Copeland Gordon: General Debates 
Copeland Gordon: General Debates 
[Volume:613;Page:9963] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 During last year’s election I found myself on a couple of occasions telling journalists and others that I had developed a deep hatred for the doctrine of political correctness. When I was asked why that was so I replied that political correctness is in reality a form of mind control. We human beings cannot control what people think although God knows over the ages many people have tried to do that. But we can do the next-best thing which is to circumscribe through political correctness exactly what they can or cannot say. I have long been able to see therefore that political correctness is an insidious and a dangerous doctrine. That is instinctive for me because of my belief that freedom of thought and speech is an inalienable human right. I believe that human freedom and democracy flow from free full and rational debate. 
I was personally unaware however until I recently read an article on it that the expression “political correctness” was first used and fashioned by Vladimir Lenin in May 1921. Lenin was obsessed with party ideology orthodoxy and control. That included party mindedness and even party truth. In other words the truth and the only truth was whatever Lenin decided it should be. Chairman Mao of China took political correctness to a wholly different level. He insisted that speech had to follow correct formulations and he had an absolute belief in the power of the word to change the world. If members think I am exaggerating let me give them a direct quote from Chairman Mao: “Not having the correct political orientation is like not having a soul.” We all know the results of that kind of thinking. It reached its peak through Red Guard terror and the great proletariat revolutions which some estimate may have cost as many as 50 million Chinese their lives. 
Let us therefore make no mistake. Political correctness is both a pernicious and fundamentally evil doctrine and one that sadly is alive and well in New Zealand particularly I have noticed—and I say this in a non-judgmental sense—in some parties of the left. We are told for example in the face of distressing figures concerning the growing number of fatherless families and sole parent families in New Zealand that we should rejoice in the diversity of the family. I am sorry but I for one am not prepared to rejoice in the fact that children are growing up in poverty without fathers in the home and in distressing situations simply because I am only too aware of the reality of the suffering that many people in those kinds of situations undergo. Therefore it riles me that I am told that somehow I should ignore reality that I should ignore the concrete circumstances in which human beings live and somehow form a view that that is OK because it represents diversity. I say no it is not OK. 
On this day when the Families Commission Bill is to be reported back I say that all of us should put away political correctness. We should put away a certain blindness to the reality of simple human suffering. We need both as human beings and as MPs to act with compassion for children and in particular for those who are in unfortunate situations. Our compassion should lead us to a further determination to improve the lot of New Zealand families—something that we are expressing today in seeing the Families Commission Bill reported back to this Parliament. We must never let ourselves be intimidated by the label “politically incorrect” from being strong advocates for the rebuilding of family life and strong interpersonal relationships at every level if we are to have a strong New Zealand society. 
I see the family as being akin in a way to the cells of a body. We cannot have a healthy body if many of our cells are sick. We cannot have and will never have in reality a healthy nation if many of the cells in our nation our families are sick and broken. There is a linkage between those two things. We must be prepared to rationally compassionately and realistically face up to the situation we have in this country and begin through this bill to build a better future.