Williamson Maurice: Civil Union Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Civil Union Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17478] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call in this debate because out of most of the members in this House I am probably the only one who has normally always been on the very liberal side of any of the moral issues. However on this one there will be those who think that I am on the wrong side and I feel it is worth having a little bit of a canvass of why I am where I am. 
My view is that the State has very few roles in the lives of individuals and that people should be able to make their own decisions about what they wish for in a relationship. If they are very strongly Christian they will have their Christian faith—and I was brought up as a very strict Catholic to believe this—and they should believe that their faith whatever it is teaches how they will recognise their relationships. 
But I also understand that a huge number of people in this country are of other faiths a huge number do not have any faith and a huge number are either atheist agnostic or whatever. My view is simply that it is better to leave individuals to make their own choices about how they negotiate a relationship. 
I come from a background of having lived in a de facto relationship with the same lady for many many years. We were then married—I have to say in a very ordinary service at a registry office one day—and we went back to work for the afternoon working for Air New Zealand. But marriage made no difference to that relationship. 
Therefore I say to people that if they are interested in making a commitment they can actually do that through a whole lot of the institutions that exist now. They can negotiate property settlement— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Unless you are gay. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it has nothing to do with one’s sexuality. If one wants to one can go to a lawyer to get a property agreement. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes one can. I can tell members that with the family trust my family is involved in now not one of the questions we filled out when we did it all had anything to do with my sexuality. The questions asked what I wanted to do with my property how I wanted to share it who I wanted to recognise and to whom I would give power of attorney in case of my death who I wanted to recognise my body and so on—and those questions could be for anybody. 
I fear that somehow this legislation is a way of coming back and saying that we want to give politicians in Parliament some enormous power over how people live their everyday lives. I want to make it clear that I fully respect a very strongly held Christian set of values whereby people believe intensely in God and in what they believe and whereby they want to marry in a church and have the church recognise their relationship. But I also respect those who say that they do not believe in that that they do not regard that and that they want to do their own thing. 
But none of that requires this bill. Because a person loves someone and wants to stay with that someone for the rest of his or her life and because that person wants to share his or her property with that someone none of that requires Parliament. It simply does not. One of the most bizarre situations I have ever dealt with in my life is that most of the married couples my wife and I have known over the years have fought like Kilkenny cats. They have ended up separating hating each other’s guts taking law suits out against each other and fighting like stink over the property. If that is how marriage is supposed to be a great institution it has me worried—because it is not. 
 Of course it comes down to personalities and it comes down to individuals. I would like to leave it to people to make their own choices. I feel grossly uncomfortable actually on either side of this debate. I do not like Parliament debating this at all. I would rather say to people that if they want to go along to their church and speak to their priest their rabbi their mullah or whoever and say that they have decided they want to do this and in the eyes of Allah God or Baha’u’llah if they are Baha’i that they want some recognition for what they do then I say good on them. I will support them. I do not believe what they believe but I say good on them. 
But what really worries me is that there is a distinct impression in this Parliament that every individual is trying to enforce his or her view: “I believe in this so now the rest of you should follow.” One of the worries about this legislation is that there is a group of people out there who are somehow supposed to be homophobic. Let me declare right now absolutely upfront that I do not have a homophobic bone in my body. I fully support the right of gay couples to have a full and loving relationship. I cannot understand why that is the subject of the debate.