Chester Borrows: Press not 'giving a stuff' about democracy

The Beehive and Parliament Buildings. Photo / Lonely Planet Images / Getty Images

Deputy Speaker Chester Borrows has fired another shot at the Parliamentary Press Gallery for not "giving a stuff" about issues of democracy and focusing only on "giving politicians the fingers".

Mr Borrows was defending the Speaker's two-week tour of Europe, which gained more attention for its $138,000 cost to the taxpayer than its focus on building relationships with other parliaments.

Asked what he learned from the trip, which ended on Friday, the National MP told reporters: "I learned that familiarity breeds contempt around democracy and we take it very lightly here.

"If you talk to people in Northern Ireland or the Eastern Bloc or Fiji, for instance, who have had their democracy removed from them and have had to fight to get it back, they actually give a stuff about this, even if people in New Zealand don't."

Mr Borrows said the New Zealand media's portrayal of these issues, especially in the press gallery, was "pretty light".

He cited a German historian who had told them at the Berlin Wall that freedom and democracy "were not self-evident" and needed to be scrutinised.

Foreign parliaments had "huge regard" for a visit by New Zealand's Speaker David Carter and they "wanted to talk about things like democracy", Mr Borrows said.

They also wanted a relationship with Parliament, not just the party that won the last election,

Mr Borrows noted that foreign delegations visited the Speaker - "not the Government, not John Key" - twice a month in New Zealand.

"These are countries who are in some way struggling with their own democracy and how to maintain that.

"They're interested in how you can have a minority government, with a disparate bunch of representatives and a whole different bunch of creeds and ideologies and still maintain stability and certainty.

"And I think that the gallery media treat that too lightly because you're used to giving us the fingers rather than actually examining those issues with any level of scrutiny."

The delegation travelled to Ireland, Northern Ireland, France, Poland and Germany and also included Labour MP Adrian Rurawhe, Green MP Kennedy Graham and New Zealand First MP Fletcher Tabuteau.