Labour’s dividends from energy sector
I now have some more info on Labour’s reaping of profits from energy SOEs, and contrasting that to Phil Goff now decrying a $236 million dividend.
I blogged earlier that over the last five years, the SOEs made $3.27b after tax. Going back for their full nine years, the figure is $4.47 billion.
I also have the dividend figures. So this is the money actually paid out to the Government, and excludes profit that was retained for investment purposes etc in new generation.
- 2000: $255m
- 2001: $236m
- 2002: $290m
- 2003: $148m
- 2004: $154m
- 2005: $250m
- 2006: $949m
- 2007: $428m
- 2008: $383m
- Total: $3.09b
So its okay to take a $949million dividend payout in 2006 but wrong to take dividends a quarter that amount in 2009.
Again I’m not saying that the level of dividends is right at the moment, but when you raked them in during times of massive surpluses, it is a bit rich to do a sudden mea culpa and say that they should be much lower during a time of huge deficits.