Borrows Chester: General Debate 
Borrows Chester: General Debate 
[Volume:669;Page:15930] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 How comfortable it must be on the other side of the House to be in Opposition to make all the promises those members want to make and to never have to address the question of where the money will be found. This morning on Radio New Zealand we heard the Leader of the Opposition complain about money not being put into the so-called Cullen fund obviously implying that a Labour Government would put money into that fund if it happened to have the privilege of being in Government right now but he never explained where it would find that money. Labour has taken slap after slap yet it never ever has to cough up. That is the privilege of being in Opposition: those members can stand there and pick whatever fights they want to take on; they can promise everything knowing they will never have to deliver; and before they would ever have to deliver anything they will remove it. We saw them all on the bus singing “Take Me Home Country Roads” longing for the fatherland etc. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: “Slip Sliding Away” I think. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Sliding around in that big red bus that said “Axe the Tax”. Funnily enough tax seems to have gone off the agenda at the moment. In spite of all the promises about no GST on fresh fruit and vegetables Labour is not saying what it would do with the 15 percent GST. It is not making any comment about it whatsoever. It is strangely silent right now. 
Labour knows that it has to keep its constituents disgruntled and disenchanted—that is code for poor and pissed off—so that it can maintain a constituency come the next election. When we look at the smacks Labour members had around the House today in question time—for instance having a go at good old Paula Bennett—we heard them saying: “There are no jobs there are no jobs.” In fact Labour criticised the Minister for Social Development and Employment for expecting people to make applications for jobs so they continue receiving an unemployment benefit. Is that not what a Minister for Social Development and Employment is supposed to do? Is it shallow to just stand back and say: “There are no jobs there are no jobs.”? Would we not expect a person with their hand out in receipt of a benefit from the taxpayers of New Zealand to at least be trying to look for work? Then we had the Leader of the Opposition stand up and complain to the Minister for Social Development and Employment because of a situation where 2500 people who are unemployed wanted to apply for a job as if that was some terrible thing. National believes that people should be trying to look for work and so did those 2500 people who were in that queue looking for work. 
Those people are actually on our side and they are actually supporting what we are saying just as people in Mana did a couple of weeks ago. Phil Goff stood up and said that that by-election would be run on the Government’s performance and we agreed. We put our record on the line and we know that Labour got an absolute caning in Mana. Its 6300 vote majority in that electorate at the last election went through the floor to 1080 on the night and ended up at about 1400. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Mana said “Hell no!” to Hekia. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Carmel Sepuloni knows exactly that and she hates it. The fact is that the Prime Minister John Key is the most popular Prime Minister since Adam was a cowboy and Labour hates it. The public of New Zealand is repeating time and time again that it is happy with the performance of this Government. Even in a pretty crappy week the public is prepared to cut us some slack. Given the terrible times that this Government has had to endure and defend in order to support the country of New Zealand the public of New Zealand is prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt and cut us some slack because they know better than anything else that they do not want that lot back any time soon.