Borrows Chester: General Debate 
Borrows Chester: General Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:5034] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I relish the opportunity to speak for a few moments about the selective memory of those members opposite. This afternoon the Leader of the Opposition went all the way back to 1990 and stopped right there. He criticised National for everything we did through the 1990s and he forgot for instance that National came into Government in 1990 finding exactly what we found coming in in 2008—that the cupboard was bare. We had to go on to take steps against that in 1991 and we get caned for it week after week and year after year by those members opposite because they do not want to remember that when they got the boot at the end of 1990 that bare and empty cupboard was their legacy to the New Zealand taxpayer. That was the way it was. 
Who was there? We know that Phil Goff—back-to-the-future Phil Goff—was there in Cabinet. We know that Annette King was there. We know that campaigning on the marvellous track record of the Labour Government of 1984-90 was Lianne Dalziel. We also know that not long after that there was the former president of the Labour Party the Hon Ruth Dyson who campaigned on the marvellous track record of the Labour Government of 1984-90. Who else was there? Who was the senior member of the Labour Party and soon to be the next president of the Labour Party? It was the Hon Maryan Street. She was there. She campaigned long and hard on the track record of the Labour Government of 1984-90. This week we heard the Prime Minister John Key remind the Hon Phil Goff of some of the excellent speeches and little turns of phrase that he used in the 1990 period. But of course that is all gone. Since then the Rt Hon Helen Clark has apologised for all that stuff at party conference after party conference so as far as they are concerned it is dead and buried. Well I say to the House that it is not so. We know the faces that were there and we know that they remain on that side of the House right through until today. 
It was very disappointing for me to hear the Hon David Parker go on and on about a former member of the House Don Brash. He referred to Don Brash as a liar and a racist on a number of occasions in the course of that pitiful speech and a number of points of order were taken on it. The irony of the rules of the peculiar and foreign environment that is the debating chamber is this: the Hon David Parker—the aptly named Hon David Parker because he is an honourable member—can talk about Don Brash in that way and call him a liar and a racist yet anyone who could have a little bit of a sense of history could go back to a time when the Attorney-General was a guy called the Hon David Parker and the Minister of Justice was a man called the Hon David Parker. A certain little incident— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s wrong. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: I stand corrected. At least the honourable member was the Attorney-General at a time when it was discovered that he had filled in company returns on five separate occasions a number of them while he was a member of this honourable House that referred to dates when company meetings were held which were not in fact held. The defence was of course—it was released in the public domain—that he had a letter exculpating him from actually having to do that. He held it up and said that as he did not have to do it he was not wrong. That was the finding of the inquiry that looked into it. But it does not take away from the fact that company returns were filed that had dates when company meetings were held which were not held. I can outline that to the House but I am not allowed to draw it in and accuse him of being any of those names that he decided to call the former member Don Brash. 
Don Brash was also accused by the Hon David Parker as being racist but Mr Parker forgot for one moment a little catchphrase of the previous Labour leader the Rt Hon Helen Clark. She talked about “haters and wreckers”. These were members of her constituency. These were members who came as is their democratic right to this House to talk about something that had been shafted to them—that is the previous Government’s decision to go past a Court of Appeal decision within the Westminster judicial system to go to the court to seek a decision. And the Labour Government got up and changed the law.