The Greens Super Fund
I have previously blogged on how the Greens Super Fund buys houses near Parliament, and then rents them out to their own MPs so that taxpayers will pay up to $24,000 a year rent to their super fund. It is legal under Parliament’s rules but a clear conflict of interest when you are effectively both landlord and tenant – but with Parliament paying the bills.
The Herald reveals today another conflict:
A taxpayer-funded Green Party pre-Budget brochure promoted a company in which its “Green Futures” superannuation scheme is a shareholder without disclosing the interest.
The brochure on the party’s jobs stimulus package “Green New Deal” was paid for by Parliamentary Services and went to about 300,000 homes before the Budget last month.
It included an article about a worker at wind turbine manufacturer Windflow Technology as an example of jobs in a company in “a new green economy”.
The party’s Green Futures Super Trust holds about 6000 shares in the company out of 12 million shares. The shares are are worth $1.82 each. No mention of its interest was included in the article.
Not a good look. Of course they did not mention it to increase their share price, but disclosure of the conflict would have prevented any criticism.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:17 am
So the Greens invest in renewable energy. Now their true hyprocrisy is revealed!! Oh..wait….
June 17th, 2009 at 10:21 am
“Not a good look. Of course they did not mention it to increase their share price,”
Of course they didn’t.
That would be wrong wouldn’t it?
Of course steam rollers do roll steam, chocolate fish do swim ……………
June 17th, 2009 at 10:25 am
David, I am sure you will have explained before, but if so, I wasn’t paying attention. The conflict of interest in the rental situation is not clear to me. I hold no brief for the Greens, and indeed don’t like them. However, why do we care who their landlord is? They get paid only once, and the amount is presumably reasonable and in line with the market.
After that, the taxpayer no longer has any interest in the money. It has been paid and used for its intended purpose. Accommodation has been provided. Unless the fact that they are their own landlord somehow leverages the amount of money they get from the taxpayer for their accommodation, where is the ethical difficulty? Any tax benefits they get from their ownership would be the same, regardless of who their tenant is. Isn’t this simple capitalism?
[DPF: There is a lot of variation in what the market rent for a place is. In a true market the landlord and tenant have to agree. That is different to having some valuer state what the level of rent will be. Also the Greens benefit greatly by having a guaranteed tenant for three years with no need for letting agents. They would make far far less money if they rented their houses out commercially - I could almost guarantee that. So they are making a profit from the arrangements]
June 17th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I’m no fan of the Greens … but this post is a dog whistle DPF!
June 17th, 2009 at 10:57 am
[DPF: There is a lot of variation in what the market rent for a place is. In a true market the landlord and tenant have to agree. That is different to having some valuer state what the level of rent will be. Also the Greens benefit greatly by having a guaranteed tenant for three years with no need for letting agents. They would make far far less money if they rented their houses out commercially - I could almost guarantee that. So they are making a profit from the arrangements]
But if the landlord were someone else, they too would be making the same profit? I am not sure how it is unethical for the Greens to make a profit on their property investment, regardless of the original source of the funding. The government buys accommodation, it is provided, the transaction is complete (from the government perspective). You seem to be saying that there would be virtue in their making less money. I am not trying to be argumentative. I genuinely don’t see the conflict, and am the more puzzled that it is a problem to someone as supportive of the profit motive as yourself.
You are not suggesting that any other supplier of services to government should take reduced profits just because the customer is the government are you?
June 17th, 2009 at 10:59 am
cant say i care about 10k worth of shares… unless of course the greens gave JK shit last year like labour. something about 50k worth of shares being sold.
the greens love money! they love getting as much money as they can for themselves and they love taking as much money as they can from us to suit their twisted views.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:03 am
A dog whistle? Really? Go and have a look at the share price spike at the time the leaflet was distributed. Go and look at the shareholdings of individual Green Party MPs. Then review the media frenzy over John Key’s transactions in Transrail stock or whoever, which were never anything other than genuine.
You should be demanding that these Green MPs come clean and declare that they sold no shares in Windflow Technology between October 1st 2008 and November 10th 2008. There was a sharp spike in the share price about two weeks before the election. The sales amounted to some $60k. I want to know whose shares were sold at that time.
This is a clear and demonstrable case of not only insider trading but use of tax payer funds to ramp up the price of stock they owned before they indulged in theri insider trading.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Tinny houses?
June 17th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The Windflow Technology investment is ‘peanuts’, being well below 1% of the value of the super fund AND the total shareholding of the company. It is ridiculous and pedantic IMO to expect such insignificant holdings to have to be repeatedly disclosed in press releases etc.
The investment by the Greens in such a company is hardly earth shattering news. Now an investment in Hazelwood Power Station in Vic Australia would be because it spews out a disproportionate amount of CO2 because of the low grade brown coal it uses.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:29 am
What is more interesting about windflow, is the fact that SOE mighty river power has a near 20% stake, that was purchased in 2008.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:37 am
peterwn, it becomes hazel nuts or even brazil nuts when you add in the personal share holdings of Green MPs. It was a very clever and devious comment from the smelly armpit, aimed at diverting gullible media from the real story of insider trading.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:59 am
The point is that the Greens are ‘oh so anti business’ except when it comes to their own businesses.
HYPOCRITES!!!
June 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Sue Bradford did disclose the interest in this media release in 2006.
It is not as if this is anything new or the Greens are hiding anything. I agree with peterwn that it “is ridiculous and pedantic IMO to expect such insignificant holdings to have to be repeatedly disclosed in press releases etc.”
June 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
There’s a curious odour of desperation hanging around this post DPF
June 17th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
DPF
The way I understand it various parties own property and receive rents for it from PS. I also understand that some individuals own property in trusts etc and lease them to PS.
So, apart from the fact the profits are being made by a retirement fund rather than a trust (or other legally sepeare entity) what is the difference between what the Green’s are doing and what Labour/National do ?
June 17th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
DPF is getting desperate. Anything to distract from Key’s dithering and Act’s takeover of policy. So lets attack the Greens – on something other parties and individual MP’s do. Pathetic. Chest beating when National performs. Spin on minor issues when they flop. Yawn!
June 17th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Are the rentals being claimed by the Green members “market rates” or are they simply the maximum that Parliamentary services will pay. ie is the tax payer paying more for the transaction because its a related party than they would in the open market (they are their own land lords so the agreement of rentals is not a market driven transaction?).
I am happy to buy a house that the Greens will rent for $24,000 per year (3 year contract) IF I can buy said house for under $400,000 (6% yield). Note: I do not know the Wellington market, so don’t know what $400k would get me? Anybody know the QV value of any of the “green” houses?
June 17th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
NOT the Greens! Never those wonderful people who are so honest and open and squeaky-clean (and who have Wussell as their wonderful and innocent leader) that they wouldn’t even KNOW what ‘DISHONESTY’ was! Oh say it isn’t so, David, say it isn’t soooo . . .
Aaah, but it IS isn’t it?
And, should we be surprised at all? No, not really. The surprise WOULD be that they actually didn’t do such things and it was all a MSM beat-up based purely on a ‘misunderstanding’ of their fine and upright principles.
If only! Sadly, watermelons don’t change their colour, and exposure to GE (General Elections) only make them worse.
Which must inevitably beg the question: Is an ‘honest’ Green an oxymoron?
June 17th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Borrowed from another thread “[DPF: I have no commercial connection with Family First – my company does – there is a difference.”
By that logic, the Greens have no connection with Windflow Technology, just their Super fund – there is a difference.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
lol DPF owns shares in family first? he invested in them to make a profit? thats interesting
June 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Dime – I’m sure you’re not that stupid, but just in case – his company (Curia – 100% owned by DPF) does work for Family First.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Of course the two socialist parties have been conducting this rort for years,no surprise.
June 19th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Surely the Lefty Red/Greens believe that “property is theft”, right? And every landlord in the country is a money-grubbing capitalist running-dog, screwing the honest working man (sorry, “person”) out of his (sorry, “his/her”) last penny, right? So the question is, why the hell aren’t the green MPs living on a vegan commune out on the edge of town and commuting to parliament by bicycle (instead of fattening their pockets in property funds and flying around the country in CO2-spewing jet planes at the expense of the taxpayer telling us all how to live our lives.)
Most of us who have been around the block a few times can spot a lousy hypocrite when we see one. But undergraduate university students are easily hoodwinked into voting for such a crowd when they start promising free this and that, free education and free sex and drugs. Thus there will always be a constituency for the Red/Greens, more’s the pity.