Hone stopped off for a surf

Hone Harawira went surfing in Hawaii on his way home from his taxpayer-funded parliamentary trip to Brussels.

In his column in yesterday's Northland Age, the Maori Party MP says he and wife Hilda stopped off in Hawaii "to do some indigenous networking – hanging out with the brownies".

He wrote that he attended a Hawaiian sovereignty hui, where he met academics and speakers from the Hawaiian Kingdom movement. "A few days catchin' the sun and riding the waves, then it was the obligatory mad rush to buy a million T-shirts for the whanau and jump on the big bird home."

When his caucus colleagues asked him about the highlight of his Hawaiian visit, he said it was "combining a musicology assessment with a review of local foreshore and seabed issues" – which he admitted was a concert featuring finalists from American Idol. "An awesome evening – excellent company, great music, soft sands, palm trees, gentle breeze, cool runnins," he wrote. "But there's no place like home."

The column also casts doubt on the sincerity of yesterday's apology. "It seems like my trip to Paris got all the dull, boring, fun-hating, anal-retention types so worked up that I may end up in serious strife with the Speaker of the House."

The Speaker's office said last night that Mr Harawira was entitled to one stopover on a long-haul journey and had applied for Hawaii on the basis that he was attending a conference. That had been approved.

The taxpayer had met the cost of one night's accommodation in Hawaii, but all other expenses would have been met by Mr Harawira.

- © Fairfax NZ News