The Fifth National Government of New Zealand was the government of New Zealand for three parliamentary terms from 19 November 2008 to 26 October 2017. John Key served as National Leader and Prime Minister until December 2016, after which Bill English assumed the premiership until the National Government's defeat following the October 2017 government-forming negotiations.

Sir John Phillip Key is a New Zealand retired politician who served as the 38th prime minister of New Zealand from 2008 to 2016 and as leader of the New Zealand National Party from 2006 to 2016. After resigning from both posts in December 2016 and leaving politics, Key was appointed to the board of directors and role of chairman in several New Zealand corporations. After his father died when he was eight, Key was raised by his single mother in a state-house in the Christchurch suburb of Bryndwr. He attended the University of Canterbury and graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Commerce. He began a career in the foreign exchange market in New Zealand before moving overseas to work for Merrill Lynch, in which he became head of global foreign exchange in 1995, a position he would hold for six years. In 1999 he was appointed a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until leaving in 2001.