Borrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Borrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8757] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to speak within this debate and to support the statement that the Prime Minister made yesterday. It is no surprise that New Zealanders vote against Governments that they feel have been duplicitous. Duplicitous is an explanation or an identification of people who do not do what they say. In this case it is a party that did not say what it did. Under the previous Labour Government we had for instance a number of years of good growing seasons strong commodity prices and a relatively low dollar for most of that period of time. It was a time when we had huge economic opportunity and we had huge economic growth but not a single cent of debt was repaid. Our debt-to-GDP ratio went down because we were doing so well. Now as the National Party has come into Government we are finding ourselves with the boot completely on the other foot yet those on the other side of the House stand and accuse us of not sticking to campaign policies of not sticking to campaign promises and of not sticking to things that we had said in Opposition. 
What we found of course is that when we came into Government a number of changes had occurred not only internationally but nationally as well and that the other side of the House was not clean on its side of the books when they were eventually opened. When we think about things like the accident compensation scheme and when we think about the debt within Housing New Zealand as far as programmed refurbishments go we find that there are big holes there and there are big holes all over the place. 
The previous speaker Sue Moroney talked about situations where National had for instance withheld Labour’s planned programme for teacher-student ratios within schools. Yet Labour’s policy year-on-year to reduce pupil-teacher ratios within the primary sector particularly in new entrant classes was never met. Labour campaigned on promises in 1999 of running a truancy register for the whole of New Zealand. It campaigned on that in successive elections and it never did it either. The fact is that the previous Labour Government left us in a position where we are playing catch-up not only economically but socially as well. It is a very very difficult game to play. 
Yesterday we heard the Leader of the Opposition say that he did not believe in GST. He did not believe in GST and he did not support GST yet of course he was in the Government that not only introduced GST but also raised the rate of GST from 10 percent to 12.5 percent without any compensation at all for those people most affected by it at the bottom end of the tree. Now apparently it is a huge crime to indicate that GST may go to up to 15 percent even given the levels of compensation that would be available to those who do not have the discretionary dollars to be able to choose how and when they spend their money whose income is spent completely on the necessities. Under National’s programme those people will be looked after particularly for instance superannuitants who will have four different legs up in a way to raise their income. 
I have a real problem with social standards that have dropped over the last few years. To be fair they have dropped over significant periods of time to a level where we have 20 percent of our young people leaving school without the educational qualifications to be able to function in a modern world. That is a real concern and it is good to know that it has been a real concern for others in the education sector for a long time. No one is going to try to pretend that it is not. Our colleague on the other side of the House when he was headmaster at Kaikohe Intermediate School—I think I have got that right— 
Colin King 
: Kaitaia. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: What did he do when he turned up there—Kaitaia was it? Sorry about that. He had a test. He found out where his students were in relation to other parts of the country. What did he find? That the vast majority of them did not hit the test. What did he do? He focused his priorities within that school on the ability of those children to be able to meet what was in fact a national standard—in other words to function where they should be in relation to other students of their chronological age across New Zealand. When he did that what happened? It lifted the game as I understand it from 4 percent to 76 percent. That is absolutely excellent—applause all round. Good on him. What do you know: now of course doing something like that is evil and nasty and we should walk right away from it! 
I cut my teeth in another trade dealing with people who failed in our society in the area of law and order. One thing that I noticed was that when police finish taking a statement off an offender they have got to get him or her to write on the bottom of that statement a sentence. The sentence is: “I have read this statement and it is true.” or “I have had this statement read to me and it is true.” I can tell the House that about 2 percent of all the people that I took a statement from could write that. The rest needed virtually every word of that small sentence spelled out for them so that they could do the same thing. What that should say to people on hearing that is this: if a person fails in education he or she fails in every other social area in this country. So if a person fails in education he or she fails in welfare he or she fails in law and order and what do you know he or she fails in health because a person is forced into a situation where he or she is most greatly exposed to those negatives that will impact on his or her health. The person is consigned to a low-wage income and so is his or her family. To get out of that trap is incredibly difficult. 
Nobody in this House and no one in this country would say that we should not concentrate on raising the levels of education with a view to increasing the prospects and the potential of those people who at the moment fail. Every one of us takes that seriously. How we get to that place is probably the reason for debate and obviously will be over the next while. But just because one side of the House believes that we need to know where we are before we start the journey that does not mean that we do not care and that we do not know what we are about. 
Yesterday’s statement from the House touched on a large number of issues. Our focus this year will be on supporting national standards with further reforms to ensure that children who need extra support get it. Along with an acceptance that national standards will have a cost to it there is also an undertaking from this Government that schools will be given the resources to fund it and schools will be encouraged to hit their targets and good on them. We will make legislative and funding changes to modernise our secondary schools. We will encourage those people in secondary schools now who are in danger of dropping out and being forced to cut a different track away from one that would lead them on to higher skills and therefore on to higher hourly rates and a lift in their earning potential and thereby improve the future for their families. We will encourage them to recognise the skills they have and to apply them while they are in school to a career path that will take them somewhere. 
We have also looked at the situation within our prison system and in law and order generally. This Government has continued down the path Labour started by increasing numbers within the police but we have targeted those police into South Auckland. It is interesting to note that crime trends in South Auckland are starting to come down. We have looked at new ways in which the Department of Corrections’ services will be delivered. We are looking at the roll-out of a public-private partnership model within that department and yes that is a hot potato. No doubt we will see the Department of Corrections’ union movement kick against that and we would expect it to because it is change. We recognise that no one particularly those in the public sector likes change. People within the private sector have had to get used to the fact that change is upon us. But we do know that this system worked incredibly well for those people in the Auckland Central Remand Prison. 
It is good that that tender is up again and that tenders will be called for the private provision of those services. That is bearing in mind the rehabilitative and extra help that those who are on remand received within the private sector which was never open to them within the public sector. When National came into Government the situation within the prisons as far as rehabilitation was concerned was that prisoners received no help and undertook no courses unless they had been in jail for at least 2 years or unless they had served two-thirds of their sentence. Most of the people in prisons were imprisoned for fewer than 2 years. We cannot write people off for 2 minutes or 2 hours let alone 2 years. 
I am proud of where this National Government is going and I am sure as is the rest of the public that we will be in a better place at the end of this term than where we set out from. Thank you.