Speaker 1: Kiyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Rmps have
Speaker 2: stakes in a combined three hundred and seventy nine million
Speaker 2: dollars worth of property in New Zealand. A Herald investigation
Speaker 2: has found that is an average of three point one
Speaker 2: six million dollars across each of our one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty members of Parliament, and despite the rumors, Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Christopher Luxen doesn't top the list as the most lavish
Speaker 2: Today on the front page ends at Herald. Data journalist
Speaker 2: Chris Knox is with us to dive into the numbers
Speaker 2: and discuss why it matters. First off, Chris, what motivated
Speaker 2: you to investigate and compile this data on MP's property
Speaker 2: ownership and what challenges did you face when gathering this information?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess from the motivation point of view, I
Speaker 1: think that it's an important thing to understand what MPs,
Speaker 1: how much property they have, and how they may or
Speaker 1: may not impact their decision making. It's something that Parliament
Speaker 1: kind of recognizes as being important by making MPs to
Speaker 1: clear what they have, but they don't actually ask them
Speaker 1: to declare what it's worth. So we decided to kind
Speaker 1: of take it a little bit a step further and
Speaker 1: find out what the property is that they declared were worth,
Speaker 1: which is something the Herald had previously done in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: So we're also sort of it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been twelve years, let's revisit it and see how.
Speaker 3: Things have changed.
Speaker 2: So you knew where to look.
Speaker 1: Yes, we knew where we were starting from the register.
Speaker 2: Who are the top five and what do they own
Speaker 2: and how much is it worth?
Speaker 1: So the total portfolio is worth about three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty million or three seventy nine million, and Sue's redmain
Speaker 1: is who's the new national MP for Rangotikei. She as
Speaker 1: the top with twenty four about twenty four million, most
Speaker 1: of which is a large farm worth eighteen million. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: she took over assumed office after Ian Mcalvey retired and
Speaker 1: he was the previous top so it's obviously farms in
Speaker 1: that area are clearly worth quite a bit of money.
Speaker 3: He was worth a lot more. I think more like
Speaker 3: sixty million if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So Luxon is often rumored to have the most significant
Speaker 2: property assets. But he came in second, right.
Speaker 1: He did, Yes, yes, certainly he had the most significant
Speaker 1: residential property assets, so if you exclude farms to come
Speaker 1: in first. But yeah, so he has a couple of
Speaker 1: houses in Auckland worth about seven million each and one
Speaker 1: rental property.
Speaker 2: So who came in at three, four and five?
Speaker 1: So third was another national farming MP and Barbara Krueger
Speaker 1: who's the national MP for the Taranaki kin Country. She
Speaker 1: has about fourteen and a half million dollars worth of property,
Speaker 1: has declared interest in that and again quite a bit
Speaker 1: of that's farming. Fourth was cal Bates who is the
Speaker 1: national MP for Wanganui. And then fifth on the list
Speaker 1: was the first non national MP, so Panji Palma, who's
Speaker 1: an act MP, has about eleven million worth of property
Speaker 1: in Ackland.
Speaker 2: So some MPs have this complicated property asset interest kind
Speaker 2: of thing involving trust. You've got company shareholdings and things
Speaker 2: like that. You just mentioned Old Maiden Wanganui. Was it?
Speaker 2: Why is trust ownerships so prevalent among MPs?
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have a good answer for that.
Speaker 2: Is it just what rich people do?
Speaker 3: I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: I think that and there's a bit of commentary round
Speaker 1: because I was trying to work out, like so, I
Speaker 1: think I found that there were forty seven MPs that
Speaker 1: use trusts, which is over a third, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to work out what percentage of New Zealanders used
Speaker 1: trusts and couldn't find kind of good numbers on that.
Speaker 1: There were some estimates from two thousand and six from
Speaker 1: IID to I believe, and they were sort of about
Speaker 1: ten percent. But I think it's reasonable. Its hum that, yeah,
Speaker 1: the MP usage is higher, but I think part of
Speaker 1: that is just that a lot of MPs have been
Speaker 1: in business for quite a long time before they became MPs.
Speaker 1: Certainly farmers make a lot of use of trusts, and
Speaker 1: so I just think that anyone was kind of subset
Speaker 1: your property holdings and also property holdings that kind of
Speaker 1: run across multiple family members.
Speaker 3: Trusts seem to be the.
Speaker 1: Other thing I think is that trusts were I think
Speaker 1: this has been some commentary that trust is sort of
Speaker 1: overused in New Zealand up until the rules tightened up
Speaker 1: after the Panama papers came out a few years ago.
Speaker 1: So I think now there are costs, so that the
Speaker 1: costs associated with trusts make it something that you have
Speaker 1: to have a real reason to do, whereas previously it
Speaker 1: was just kind of.
Speaker 2: Why not, Well, how transparent is the current disclosure regime
Speaker 2: and do you think that gives the public a full
Speaker 2: picture of an MP's wealth.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's not. The disclosure regime is
Speaker 1: not intended to give a picture of their wealth, just
Speaker 1: the things they have interests in. I think it's reasonably transparent,
Speaker 1: but it does it is a very it assumes good
Speaker 1: behavior by the MPs, so there's a very little enforcement
Speaker 1: kind of that. There's no like the registrar doesn't check
Speaker 1: that MPs have declared things correctly. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: entirely up to them, and it's only when the media
Speaker 1: raw or another party kind of starts digging around that
Speaker 1: that things kind of may get referred up to an inquiry.
Speaker 1: But it isn't like it's not there's not a process
Speaker 1: in place where where so the MP's are given guidance
Speaker 1: and then they make I do think that though the
Speaker 1: guidance could be tightened up, like I've noticed a lot
Speaker 1: like there's quite a bit of variation between different MPs declarations,
Speaker 1: like for example, the national MP for Kaka has declared
Speaker 1: an incredible detail all of his shareholdings, and then other
Speaker 1: people have sent to follow a much more kind of
Speaker 1: sort of vibe based approach, and some some some MP's
Speaker 1: are declaring very like you know this pay of rental
Speaker 1: property in this suburb, and then other just like residential
Speaker 1: property in Auckland, and you're like, you know, so there's
Speaker 1: quite this sort of variation and I think it would
Speaker 1: be good to have a bit more consistency.
Speaker 3: In the process. It has made up a big part
Speaker 3: of the election campaign so far.
Speaker 2: Your party has repeatedly insinuated that labor is planning a
Speaker 2: capital gains tax.
Speaker 3: How many houses do you own?
Speaker 1: I've been upfront seven houses. There are one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty MP's in parliament.
Speaker 2: Who owns the most houses?
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 3: Is there any MP you can name who owns more
Speaker 3: houses than you?
Speaker 2: Don't nijack?
Speaker 3: Is there any MP you can name that owns more
Speaker 3: houses than you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't have a clue who owns what?
Speaker 2: Why is it important for MPs to declare property and
Speaker 2: I guess other financial interests? What are the parliamentary rules
Speaker 2: around that kind of transparency basically, so they don't go
Speaker 2: and make decisions. You know, I've got a house in
Speaker 2: COUI coulda for instance, and there's a big development happening.
Speaker 2: I have the power to do something about it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically it's to provide transparency about the kind of parliamentary process,
Speaker 1: and I think that often I suspect that that often
Speaker 1: there's more of a like an assumption of kind of wrongdoing.
Speaker 3: You know, like if there's.
Speaker 1: No information, then it's very easy to kind of start
Speaker 1: speculating about what might be behind decisions, Whereas if the
Speaker 1: information is out there, then you can just kind of
Speaker 1: have a look and be like, okay, you know that
Speaker 1: this that they had these properties, and you know it
Speaker 1: probably didn't impact it, or maybe it did or It
Speaker 1: is interesting though that the local government rules are much
Speaker 1: stricter in terms of it. Once you've declared an interest
Speaker 1: in at least in some of the local government meetings
Speaker 1: that I've seemed, if you have a conflict interest, then
Speaker 1: you actually recruit yourself from that meeting, whereas at a
Speaker 1: parliamentary level, it's more just that declared and then it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually impact that you're kind of your decision making process.
Speaker 2: Should there be better safeguards in place to make sure
Speaker 2: that MPs don't make those policy decisions in relation to
Speaker 2: what they own or what kind of interests they might have.
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 3: I think it would get pretty tricky.
Speaker 2: You know, because you can, you were, one person can
Speaker 2: say I've got shares in New Zealand, and then one
Speaker 2: person can say my cousin's sister works for New Zealand
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that you would land up
Speaker 1: with kind of half of the MPs having to recuse
Speaker 1: themselves from most you know, so many sort of the
Speaker 1: decisions that are made at a national level can have
Speaker 1: such a big impact, you know, and like particularly when
Speaker 1: you look at the so there was a three million
Speaker 1: dollars of property roughly per MP, but if you look
Speaker 1: at it per party, then the Act and National MPs
Speaker 1: are sitting in more like four and a half million each,
Speaker 1: and so that's getting up to be quite a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of interest in property. And so then you know,
Speaker 1: do you need to get every national and Act MP
Speaker 1: to accuse themselves from any decision that might impact property prices?
Speaker 1: Which is kind of you know, for all the decisions
Speaker 1: or not quite but you know, certainly there's a lot
Speaker 1: of rules that Parliament can can consider which may or
Speaker 1: may not impact property prices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, your article mentions restoring mortgage interest deductibility for
Speaker 2: landlords as a significant policy change.
Speaker 3: Obviously, how did.
Speaker 2: You estimate potential financial impacts for MPs and what did
Speaker 2: that reveal?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I was able to look at a number
Speaker 1: of MPs who declared that they had rental properties, and
Speaker 1: then you can see from records how much they paid
Speaker 1: for those properties and how long ago it was. So
Speaker 1: if and then you have to start making big assumptions,
Speaker 1: which is why we didn't name any MPs for this,
Speaker 1: because the assumption. You know, obviously I have no idea
Speaker 1: what an individual mpiece loan structure is, but if you
Speaker 1: kind of generally, you know, there's a requirement at the
Speaker 1: moment that I think, I think there may be some
Speaker 1: move a foot to change it, but at the moment,
Speaker 1: you need a thirty percent deposit for a rental property
Speaker 1: or an investment property. So if we just assume that
Speaker 1: those properties were bought with a loan equal to seven
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the value of the property, and that
Speaker 1: the loan was set for a thirty year term, and
Speaker 1: that the interest rate on average was six percent, which
Speaker 1: is kind of roughly what average interest rates over time are.
Speaker 1: Then you can go on to something like the sorted
Speaker 1: mortgage calculator and see what what the what amount of
Speaker 1: interest is being paid after a certain number of years.
Speaker 1: So one MP I looked at after seventeen years of
Speaker 1: paying that mortgage, that'd be looking at about fifty thousand
Speaker 1: a year in interest payments. And so if and you
Speaker 1: can also assume that all MPs are any extra in
Speaker 1: can they gets going to be in the thirty nine
Speaker 1: percent tax bracket because it's probably over one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty thousand, and so then they're able to deduct that.
Speaker 1: So if they've got extra income, then they can deduct
Speaker 1: fifty thousand from their income and in the thirty nine
Speaker 1: percent tax bracket that's going to be about twenty thousand.
Speaker 2: Back tell me, Chris, why does this all matter?
Speaker 3: Do you think?
Speaker 1: I think it's just important to understand whereut what our
Speaker 1: MP's own, and what they're doing and how those decisions could,
Speaker 1: how any decisions they make could impact their personal situations.
Speaker 1: For example, that the MPs are sitting on almost two
Speaker 1: hundred million worth of family homes and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's there's constant discussions on around things like capital gains tax,
Speaker 1: wealth tax, you know, which isn't say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not putting forward whether any of those things are the
Speaker 1: right policy. But I think that that you have to
Speaker 1: look at an MP's holdings to really understand how they
Speaker 1: whether they are considering those things kind of from looking
Speaker 1: at a future like what is the tax structure of
Speaker 1: New Zealand how is it going to look going forward
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Are they actually able to consider
Speaker 1: things from from kind of the nation's point of view
Speaker 1: or are they too drawn into their own own portfolios?
Speaker 2: And a lot of trust goes with that as well,
Speaker 2: And like you said, a lot we trust people and
Speaker 2: especially MPs to just do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Hey, yes we do. And so yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that being able to see what they have. The other
Speaker 1: thing too is that it's not you know, being rich
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a bad thing, you know, And so
Speaker 1: I think if it's also good to see what it
Speaker 1: gives us a message of where amps have come from
Speaker 1: and what they've done. And you can see, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see their involvement in farming and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing as well as part of this process.
Speaker 2: When you were digging into the numbers and seeing how
Speaker 2: much each person owns and everything. I mean, was there
Speaker 2: anyone apart from the top five, say, was there any
Speaker 2: other people that stuck out to you that you thought,
Speaker 2: huh interesting?
Speaker 1: Not particularly, I mean there was obviously Carl Waits popped
Speaker 1: out as there was something interesting going on.
Speaker 2: There because his family ended up being one of the
Speaker 2: largest landlords in that area.
Speaker 3: Hey, yes, that certainly.
Speaker 1: Looks like there were one of the largest private landels
Speaker 1: in his own electorate, which is an interesting situation to
Speaker 1: be in, and one I think that ought to.
Speaker 3: Be more transparent.
Speaker 1: I think actually one of the things that I was
Speaker 1: surprised by was that, compared to the last time the
Speaker 1: Herald did it, the kind of the headline numbers aren't
Speaker 1: actually that large. So for example, Ian Mcalvey was worth
Speaker 1: on the era of about sixty million in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: and John keyes properties were worth far more than the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister's properties now and so it's almost like this
Speaker 1: twelve years later Parliament actually in some way says less
Speaker 1: property holdings than they did previously, And there was kind
Speaker 1: of there wasn't anyone whose property holdings kind of would
Speaker 1: reach into that sort of mega which certainly there's some
Speaker 1: quite wealthy people then, but you know there are there
Speaker 1: are people in New.
Speaker 3: Zealand who own considerably more than anyone in Parliament.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Chris.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.