Borrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBorrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 30 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15727. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Minister for Courts): It is a pleasure to take a call. At the beginning of this election year it is good for people to have a look a little bit below what is immediately in front of them. In other words do not always judge a book by its cover. I guess that is a fair enough comment after listening to the last speech. It is also interesting to remember that there is a sales pitch that goes on. The National Party has started off the year with a bit of a hiss and a roar. It has talked about education. It has been interesting to watch the Dave and Norm smoke-and-mirrors show. They have responded to that.John Key was talking about education and he has put up a number of ideas four of which—what do you know—the education sector surprisingly loves. He talked about rewarding outstanding teachers by paying them more and giving them more responsibility. He talked about keeping good teachers in the classroom and allowing schools to work together in clusters so that those who are good principals good at administration and good at getting the best out of their staff and their students are able to help other schools within that near vicinity. We know a lot about education in South Taranaki because we remember the legacy. If the member for Hutt South does the round the mountain cycle tour next year he will be pleased to note that on a certain farm aroundAuroa there is still a billboard that says “It is still open season on Mallards.” so many years after the event.Hon Trevor Mallard: Is itAuroa School?Hon CHESTER BORROWS: YesAuroa School. Yes you managed to leave that one open former Minister Mallard. And I tell you what: the headmaster atAuroa School HeathChittenden is bound to be an expert headmaster—maybe that is politically incorrect; an expert principal—because that guy is the gun. At about 35 years of age he is getting incredible results out of those country kids.National has come up with a policy that talks about rewarding outstanding teachers. It talks about making schools better. It talks about keeping good teachers in the classroom and helping kids learn at a cost of $359 million. What did Labour and the Greens say? What did the Dave and Norm smoke-and-mirrors mantra say? They said: “Don’t go looking there. Don’t go looking at education because we haven’t thoughtabout education just yet but you have to go and look at poverty. Don’t look at education; look at poverty. Look at all the free money we will give you if ever we have the privilege of being on the Treasury benches!”.What they did not talk about in respect of poverty for instance was insulating 250000 homes mainly affecting people who are living below the minimum wage or on the minimum wage. The policy is working to put young people in a place so that when they do get to school they can learn they can listen and they can achieve in the same way as for instance the extension of the breakfast in schools programme is working. But they did not want to look at that. They would not even recite that. They do not want to address education.They have not said what they will do in my own area of work around welfare fraud. The National Party says we will stop welfare fraud. We will hold fraudsters to account. The tens of millions of dollars that people are getting away with ripping off the system we are going to claw back for this Government so we can take that money and we can put it into areas principally around health education and welfare.But what does Dave and Norm’s smoke-and-mirrors show say? “Don’t go looking there. Don’t go looking there. Don’t look for welfare fraud.” They say people offend only because they are poor forgetting the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who are receiving welfare benefits in this country do not rip anybody off. They are struggling just as hard as they can to make ends meet and they can do it without committing crime. But Labour and the Greens say: “Don’t go over there. Don’t go over there. National is doing it only to distract us from the fact that its rich mates are ripping off the tax system.” And yet what did Labour do around taxes and around clawing back tax rip-offs when it was in Government? Nothing. What has National done in the last 3 years? An increase of $200 million of new spend to get that tax back.What we know is this: most beneficiaries do not offend. We have spent $200 million of new money from this Government on a zero budget to get that money back in so that we can spend it for the good of our people—for the good of the very people whom those people on the other side say they represent.But what that would-be Government is also saying is this: you cannot fight two types of fraud at the same time. Well I reckon that is rubbish. This Government is proving it is rubbish. We can think about things and do things at the same time. We can catch people ripping off welfare and we can catch people ripping off taxes at the same time and we are prepared to put our money right there where it counts.Then we have got two views on the economy. We have got the National Party saying: “Let’s grow the economy. Let’s do business. Let’s help businesses create new jobs. Let’s back Kiwis to do more in their own country.”. There are several examples of that around farming and around movie production and those sorts of things. But Labour and the Greens—here we go again. The Dave and Norm smoke-and-mirrors show says: “Don’t look at all those good ideas. We’re not interested in helping anyone do business because we know that in spite of the fact that 95 percent of everyone in this country is employed by a business rather than being self-employed in any event”—this is Labour’s mantra—“every one of those employers gets there just by standing on the necks of the people whom they employ.”It is a doomsday scenario. They keep talking about a manufacturing crisis in this country forgetting that we actually have an economy that is doing incredibly well by international and independent assessment. We know it and unfortunately the Opposition knows it and the problem for those members is they now have to get off this horse. They have to change horses because they are on a horse that has been saying the economy is stuffed we are going nowhere it is all wrong it is doom and gloom there is nothing we can do about it and it has had it.Yet those international commentators are independently looking at our economy and saying that we are rock stars. They are saying that this is damned good. By international standards this is great and we need to get there too. At some stage over the next 5 or 6 months we are going to have to see Labour and the Greens get off the horse that says we are going to hell in a handcart in this economy and get on a horse that says that actually this is pretty good and they would do all of that stuff and more. But no one is going to believe them. No one is going to believe them because they have actually countered every step that this Government has taken in order to create a better country for New Zealanders in respect of business welfare health and education.We are going to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar in this country we are going to get the country back into surplus and we are going to pay off debt rather than leaving it for our kids. But Labour is saying: “No no no. We are going spend more we are going to deal more somehow we are going to try to balance the books despite the fact that we are going to spend more and we have cancelled our really crazy promises in order to pay for our not so crazy ones.”The analogy was made this week that if you go down toKirkcaldie and Stains and do not buy a suit which is in the window for 1500 bucks it does not mean that you now have 1500 bucks more to spend because you never had it in the first place. Somehow dreaming that because you are not spending $1.5 billion on dumb ideas does not mean that you now have $1.5 billion to spend. Just a few days into our first term of this year—in an election year—Labour and the Greens have already decided that they have three-quarters of a billion dollars to spend that is not there.Here is where the Dave and Norm smoke-and-mirrors show falls down: it depends on Kiwis being too stupid to see through those smoke and mirrors in any detail. You know what? They are not. Unlike Dave and Norm and their fellow travellers I have faith in the Kiwi voters seeing through these kinds of tricks. When they do have a good hard look here is what they will see. Under National they will see a strong and stable National-led Government backing teachers growing the economy being responsible with the money that the public give us reducing crime and making our streets safer and being up front transparent and clear with the New Zealand public about our policies.When they look at the other side they will see that a Labour and Green Government—the Dave and Norm smoke-and-mirrors show—is against anything that might create a job. They will cripple the economy with red tape and bureaucracy they will make excuses for criminal offending and they are not up front with the real details of the policies that they are making as we have seen just in the last few days with the “baby bonus”. They depend on smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that they have no answer for the positive effective policies of this Government and they will depend on Kiwis being too foolish to see past their bribes half-truths and hyperbole. Kiwis are not that dumb.