Borrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Borrows Chester: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 30 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7633. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and speak in support of the motion of confidence in the Government as it stands at the moment led by the Rt Hon John Key. I would also like to add with others my best wishes to the departing Speaker as he leaves to seek his fortune in other places and to the incoming Speaker whoever that person might be. I would like to note in respect of the departing Speaker my gratitude for the help that he has been to me at times as a young and inexperienced member of Parliament and previous to that on a number of occasions as a young and inexperienced candidate. I always appreciated his wisdom and advice and the opportunities that he gave to be part of his programme within his own electorate. 
But the primary cause for standing and speaking of course is to speak in respect of confidence in this Government a Government that is marked with aspiration and optimism—aspiration for people right across our society whether they be young people who want to own homes young parents who want their children educated young people wanting to start out in business or people who have been in business for some time who want to employ more staff and who want to attract the attention of people in other markets to the products they want to sell over there. It is a Government that has an aspiration for everybody to get up and to get on rather than having the hallmark of an Opposition that is about doom and gloom despair and hatred—hatred for anybody who aspires to do well in this country and hatred for anybody who has done well in this country whether they are employing hundreds whether they are employing thousands or whether they are employing five or six. The Labour Party does not want it it does not like it and it hates it because it knows that as soon as somebody gathers assets around them gets the aspiration of someone in business for themselves or in business for other people and is prepared to work hard they look at where they are going to spend their voting power and they tend to vote conservatively. 
The Labour Party also hates farmers. We have seen that. Labour counters every possible initiative that this Government might have in respect of progressing farmers whether it be by Primary Growth Partnership subsidies whether it be by working with other markets to attract our produce overseas or whether it be by encouraging people to be more productive on their land or for instance storing water so that that productivity can be seen right across our sector. Labour hates the farming industry. Without it we would not have an economy. We would not have a free education system like we have now. We would not have a free health care system like we have now. We would not be able to live and enjoy the life that we have in this country without that farming sector and Labour hates it. 
Labour hates people within the energy sector without whom we would not have our fourth-biggest contributor to our economy and Taranaki would be in a situation where many other provincial areas have been under the leadership or lack of it from that previous Government. Taranaki—and South Taranaki is my part of Taranaki within the Whanganui electorate—is experiencing high employment at the moment. It is experiencing comparatively high wages compared with other areas. A lot of that comes on the back of two industries the dairy industry and the energy sector and Labour hates them. Labour has hatred for anybody who has a different idea from Labour’s. So if you want to start talking about a different idea for education Labour will hate you for that. If you want to talk about a different idea in respect of farming it will hate you for that. If you want to have different ideas about youth justice it will hate you for that. If you want to have different ideas about anything that Labour has got a stated policy on it will hate you for that. It will hate you for your ideas about kick-starting the economy about recognising growth and about recognising opportunities and seizing them. It will hate you for that. Labour is built unfortunately on hatred. 
Labour and the Greens despair at anyone who would like to support a National Government and they hate those people as well. Invariably they hate them as well. Time and time again over the last 6 years we have seen personal attacks on our leader and personal attacks on members of Parliament from this side of the House. What we know is that Labour members talk about “smile and wave” and they talk about all those sorts of things but the rest of the public fortunately for us and unfortunately for Labour do not hate like Labour has learnt to hate. What we see is that the support for this National Government 6 years into its term—5 years into its term; they will never put me in charge of the money. In any event we are seeing those polls staying exactly where they have been on election nights and good on them. All that really shows is that the Labour Government—sorry the Labour Opposition—is out of step—shit I am cocking this up—with where the rest of New Zealand is. 
I want to talk about the sector that I have some responsibility for and that—my numbers are worse than David Parker’s; I do not know whether you noticed. A better headcount than David Cunliffe. In any event if we look at those areas around youth justice and law and order there are a number of really good initiatives that came in when we came in in 2008. They were Fresh Start initiatives. They ran through the Social Services Committee that a number of us sat on and they were hated by Labour as well. They were opposed by Labour and the Greens and they voted against them on every move. But what we have seen is the result of those Fresh Start initiatives starting to pay off. We have seen a drop in youth justice family group conferences by 1000 in the last 12 months. That is 1000 young kids not being dragged before a family group conference because there is not the need for that to happen. Court-ordered family group conferences are down by 500. That is an enormous impact on young people’s lives that does not set them down a course where they could be sucked into the justice system and eventually the prison system. Fresh Start has dramatically dropped the number of young people transferred into the District Court. Only a third of young people who used to go to the District Court for sentencing are now going there. There has been a huge impact by not putting young offenders into an adult environment for sentencing. 
We are noticing that crime has come down and youth crime has come down significantly and that is as a result of the Fresh Start changes taking people out of the churn. I remember going as a member of the Opposition to the Rolleston youth justice facility there into the residence there. Of the 32 young people who were in that residence about 30 of them were back in that residence for their fourth or fifth stint of 3 months at a time. That is absolutely ridiculous and there was no plan to get out of that. So just by creating legislation that enabled people to bolt on to the back of those short terms of supervision in residences with counselling drug and alcohol treatment therapy and those sorts of things we have stopped that churn of young people coming through those residences. We have stopped sending them off to a criminal university and giving them a gang affiliation. But Labour voted against all those things. 
Another initiative that we have had huge success in is drug and alcohol placements. We are delivering double those numbers for drug and alcohol therapy. We are delivering double the numbers for youth mentoring. The military activity camps which Labour labelled the boot camps and talked about incessantly—that conversation has dropped right off now. What we have taken over the last little while is 40 of the worst young offenders in this country and having intervened in their lives we are seeing 13 percent less recidivism than if they had gone just to the supervision with activity course that they were destined to attend under Labour. 
Crime is down. Court appearances are down. The courts system is being streamlined and is working far more efficiently than it has in a long time and it is destined to see more changes coming that way as well. 
I am proud to be part of this Government which has aspiration and optimism for the future of this country. I look forward to exposing time and again over the next 12 months the hatred the doom the gloom and the despair of the Opposition.