Copeland Gordon: Adjournment 
Copeland Gordon: Adjournment 
[Volume:650;Page:19300] 
GORDON COPELAND (Independent) 
: 
 I too would like to begin by thanking various people particularly my staff member Rebekah Clement—I have just one staff member in Parliament—and also Bernie Ogilvie and Larry Baldock who have worked tirelessly outside of Parliament as part of my very small team as an Independent MP. As an Independent MP I particularly want to give my thanks today as well to the Parliamentary Library. Believe me when one is on his own pretty much that service is absolutely vital and it has been superb. Also I thank the Office of the Clerk which on many occasions has given me advice and assistance as I have adjusted to life as an Independent MP. 
I would like too to extend my very best wishes to the National and Labour MPs who are leaving Parliament today. I was not able to be here for all the valedictory speeches but I do wish those members all the very very best as they leave here now to go on to whatever their future holds for them. I would also like to join others in marking as I have privately the death of Brian Donnelly—that was a real shock to all of us—and to convey my sincere condolences to his colleagues in the New Zealand First Party and of course to his family. 
In particular I thank you Madam Speaker for the many many ways you have assisted me particularly since I have become an Independent MP. I also thank you for the way you have carried out so professionally so well and so impartially your great responsibility as the Speaker of this Parliament. As we have gone into this Parliament the level of noise has increased pretty steadily and you have done a superb job in keeping us on track when we went down many blind alleys at various times. I also thank your supporting team of Clem Simich Ross Robertson and Marian Hobbs. I say thank you very much to them for all of that. I also wish you Madam Speaker the very very best in your future.  
Today of course marks the end of the forty-eighth Parliament and I guess the official beginning of—we can go from de facto to “in facto” as it were—election campaign 2008. History may well identify the passage of the Act criminalising good parents who correct their children as the beginning of the end for the Helen Clark - led Government. That bill was passed—that Act enforced—against the wishes of 80 percent of the people of New Zealand. Editorial after editorial has been written along those lines saying that that was the critical point in the life of Helen Clark’s Government. 
Indeed I remind the House that directly after the 2005 election the Prime Minister said: “We almost lost the election because of social engineering and there will be no more in the next 3 years.” But when a member’s bill in the name of Sue Bradford came along the Government could not help itself. She could not help putting aside electoral logic and every other thing and getting really involved in that. One has only to listen to talkback radio right through this country to find out how many people those actions have upset and how that will result in seeing a very very different outcome in terms of Government following this year’s election. I have no doubt that we will see a change of Government. 
Can members imagine the effort that was required to collect 390000 signatures to force a referendum on this matter? MPs who have been involved from time to time in collecting signatures for a petition feel they have done well if they get 6000 or 7000 signatures. Even on issues like the abolition of the Privy Council as I recall after a huge well-financed and well-organised campaign 70000 signatures were collected on that issue. Members can just imagine the effort that has gone in by so many people to force a referendum on the anti-smacking legislation. It has been a tremendous effort. But because Parliament has chosen to criminalise good parents New Zealanders have flocked to the tables from Whanagrei to Invercargill and from Greymouth to Gisborne in huge numbers. 
They came from every strata of society from Maori and from Pakeha and from every ethnic community in this country. They are Christians Jews Hindus Buddhists Muslims Sikhs and of course in New Zealand today many many deeply committed secularists. But they are all very very passionate about the fact that they wanted that bill to be overturned. They are schoolteachers—schoolteachers signed that petition in huge numbers. They are police officers including those in uniforms. They are High Court judges. They were thousands and thousands of blue-collar workers. They were the elderly and the young. In fact in my office I have a whole stack of petition forms that are signed by people under 18 which could not actually be presented to Parliament. Believe you me people young and old in this country believe that we have made a very very serious mistake indeed. 
But first and foremost all of the people who signed that petition are parents or intend to become parents. They are people who love their children deeply and deeply resent the intrusion of the police and of Child Youth and Family into their families and into that unique and wonderful bond between good parents and their children. They are upset that a relatively small group of New Zealanders have decided that they have the wisdom and the right to impose their views on this issue on the rest of New Zealanders. 
Heartland New Zealand sees the law as a black mark against the Labour Government that will not go away. Members simply increase those people’s sense of alienation when they tell them to “get over it” and refuse to allow the referendum that they demand as part of this year’s elections. What a wimpish action! What an excuse for democracy it was! The Government knew that 80 percent of the people of this country do not agree with that law yet it has simply been put off from the election date until a postal ballot next year. 
I do not know what the thousands of New Zealanders say to members of the National Party on this issue but I can tell members that in hundreds of conversations with me people from all sections of society have asked me what National was thinking. It had Helen Clark on the ropes when it suddenly threw in the towel sat down in the middle of the ring and said that it is OK to criminalise good parents. National has not seen the end of this matter. I say to National members that parents do not buy it. If National becomes the Government they will have to deal with this issue. 
That is pretty much it from me but I would like to wish everybody a good election campaign. Like others I encourage members to put aside the spin. So often in this place when one is surrounded by spin doctors and the members of the press gallery and so forth it is very very easy to lose contact with the voices of New Zealanders what is actually real in their lives what they are actually thinking and what they are actually saying. If nothing else the petition has given me a wonderful insight: I certainly spoke to more people in this country in the last 18 months than I did in the first 5 or more years of my parliamentary career. It is very very good to listen to the wisdom of those people and the love that they have for this country. They are saying to us that we need to put aside all that spin and we need to put aside the personal denigration and actually get real with the issues that confront and concern ordinary mums and dads ordinary Kiwis and ordinary young people in this nation. I believe it is time for us to begin to listen to them and to take on board their wisdom rather than imposing on them what we think is right for them. Let us seek to give them a voice—a voice in this Parliament—for they certainly deserve no less. 
I wish all members a good campaign. I tell them to enjoy it. Hopefully I will see them again later this year.