Faith, family values high on United's list

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The candidates who would follow Peter Dunne into Parliament off the United Future party list have a strong Christian streak, adherence to moral values and are all married with children.

The top of the list is dominated by members of the Christian-based Future New Zealand, which went into a coalition with Mr Dunne's United Party in November 2000.

Gone are names from the Ethnic Minority Party, which joined forces with United and featured strongly on the United Party list in 1999.

If yesterday's Herald-DigiPoll survey result of 6.6 per cent support translates into votes on Saturday, United Future would get eight MPs, but Mr Dunne would be the sole one from the old United Party alone.

Four of the potential MPs are members of Future New Zealand and the other three have joint membership.

Mr Dunne, who left Labour in 1994 and moved to the right, is pitching his party as a middle-of-the-road one that could work constructively with Labour.

The United Future manifesto puts family issues at the heart of every policy and would push for a commission for the family.

The motto, Families First, can be traced back to former National MP Graeme Lee, who formed the Christian Democrats Party in 1995. It went on to become Future New Zealand after a disastrous coalition arrangement with Graham Capill's Christian Heritage Party at the 1996 election.

In an opinion piece in the Herald in 1995, Mr Lee explained that the motto Families First meant the traditional family unit.

He attacked the "growing numbers of women who feel they have to work, rising divorce rates and the coalition of radical feminists and leftists who have apparently declared war on the family, and the lack of recognition of the value of the mother at home".

United Future deputy leader Anthony Walton yesterday reiterated that message by saying the party opposed Labour's Property (Relationships) Act, which gives couples in de facto relationships rights equal to those of married couples.

"Most of society doesn't want the word husband and wife removed because of somebody's ideology. It [the family] is an institution that we can maintain and people want. Why knock it out almost completely for some other new concoction that is totally unnecessary," he said.

"We can have a separate piece of legislation for de facto, gay and whatever other relationships that exist."

Mr Walton said United Future was committed to tightening the abortion laws but would not make that a condition in any talks on entering a coalition government.

At least half of the top eight Future NZ candidates have strong religious ties.

Gordon Copeland, number two on the list and a member of Future New Zealand, is the financial administrator of the Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington.

Two years ago, he convened Celebrate Jesus 2000, which attracted 27,000 Christians from all denominations to the WestpacTrust stadium in Wellington.

Bernie Ogilvy, number three on the list, is a director of Worldview Studies, a religious school that teaches God, self, morality, truth and the afterlife in Auckland's Bible belt suburb of Mt Roskill.

Judy Turner, at number eight on the list, hosts a weekly radio programme on behalf of local churches in Whakatane as well as doing pastoral work for a local church.

Mrs Turner, who stood for the Christian Coalition in 1996 and Future New Zealand in 1999, said United Future was not a Christian party but a political party with some very strong Christian interests.

"We all believe the policies we are believing in are good for New Zealand, not just Christian New Zealand."

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