy is not merely about external independence, but internal unity—and that unity can only be preserved by the institution’s own capacity to regulate its affairs and make and enforce its own rules.

In his view, a legislative body that cannot protect its deliberative processes from external interference or compel accountability from within is already collapsing into illegitimacy.

Actually who really gives a flying fuck about how parliament or its members choose to operate themselves? Our sacrificial representatives role is to work a viable legislative and fiscal position for our current and future society – or else they won’t like the consequences. If they look like they are incompetent, they will be sacrificed in the next election. Modern representative parliaments have a robust feedback mechanism – secret ballots determining the representatives future career prospects.

Similarly a lack of confidence by crown institutions in the directions of their ministers will result in those institutions hunkering down and waiting it out for an election – after all ministers and MPs actually don’t do the work of the state, they just try to steer it from the end of a very long tiller.

The most determined assault on parliamentary privilege in recent years has come from Te Pāti Māori. Since regaining representation in 2020, the party has repeatedly denied the authority of the House to govern its own members. Sometimes the transgressions have been so minor as not to really bother with (protesting neckties), and other times they have been more serious (disrupting parliamentary business). Most recently, as we all know, three MPs refused to appear individually before the Privileges Committee following some pretty shocking behaviour, asserting that only tikanga experts had jurisdiction to assess their conduct.

Of course, that is speaking at the level of stupidity that only a died in the wool authoritarian conformist conservative could write with a straight face.

Those actions of Te Pāti Māori MPs are all well within the bounds of any MP to do so if they wish to. They may suffer some consequences, but that is part of the cost of how you induce social change. Few groups of voters apart from women, 19th century Chinese miners, and possibly the Irish migrants prior to about 1930 have anything approaching the motivations that drive the voters that power Te Pāti Māori’s representation.

In the time that my family has been in New Zealand settling mostly from the 1820s to 1880s, Parliament and disease have been the main mechanisms that has been used to used to divest Māori of their assets and population. Only a dimwitted conservative or a relatively recent immigrant, ignorant of our countries history, could possibly imply that any Māori should pay slavish respect for parliamentary conventions. It is hard to differentiate between the effects of smallpox, measles, and other European migrants and the New Zealand Parliaments actions.

But more importantly, we don’t elect MPs to conform. We mostly elect them to represent, usually to induce change in the status quo. It doesn’t matter is this change is the neo-liberal ideologues and racists of the Act party, or if it is progressives and unionists or the nostalgia of the conservatives for a world the never really existed outside of their dreams. There is a need to push regardless of how it upsets or offends others. That is what happens in a house of representatives because we elect them to refit our legislative and economic frameworks with a ever changing world and local population.

The trick is to do it relatively moderately. Usually societal or parliamentary change only occurs after there is a offensive reactive over-reach by those upset by the idea of change that they dislike. Over-reach tends to offend voting groups. Which explains the both the conservative reaction against Te Pāti Māori actions, the actions against Act’s selection of racist bills or the retrospective trashing of long and hard fought pay parity claims using urgency for a quick short-term budget fix.

Also the over-reach like the Act Party appears to have caused in the privileges committee with their recommendation for an excessive and unwarranted penalty that is far outside the bounds of parliamentary convention or standing orders. An over-reach that cravenly dragged the other government members to a foolish majority vote without a concordance across the opposition MPs. For some obscure reason, the massive extent of that over-reach was the one thing that Liam Hehir failed to address at all in his rant. Perhaps he’d failed to realise its extent.

Fortunately Chris Hipkins was quite voluble and accurate in parliament in explaining that over-reach clearly. He explained what happened, what should have happened, and exactly why. It was a particularly good explanation.

There is no requirement for MPs to follow the procedures of the privileges committee. There are few powers of coercion like arrest in Parliament, and those are exercised by the Speaker. An arbitrary committee of the house cannot compel members to testify or nor to specify how they should testify. Which appears to have been the intent of Judith Collins and the government members on the privileges committee. The privileges committee role is not one of a court, especially not a inquisitional court. It has a role of investigation and recommendation. It has no role in attempted coercion of MPs nor making a recommendation that looks like it was based entirely on the spite in not getting the obeisance that they expected and desired.

But this is the reality throughout our society when it comes to protest and political actions. There are few differences between a citizen who happens to be a member of parliament and any other citizen.

Like the MPs for Te Pāti Māori, I often assert a right to protest or mock just about anything that I find stupid and in need of a change. The extent of my actions may be within and beyond the expected or legal limits when I choose to do so. Of course I sometimes wind up with consequences. I’m aware of those and I factor them into my decisions, mostly when considering how to defend against over-reach by my opposition. That is my choice. But generally I have eventually seen societal change coming directly or indirectly from my actions and those of others over decades – which is why I do them.

But to choose to try to deny the choice of achieving this for the simpleton reasons that Liam Hehir is trying to push makes me wonder just how poor his comprehension of our country, its citizens and its fluid constitution is. Parliament is just a convenient institution only as sovereign as its citizens allow it to be. Parliaments don’t command loyalty. If we don’t like one parliament we can always put in a different one, and regularly do so.

Like anyone else in New Zealand, members of parliament do not swear an oath or affirmation to Parliament. They make an oath or affirmation to the monarchy of New Zealand in the presence of the monarch or governor general or their designated representative.

The only oath or affirmations that I have ever taken were been the same. The main one was a affirmation on joining the NZ Army in 1977. That was similar to MPs requirements. The current one is still a military requirement and much the same as I remember it in 1977. Both are of the same from as the oath of allegiance in the 1688 act.

1977 was the era of Smiths Dream/Sleeping Dogs, the Muldoon government’s quite arbitrary governance and gerrymandered electoral system. To me, I felt responsibility to make sure that our common society was kept safe from threats from external enemies and parliament. Joining the army and getting the training required to do either was a step in that direction. But even at age 18, I made damn sure that I wasn’t swearing allegiance to parliament. I was also quite aware of possible consequences while I was in the armed forces and in the reserves after I left. But that was my choice, just as those potential consequences in protesting are. Or operating this political site are.

Monarchical with a representative parliament is a quite useful device for a growing and developing societies stability. It just looks like a messy and poor solution to governance, right up until you look closely at the alternatives and their fundamental short half-live instabilities. Parliaments and states sometimes go quite out of control, and need to be restrained or stabilised by responsible citizens. By voting. If required by protest. At the very worst by kicking some overbearing fools in parliament with delusions of grandeur out by force.

There is a reason why institutions like the defence forces, civil defence, police, the judiciary, security and intelligence services, customs, inland revenue, and others are not directly operated by parliament, their control is fiscal and legislative.They have an allegiance to the monarchy. In effect such crown institutions are semi-autonomous and are subject to oversight and relatively limited control by ministers of the crown, who just usually happen to be members of parliament.

Basically I thoroughly approve of the Te Pāti Māori MP protest. It was an appropriate and well timed response to an obnoxious bill. Sure, they need their hands smacked for disrupting the house. But it should be in line with the norms for the house. Probably a day or so, following the usual norms for the house.

But the blatant over-reaction by an isolated government majority being pushed by the apparent bigotry by Act in the privileges committee smacking down uppity Māori MPs was exactly the response that should not have been used by the government MPs in that privileges committee. The house needs to curb that kind of government authoritarian shit, and do it hard. I suspect that we will see that in the debate about the privileges committee on June 5th, and probably in the next election.

17 comments on “Liam Hehir needs to relearn his civics ”

  1. JT 1
    22 May 2025 at 10:18 am

    The writer makes some good points regarding Liam Hehir's rather abstruse article. However labelling it a rant is an unnecessary overstatement. Further the viewpoint expressed is compromised by the use of expletives and scatological language that only serves to detract from the undoubtedly serious intent of the narrative. That serves only to turn that article into a rant.

    [lprent: We have a section in the about specifically for up-tight Mrs Grundy wannabe censors like you.

    No – you must….
    Have you read this page? We must do nothing. The posters post on the topics they want to (with a few limitations from the sysop). If you really absolutely want your ideas to be heard, then start a blog and start learning to write. You can probably find a more compatible blog on our blogroll. Or you can comment on the posts that our posters write and follow our rather lenient rules.

    How I choose to phrase a post and the style that I use is completely up to the author of the post. Subject only to the legal considerations and the editors and system operator (myself for the latter).

    I also encourage that you read the Policy about comments here, especially the section in Banning about self-martyrdom offences. I prefer new commenters are pre-warned about obvious stupidity and probable fate. ]

    Reply
    • Incognito 1.1
      22 May 2025 at 10:53 am

      So, your comment is a meta-rant. Got it.

      Does JT stand for Jolly Troll?

      Reply
    • Res Publica 1.2
      22 May 2025 at 11:38 am

      And that, with respect, is exactly the kind of performative pearl-clutching this post was calling out. The preference for the fantasy of enforced "civility" over the reality of meaningful debate.

      I'm sorry if your sensibilities were bruised by encountering a swear word online, but in a free society, strong language is sometimes the most honest way to describe strong ideas.

      Especially when the alternative is cloaking nonsense in polite euphemism.

      So yes. I think this is a truly dogshit take, crafted by a narrow constitutional fetishist who hopes that citing enough Victorian jurists and irrelevant historical analogies will obscure the fact that he’s defending the indefensible.

      Reply
      • Drowsy M. Kram 1.2.1
        22 May 2025 at 4:43 pm

        And that, with respect, is exactly the kind of performative pearl-clutching this post was calling out.

        I tawt I taw con-artist Collins clutching her pearls, but it was an artist's impression.

        Reply
  2. Bearded Git 2
    22 May 2025 at 11:04 am

    Hehir showing his true colours.

    If TPM have really over-stepped with their behaviour the electorate will let them know. My guess is that they will sweep all of the Maori seats.

    I hope Maori voters realise that they should tactically use their party vote for the Greens or Labour rather than TPM. That way there is a much better chance of a left leaning (pro Maori) coalition winning in 2026, with several overhang Maori seats.

    p.s. any chance this site could adopt NZ English spelling? Not a biggie.

    Reply
    • lprent 2.1
      22 May 2025 at 12:50 pm

      In the comment editor? Or in the post?

      I'm been trying to find time to fix the comments editor (it has focus problems on Safari). When I gte a big enough block of time to do that, I'll see if a more modern ckeditor and/or tinyMCE has a dictionary choice.

      I'm pretty sure that site-language is set up as en-NZ (Yes it is), I know that the server is.

      Reply
      • Bearded Git 2.1.1
        22 May 2025 at 1:30 pm

        Don't waste any time on it lprent. I love the site-you have better things to do.

        But when you type for instance behaviour or colour or valour you get the red wrong spelling lines under each word…which is what I am seeing right now.

        Reply
        • lprent 2.1.1.1
          22 May 2025 at 2:31 pm

          Comment editor dictionary.

          The comment editor fix is something that weka has been awaiting for. So when I do it, I'll remember that I need to make sure to avoid using a en-US dictionary

          Reply
  3. Res Publica 3
    22 May 2025 at 11:09 am

    Liam Hehir’s defence of parliamentary privilege reflects a familiar strain of procedural fetishism. His belief that fidelity to inherited form is synonymous with democratic legitimacy.

    But this view prioritises the theatre of decorum over the substance of accountability. It confuses the performance of order with the reality of representation.

    His argument rests on a tautology: that Parliament must govern itself because it governs. But Parliament’s authority is not self-justifying. It never has been, no matter how many stuffy Victorian jurists he quotes,

    It is contingent, always, on the consent of the people. That consent cannot be assumed through ritual. It must be constantly renewed through responsiveness, inclusion, and legitimacy.

    To treat parliamentary privilege as sacrosanct, as immune from reinterpretation or challenge, is to misunderstand its historical role.

    Privilege was never about protecting Parliament from critique; it was about protecting deliberation from monarchical interference.

    n Aotearoa today, where sovereignty is shaped by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the enduring presence of tikanga Māori, the question is not whether privilege should exist, but whose voice it protects, and on what terms.

    Hehir’s response to Te Pāti Māori’s protest treats disruption as betrayal, rather than democratic expression. But democracy has always been messy, particularly when justice requires institutions to reckon with histories and values beyond their founding assumptions.

    Even a conservative Catholic, as Hehir is, should recognise the dangers of mistaking form for substance. And of defending the letter of law at the expense of its spirit. The Church itself learned, often too late, the cost of refusing to evolve when moral authority demanded it.

    Ultimately, parliamentary privilege is not a relic to be venerated. It is a tool. Its legitimacy depends on whether it serves all peoples in a representative democracy — not just those whose worldview fits comfortably within the architecture of Westminster.

    The social contract, after all, is not written in stone or handed down to us from upon high. It is written in the shared values and evolving norms of the people it claims to govern. And as such, is being rewritten constantly.

    Reply
    • lprent 3.1
      22 May 2025 at 12:52 pm

      Hehir’s response to Te Pāti Māori’s protest treats disruption as betrayal, rather than democratic expression. But democracy has always been messy, particularly when justice requires institutions to reckon with histories and values beyond their founding assumptions.

      That is a much more elegant way of expressing what the gist of my argument was.

      Reply
  4. ianmac 4
    22 May 2025 at 12:45 pm

    Well said. I especially liked the summary of the role of the Privileges Committee. Says it all.

    The privileges committee role is not one of a court, especially not a inquisitional court. It has a role of investigation and recommendation. It has no role in attempted coercion of MPs nor making a recommendation that looks like it was based entirely on the spite in not getting the obeisance that they expected and desired.

    Reply
  5. SPC 5
    22 May 2025 at 1:20 pm

    Parliament governs the realm for the Crown and yet it is enabled to do so via a Treaty between Crown and Maori.

    And it, parliament, chose to govern in the interests of settlers (those male property owners allowed to vote in its representatives). And they chose to ignore the Treaty and to conquer the self-governing (chieftainship) Maori land areas that dissented.

    Then sought to hand a token representation to Maori as a people assimilated by conquest.

    Parliamentary privilege, all hail parliament.

    As Oliver Cromwell did not say, parliament is a rump and if it bares itself harpoon that leviathon whale and make it think again – but then he held sovereign immunity at the time.

    Reply
    • Res Publica 5.1
      22 May 2025 at 2:02 pm

      That's really the nub of the issue.

      Traditional Westminster understandings of parliamentary sovereignty tend to treat the authority of Parliament as axiomatic: its power presumed rather than justified. They often sidestep the deeper question of how and why Parliament came to possess these powers in the first place.

      But in Aotearoa that presumption collides with the reality of a constitutional foundation built not solely on British legal traditions, but also on Te Tiriti o Waitangi: a treaty that affirms to everyone but David Seymour, the existence of a co-sovereign partner.

      Increasingly, Māori are asserting that co-sovereignty not as a historical artefact, but as a living, evolving claim to legitimacy that must be engaged with on equal footing. How that interacts and overlaps with Parliament's claim to absolute sovereignty is a tricky but still very live question.

      Suus cuique mos

      Reply
  6. Ed1 6
    23 May 2025 at 3:04 pm

    Thanks to LPRENT for this post – I particularly agree with "Basically I thoroughly approve of the Te Pāti Māori MP protest. It was an appropriate and well timed response to an obnoxious bill. Sure, they need their hands smacked for disrupting the house. But it should be in line with the norms for the house. Probably a day or so, following the usual norms for the house."

    The plan do cut pay is I believe particularly egregious – that is getting towards a committee that should be concerned about procedures the authority of prosecutor and judge, without relevant authority – no crime was committed.

    From another forum (nz.general): "I doubt that there are many New Zealanders, and certainly not many
    Members of Parliament, who are not familiar with a haka and the
    symbolism of it; the use by TMP would have been understood as
    symbolising the views of that small group of Members of Parliament.
    The lies that it prevented voting and that it included a threat of a
    gunshot are laughable, as video evidence shows. It was an effective
    protest which will have been welcomed by those that support Te Maori
    Pati – the reaction to it will have alienated the National, ACT and
    even NZ First from many who may otherwise have had some sympathies for
    those parties – it was a ceremonial dance that sent a challenge and a
    display of cultural pride, and certainly not a physical threat or
    intimidation. Most karakea in parliament are welcomed; parliament
    needs to be prepared to accept differences in cultural expression – it
    is part of free speech. Clearly a bit of time is needed for some MPs
    to recognise that we are a New Zealand Parliament, not a British
    parliament, and that our parliament needs to accept that our different
    cultural mix does need to be recognised – certainly for Maori to be
    consistent with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but also other racial and social
    groups that now form a significant part of our New Zealand culture."

    Reply
  7. Mountain Tui 7
    30 May 2025 at 2:18 pm

    What a blazingly good piece – may I reproduce it anywhere, lprent?

    Reply

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