File photo. Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle in the House. Photo: VNP/Phil Smith
Green MP Benjamin Doyle will not be returning to Parliament this week - following death threats and accusations of inapropriate language on a private social media account.
Parliamentary Services is working with the MP, and the Green Party, around the received threats, and those are being escalated to police where necessary.
The Greens are demanding the prime minister step in over Winston Peters' statements, saying there had been an "immense" numbers of death threats against Green MP Benjamin Doyle.
Peters in a social media post on Saturday said the media needed to start asking serious questions about one of Doyle's social media accounts, "BibleBeltBussy - what the name really means and the posts - some of which have apparently been deleted".
Peters said there were questions to be asked about Doyle's use of "the word Bussy" and "Bussy Galore" and other content.
"If it were any MP from a government party the media would've already headlined it. The silence from the Green Party leadership amongst the swirling allegations and innuendo online is deafening," Peters wrote.
The term "bussy" is used by members of rainbow communities and refers to a man's anus.
Doyle had posted a series of messages and images on the private account before they were an MP, including an image of their child.
Speaking to reporters at Parliament, Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the term bussy had been co-opted by rainbow communities for use "oftentimes with irreverence and absurdity".
"We have a member of parliament that has been subjected to immense abuse and real-world death threats which have also incorporated their child and their whānau," she said.
As a member of the queer community herself, she said the "oversimplified way that things are being represented right now in the twittersphere is just not the way that we navigate the world with irreverence and absurdity".
"[Doyle] used it in a flippant way, in the way in which many of us would use memes when engaging with our friends. That's it," she said. "You would use it in a way that you would share a meme with a friend."
She said Doyle's social media account had been private since before they became an MP.
Asked about the deletions of some of the posts, Swarbrick said it was a private account, and "when somebody sees that things on their private account are being leaked including mis and disinformation relating to their child, I think it's pretty normal for somebody to respond in such a way, to try and shut that down".
"As far as I am aware this was Benjamin's response to feeling that their child was in immediate danger."
Winston Peters. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
Co-leader Marama Davidson said she wanted to address Peters' comments and the harm it was causing.
"We are calling on the prime minister to take responsibility for the behaviour of his coalition colleague," she said.
"This isn't the standard politicking by the deputy prime minister. This isn't a game of who's winning this round of clickbait."
Peters refused to answer questions about his posts about Doyle in a media conference about specifications for the new Interislander ferries, but addressed the matter separately later in the day.
"How could I be possible spreading disinformation? It's his post, not mine," Peters said.
Doyle uses the pronouns they/them.
Peters said he was just asking questions, including of the mainstream media.
"I'm asking of the mainstream media why don't you do your job when it comes to some MPs and spend your time trying to besiege other MPs who in this case, in my case, were utterly innocent," he said.
He said he took no responsibility for the death threats because "the Green Party came to our office well after the threats had been given to tell us that this had been happening".
"We had already posted by that time at 9 o'clock in the morning. So for 24 and more hours before that, that was happening. We are not responsible therefore, on the chronological grounds that I've just given to you," he said.
Peters was not concerned his actions may have added to the problem.
"That was going on long before I ever said anything, all I did was get the information and say 'hang on, this is alarming, I want some answers," he said.
Swarbrick said she had sent a text message to Christopher Luxon on Saturday morning asking to speak with him about the matter and her concerns about the death threats. Luxon had passed the message on to National's chief of staff, who then had a conversation with the Greens' chief of staff about the harm it was leading to.
"I again have reached out to the prime minister directly via the phone this morning and have not heard back."
She said Doyle would not be present at Parliament this week.
"There are real-world threats that we are having to grapple with and we are working with Parliamentary security on what it looks like to keep them and their child, their whānau, safe ... we will continue to reach across the aisle and operate in good faith here, I don't think that it is in anybody's interests that this conspiratorial story continues to get legs."
Questioned about the matter at his weekly post-Cabinet media briefing, the prime minister said he thought Doyle's use of language in their social media posts had been "really inappropriate".
"The reality of political life, our social media language is scrutinised by the media, it's also scrutinised by fellow politicians and also the public. And ultimately that's a case for the Greens' leadership to deal with," he said.
"If that was one of my MPs I think you would rightfully be scrutinising me about what I'm doing about that social media language being used, I think those are questions for the Green Party and the leadership to answer for."
He said any threats of violence, death threats or otherwise, were "totally unacceptable on MPs or frankly any New Zealander"
Asked if he supported the actions of Peters - who had acknowledged he already knew of death threats against Doyle before he posted about the matter on social media - Luxon said the "only people who should be accountable for death threats are those that make those death threats".
"If there's an issue there, then the police need to be very much involved."
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