Borrows Chester: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Borrows Chester: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4873. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 It is a privilege to take a call in this general debate. It is interesting to note that when the last speaker Jacinda Ardern came into Parliament she came at the end of her party’s term in Government and faced her first term being in Opposition. She has conveniently been able to pull the door behind her and forget what Labour did not do when it was in Government for 9 years. A lot of the policies that Labour members are now espousing to promote and enhance they never took anywhere near those people they now want to extend them to. 
If we want to talk about Working for Families we heard the Green Party talk about this earlier on. It is interesting to note that the Labour Party has recently been talking a lot about the Green Party and the sanctimonious way that its members are addressing the issues of today given that they were there supporting Labour in Government but they never encouraged Labour down that track—for instance to extend Working for Families to the unemployed. That is something that Labour is now wanting to do. Now that Labour is in Opposition it is promoting something that it never went anywhere near when it was in Government and had the opportunity to do it. 
When Labour left office in November 2008 we know that inflation was sitting at 5.1 percent. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: How much? 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS 
: It was 5.1 percent and now it is at about 1 percent. But apparently that does not mean anything because the only thing apparently that people on this side of the House are interested in is business and tax cuts for our rich mates. I would put it to members opposite that the only thing they are interested in is keeping poor people poor because as long as they are poor they are poor and dejected they are interested only in voting against things that take a community anywhere and they are interested only in voting for Labour because Labour will never hold them to account for the decisions they make in their day-to-day lives. Labour was in Government for 9 years but never—never—made a measure for measuring poverty. Now it wants to put in place a measure—the mean income. 
Well as incomes go up what do you know? With a measure like that you will have more people supposedly by Labour’s measure living in poverty. I reject totally the idea of relative poverty. There are not many of us with wrinkles round our eyeballs like Maryan Street Annette King me and Rajen Prasad who did not grow up in a lot less comfort than people live in today. If we went by Labour’s measure we would have been where? We would have been in poverty. We would have been in poverty if it happened that our most frequently worn clothes that we were wearing used to belong to our cousin or the neighbour next door or if the groceries that we bought from the supermarket were a hell of a lot fewer with a lot less of a range because we did not have the money to spend. The veges that you got you went and got from the garden. 
Apparently those poor people live in poverty. If they happen to live in a house that has all the opportunities to do the things that our parents did like grow vegetables then apparently they do not have the will to do that. Why? Because they live in poverty. Everybody on this planet knows that it is not what happens to you in life; it is how you respond to it. And the cards are not always dealt fairly and people across the House on all sides of the House know that because we are not stupid enough to put people into pigeonholes— 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: I think you are. I think the member is. 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS 
: —like Mr Rajen Prasad would to suggest that anyone who comes from this side of the House does not know what hardship is. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: Oh come on. 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS 
: But I repeat that it is the way you respond to things. If Mr Prasad looks back at his history and at the way that his family responded to the circumstances they found themselves in he will see the answer to the question why he does not live in poverty today. For instance those people relying on the pension—people like my parents and possibly people like the parents of members opposite—who survive on the pension as their sole income all live in poverty. You go and ask those old-age pensioners today if they are living in poverty and they will tell you that life is not easy they will tell you that life has never been easy and they will tell you that the whole of this game that we call life in Godzone is about the top 2 inches and it is about how you respond to those things that are put in front of you. It is not about a bleeding heart and claiming that the Government needs to pay for everything. What we know for instance is that in the time that this Government has been in power in the few short years that we have been here—