Borrows Chester: Address in Reply 
Borrows Chester: Address in Reply 
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CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure to stand here and to speak in this Address in Reply debate. 
It has become very clear over the last couple of months since the election that National has set some new hurdles for others in years down the track. We have set the agenda I guess in some new ways. First was the pace with which John Key managed to bring together a National Government. An expectation was driven through the media and driven by members opposite leading up to the election about how long it would take to form a Government. Calculations were made about blocs on the left and blocs on the right and how long it would take. What happened of course was that a Government was brought together very very quickly. 
It is important too though to stop and acknowledge those who are new to the House and to congratulate them on achieving the title of member of Parliament. It is interesting to note that there have been less members of Parliament in this country than there have been All Blacks. 
Hon Member 
: Fewer. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Sorry. I am prepared to take the member’s advice. There have been fewer members of Parliament than there have been All Blacks in this country. So it is a privilege to be able to sit in this House and take up the role of member of Parliament. I congratulate members who are new to the House and I congratulate those who have returned to the House. I certainly count it as a privilege to be able to be here in this House and to have the opportunity to stand and make this speech. 
In drawing together those members who make up the Government and the parties in support of the Government on confidence and supply the Prime Minister John Key has done an interesting thing. Although it was not expected he has extended a hand to the Maori Party. Of course the previous Prime Minister Helen Clark named it the last cab off the rank. Having done that she found it incredibly difficult to forge an alliance with the Maori Party and to gain that party’s confidence during her administration. In taking this step John Key has done something different. It was not something that was forced upon him; it was done out of a sense of the moment and with an eye to the future and in order to create for Maori an enduring relationship. The relationship will no doubt endure for many many years to come. The Maori Party has the opportunity now to do something that the Christian Democrats have done in Germany and that is to be part of every Government pretty much since the war regardless of which party is the lead party in Government. 
National is enjoying the best of times at the moment on the right of politics. It happens to be the biggest party in Parliament at the moment and therefore it gets to form the Government. Some time a long way down the track many many terms from now National will get the boot because that is the nature of New Zealand politics. But John Key has cast down the gauntlet in front of the Labour Party. If the Labour Party ever is in the position of trying to form a Government at some time way off in the future and if it is unable to form a coalition with the Maori Party or obtain that party’s support on confidence and supply Labour will be seen as a failure. I am sure that the Labour Party understands that and respects it. That really has been the nub of the concessions made in speeches from members on the other side of the House. I am sure that many members opposite are sitting there wondering why they dealt so harshly with the Maori Party in its early formative months and years because it certainly set them up for failure this election and it may well be that they continue to feel that sense of failure for a long time to come. 
During the last election campaign John Key engaged with people and we have found as we have wandered around our electorates that that has been endorsed time and time again. A real expectation of success has been created. I have to give some credit to the Labour Party too because as it has returned in this term it has very much kept up the pace. Yes John Key and the National Government hit the ground running created a great deal of expectation set about embarking on a 100-day plan and certainly turned some heads amongst everyday New Zealanders. But it has been interesting to note that the Labour Party has been here with its front-benchers sitting in the House when they certainly were not here this time last year. They have a new broom at the sharp end of their party and their movement so they will have to keep up the pace. It will be very interesting to see how they do that when we hit winter and they realise that they are going to be there for a long time to come. 
The National Party has set out on its 100-day plan and put its vision in front of the country. The driving goal of the new Government is to grow the New Zealand economy in order to deliver greater prosperity security and opportunities for all New Zealanders and New Zealanders have a hold on that goal. It is very interesting to pick up the little snippets that come through the media as they look at us approaching the 27th of this month and reaching that 100-day mark. We see in the media how the New Zealand public is responding to a new National Government and whether members opposite like it or not it has been positive. We are enjoying the warmth of that feeling at the moment. But also the Government knows that only a strong economy will guarantee financial security for families well-paid jobs in New Zealand for young people and larger superannuation payments for our older people—and they deserve it because they have done the hard yards. 
What is unfortunate as we notice that we are now going into a cycle of recession and hard times is that we all know that we have been here before. Whether we like it or not when times get tight New Zealanders like to have conservative parties running the cheque book. As times ease up they will start to think they want money thrown around with a lot more gay abandon as has been done in the past by members opposite. But also both sides of the House have talked about what we were left with. The Hon David Parker made the point that at the end of the Labour Government’s term Labour handed over a New Zealand economy that was relatively strong. What he did not talk about was the holes that were there. What he did not talk about was the missed opportunities. When the National Government went out of office at the end of the 1990s it had had some very tough times particularly in respect of droughts and the Asian economic crisis which knocked it around. But we accept that the 1990s were tough times and the whole of New Zealand did it quite hard and we had to respond to what we had been left with when we came into Government in 1990. We found that at the end of our term we were growing the New Zealand jobs market by about 500 jobs a week. That is what the figures showed and that is what we left to the Labour Party when it came into office. Yes the trend carried on and Labour grew those numbers but it had those growing seasons. It had high commodity prices and it had a relatively low dollar for a long time. 
But when Labour left office this time it told us that we were about $13 billion in the poo. What we found from the Pre-election Fiscal Update was that it was not $13 billion; it was actually $31 billion. In the first 2 months that the National Party has been in Government the deficit has been revised and revised and it has grown by a billion dollars each month. That is the legacy that the previous Government left us with. 
My real concern is that when New Zealanders look back all they will remember is the worldwide recession. They will not remember that Labour was a poor steward of the New Zealand economy given the wonderful economic times that it had to play with. The money was squandered the money was not returned to average New Zealanders in the form of tax cuts so that they could keep more of their own dough and now things will be very very tight for a long time. The bitter pill for National will be that New Zealanders will probably not remember whose fault it was. It is just like the way they never remember the 1980s; they talk only about the 1990s and the difficult times that we all had as a result of the position that the Labour Government left us in in 1990.