Eyes right for the moral minority

Destiny Party backer Joseph Brown (left), pictured with fellow Tairawhiti Polytechnic students, believes homosexuality is "against God's law". Picture / Alan Gibson

At a cattle sale in Te Awamutu, Arapuni farmer Owen Emmett and his niece Shirley Emmett are giving the Herald a morality lesson.

"I'm quite disappointed in the lack of support of family issues with things like civil unions," Mr Emmett says.

"It's deteriorating." He means the country's moral climate. "And it's supported from Government."

From Kaitaia to Bluff, many New Zealanders in this election year are worried, as one Christchurch mother puts it, about a climate of "anything goes".

"I believe our society would be much better off if there was a real focus on family, because family is the cornerstone of a healthy society," she says.

"I don't believe this Government has a good sense of family. I don't believe they are very good role models."

The main institution which defines morality in New Zealand - like all societies - is marriage, which ties adults into caring for each other and their children.

But marriage in this country is weakening. In the 25 years to 2001, the proportion of families with children that still have two parents has dropped from 90 per cent to 71 per cent. Among Pacific Islanders it is 64 per cent; among Maori, 50 per cent.

In the main street of Timaru, a white-bearded man in a suit who declines to be named believes we are losing a sense of responsibility to one another.

"It's the 'blow you Jack, I'm all right' syndrome" - exemplified, he says, by Labour's "blatant bribe" to students in offering to wipe the interest on their loans if they stay in the country.

"Every student has a signal to borrow as much as possible. I think that shows moral bankruptcy."

He believes the me-first tone has been set by the domestic purposes benefit for people who leave their partners, often even before their children are born.

"There are plenty around the town pushing prams at 17, and their consorts," he says. "I heard one of them refer to his partner as 'the mother of my baby'. That shows the casual attitude to procreation in this country, and the easy way the state will provide."

In Lower Hutt, a middle-aged civil servant called David laments "a generation with no discipline" in the wake of the exclusion of men from many children's lives.

"I believe the family unit is vital, but we seem to be going against it," he says.

He cites the Civil Union Act.

"I have nothing against homosexuals. But to say that it [a civil union] is a stable relationship for children - I say that's not what was intended."

Many are less generous. At Gisborne's Tairawhiti Polytechnic, where the Herald invited a group of students to discuss the state of the country over a pizza lunch, carpenter-turned-computing-student Joseph Brown, 49, believes simply that homosexuality is against God's law.

He's voting for the Destiny Party because it stands for "the morals of the country".

Fellow student and mother Monique White, 20, is also backing Destiny because it "addresses all the issues of today - prostitution definitely worries me".

Down the road in Napier, bank officer Diana Moyle, 37, is voting National because her biggest concern is "the breakdown of families".

"It starts at the top - what their values are, what they stand for," she says.

"If you decriminalise prostitution, then it becomes normalised."

She has gone back to work after 15 years as a full-time mother and would like to see the Government encouraging mums to stay home.

"Childcare is not the best option for kids," she says.

"If Mum can stay home, that's the best."

Dunedin home-maker Rachel Elder, 48, suggests one way to encourage mums would be to tax couples with children on their combined income.

That would cut the tax on a single income of $50,000 by $2000 a year, or about $40 a week.

Caroline Borger, a worker with special needs adults from Kumeu, suggests providing marriage counselling for all couples having troubles.

"If you provide more help, they would stay together," she says.

But, as Timaru's Aaron More, 30, points out, staying together may require giving up other things. Although he still has a $20,000 student loan for commercial studies, he has opted to set up a simple business as a window cleaner while his wife stays home with the children.

"It's about sacrifice," he says.

"You can't have everything, so you figure out what you do want, and what you can do without."

Overall, moral issues are only a minority concern, mentioned by 7 per cent of the 600 people questioned.

But they matter because they are the major factor driving the votes of 19 per cent of the people shifting to right-wing parties in this election.

Such issues are more likely to be mentioned by Pacific Islanders and Maori, and by southerners.

Only 5 per cent of Aucklanders and 7 per cent of other North Islanders, but 9 per cent of South Islanders, raised concerns about family and moral matters.

"People down here have more time for each other," Mr More says.

"The further north you go, the more people are just into themselves.

"I'm not a rat-race person."