New Zealand’s parliament was briefly suspended on Thursday after Maori members staged a haka to disrupt the vote on a contentious bill that would reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty between the British and Indigenous Maori.

New Zealand's parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka, amid anger over a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country's founding treaty with Māori people.

Hundreds of people on Monday set out on a nine-day march to New Zealand's capital of Wellington in protest over legislation that would reinterpret a treaty at the heart of race relations in the Pacific country.