Jonathan Edgar Joseph Young (born 1958) is a former National Party Member of the

New Zealand House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the sole chamber of the New Zealand Parliament. The House passes Law of New Zealand, laws, provides Ministers of the New Zealand Government, ministers to form Cabinet of New Zealand, Cabinet, and supervises the ...

for the New Plymouth electorate. He was first elected in the 2008 general election and served until 2020.

Early years

Jonathan Young is the son of

Venn Young Venn Spearman Young (16 February 1929 – 14 January 1993) was a New Zealand politician. He was a member of the National Party, and served as a Cabinet Minister in the government of Robert Muldoon. He is known for his failed attempt to legalise ...

, a National MP from 1966 to 1990. He attended New Plymouth Boys High School but later finished his education at Hawera High School. Before entering politics, Young was the Senior Minister at CityChurch Waitakere in West Auckland for 18 years. He has also been a primary school teacher, and a financial administrator. In addition, he has been involved in development work in

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...

Member of Parliament

In the 2008 election, Young was narrowly victorious in the New Plymouth seat against long-standing

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

incumbent

Harry Duynhoven Harry James Duynhoven (born 1955) is a New Zealand politician and member of the New Zealand Labour Party. He was the mayor of the city of New Plymouth and surrounding districts from 2010–2013. He was a Member of Parliament for the New Plym ...

. Young's final majority was 105 votes – a margin of 0.3% of the total vote count in that electorate. New Plymouth had been one of the seats that the party had focused on as they had won the party vote in the 2005 election and campaign head Steven Joyce felt that "it had swung further our way". During a debate on the controversially rushed-through Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 in April 2011, which was aimed at controlling internet piracy, he described the internet as being akin to Skynet from

The Terminator ''The Terminator'' is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whos ...

movies. Young voted against the

Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill The Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013 is an Act of Parliament in New Zealand, which since 19 August 2013, allows same-sex couples to legally marry. The Act was proposed as a member's bill by MP Louisa Wall in May 2012, and wa ...

in 2013 which would legalise same-sex marriage, saying "marriage had always been a heterosexual institution". In August 2019, Young also voted against the Abortion Legislation Bill in its first reading, which would liberalise abortion law in New Zealand. At the 2020 election, Young was defeated in New Plymouth by

candidate

Glen Bennett Glen Thomas Bennett is a New Zealand politician and a member of the Labour Party. He was elected the Member of the Parliament for New Plymouth at the 2020 New Zealand general election, defeating the National candidate and incumbent Jonathan Yo ...

by a final margin of 2,555 votes. Ranked 22nd on the National list, he was placed too low to return to Parliament via the list. After National list MP Nick Smith resigned and

Harete Hipango Harete Makere Hipango is a New Zealand politician. She is currently a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the National Party and sits on the Māori Affairs Committee. Hipango served as MP for Whanganui from 2017 to 2020 bu ...

entered parliament of National's list, Young became the next person in line to enter Parliament off of National's list if any other National list MPs leave Parliament over the course of the current term.

Homophobia controversy

Shortly after the

2008 New Zealand general election 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...

, Young was criticised by the

GayNZ.com GayNZ.com is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community website for New Zealand. Prior to the websites closure in 2018, it posted daily local and international news stories, monitors fundamentalist Christian politics in New Zealand a ...

website for his statement that 'one of my associates was an ex-lesbian' and for his involvement with Teen Challenge, a Christian youth organisation with links to the

ex-gay movement The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relat ...

. When commenting further, Young noted, "One of the things I do strongly object to in terms of the people omosexualswho have made this choice is the presentation of it as a normal alternative."Taylor, Cliff (16 November 2008).
New MPs under fire for gay remarks
. ''

The New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation of all newspapers ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Jonathan 1958 births Living people New Zealand National Party MPs New Zealand schoolteachers New Zealand Protestant ministers and clergy Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives New Zealand MPs for North Island electorates 21st-century New Zealand politicians Candidates in the 2017 New Zealand general election Unsuccessful candidates in the 2020 New Zealand general election