I don’t think this is the great political schadenfreude some of my comrades on the Left seem to think it is…
Act leader David Seymour has made a virtue of owning no property, but is now correcting the record to show he is a beneficiary of trusts that own three properties.
Seymour is embarrassed about what he calls an “honest mistake”, and says he has legal advice saying he doesn’t really own any of those properties: his grandparents’ beach house in Northland, a neighbouring section of land, and his father’s house in Whangārei.
But he accepts he could end up owning some of them – or a share in some of them – as a beneficiary of the trusts, so these will be included as his “real properties” in the upcoming 2021 register of MPs’ pecuniary and other specified interests.
The register will also show that Seymour has a KiwiSaver account that he says dropped off his radar until the start of this year.
…shrug.
So what?
After leading a discussion on the issue with his MPs, he realises he might fall foul of the disclosure rules and updates himself.
Isn’t that what we want?
That he technically has some interests in some as yet realised gains in trust doesn’t amputate the legitimacy of his criticism of the landed political elites…
“The fact that the average National MP owns 2.2 properties of their own might suggest why they’ve spent a lot of time introducing solutions that you’d almost suspect weren’t supposed to work – because they certainly haven’t,” Seymour told RNZ in May 2017.
He has also talked about being unable to afford a home in his electorate of Epsom, despite earning a six-figure salary.
…if even old Trust fund Seymour can’t get a break, Gen X is fucked!
The fact still remains that Parliament is full of property owners so that the interests of the 40% renters is politically muzzled.
Renters have been outrageously abused in this pandemic response.
Government pumped $60billion into the pockets of property speculators to keep the Banks from freaking out which exploded House prices and retaliatory law penalising that vast speculation has generated a wave of Landlord resentment that gloatingly boasts of spiteful rent rises.
Why the hell should a fight between Government and Landlords be paid for by renters?
David Seymour is right, Renters need radical protection, which is why Labour, with their Parliamentary majority, must urgently pass rent rise freeze laws now before Autumn sets in, because a wave of spite rent rises will force people into unforgiving homelessness this frigid winter.
Renters need protecting now, Labour must stand with David Seymour and defend Renters from the landed political elites!
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David Seymour is one of those free loading self selfing politicians who deem themselves as being more superior than anyone else on the planet.
Sorry, did you say Roberston? Surely you must have meant Robertson? Free-loading…hmm… at least we know that the left has no freeloaders. It’s just Seymour, phew there I thought they all do it!
Why the hell should even consider making a contribution to TDB when you don’t accept my legitimate comments?
The answer to this market failure is statehouses.
1. Build 200,000 statehouses.
2. Design them with a 100 year life span.
3. Provides the government with 100 years of non-tax revenue.
4. Places $100 billion of assets on the government balance sheet, paid for with money printing.
3. Rent them at 25% of tenants income, not market rates.
4. Floods the rental market supply, forcing down private rents.
5. Removes 200,000 accommodation payment subsidies to landlords.
6. Drives investors out of housing into a more productive use of investment dollars.
7. Drives down landlord house price speculation.
8. Frees up properties for (1st) home buyers.
9. Creates good tradie jobs for a generation.
10. Downside. Sorry, there isn’t one.
Joseph for PM
Good idea although where you build them & where does the land come from is likely to create a bit of controversy. I like the current practice of increasing housing density for current Housing Corp properties although it needs to happen much faster.
Bonnie, the state house land was sold by Natz and given away by Labour as part of Kiwibuild. It’s now in private hands. Then their are the large amounts of state house land and buildings given away to social housing providers.
This government labour and Greens (like the Natz) doesn’t trust themselves to manage housing anymore and can’t wait to pass the buck and then pretend they are not responsible.
No down sides other than crashing the economy. Other than that, absolute winner.
I don’t disagree that the state needs to build and build in volume but they run the risk of crashing the economy through oversupply of property which will drive prices down which in turn leads to negative equity and pretty soon after a fucking awful recession that will hurt so many more than you’re trying to help.
Law of unintended consequences
Yeah nah. I reckon building 200,000 state houses is stimulatory, for wages, construction industry, redeploy of tourism workers, with flow on effect for the whole economy. Intended consequences.
+1 Joseph – but your ideas also involve the government actually doing something instead of contracting out the problem of housing to the private sector, while doing policy changes for the markets, and denying accountability for government changes to housing and other areas of poor policy when it all goes wrong.
What is also sad, is government not taking responsibility but instead scapegoating groups who actually provided the cheaper housing aka Housing NZ and private Landlords for the last 60 years.
I’m not seeing massive help to renters and homeless or any savings using motels and businesses to provide housing solutions. It seems like the opposite, more expensive and less quality. Likewise private companies building and developing the land is increasing the price of housing and land, not doing the ‘market’ prediction of dropping prices. Why, because they are doing it for profit, DOH! They don’t even build the houses, they just rezone the land and make a fortune! DOH!
New Maths at work. Add nearly 1 million more families living in NZ over 10 years and then say you will build 100,000 new houses in NZ in 10 years. Hmmm sounds like adding to the housing shortage, even if you fulfilled your goal. (which they didn’t). Don’t bother doing independent analysis on birth rates and health spend of adding 1 million more families into NZ.
John Key pulled the wool over peoples eyes on housing and immigration for 9 years, but it seems that Labour and Greens are continuing on his legacy.
Big deal about Seymour. Alot of people will eventually become property owners by default when their parents pass away, NZ law is children inherit parents property, but that doesn’t make them owners of the property right now. Seymour parents and granny happened to set up a Trust. His kiwisaver was 2k and he forgot he had it. I guess that’s his version of my tenner stashed in my Toyota glove box and discovered later, bless his cotton socks. Am not a Seymour fan by any stretch but these undeclared things look worse than they are
I think you will find that retirement providers will be taking the average Kiwi’s inheritance these days. Seymore’s parents have his inheritance in a trust, which gives a bit more protection, but the average Kiwi parent will live to 90 and there will no longer be much inheritance left as they sell to get into a retirement village or nursing home which are full of government sanctioned profit gouging.
I don’t give a stuff about Seymour’s little trust entanglements and him ‘coming clean’ about them.
Everyone knows if it wasn’t him but someone on the government side though, his gawipsh and priggish grin would be on the tv channels and the print media hinting at the person being corrupt, not to be trusted and he was the defender of what is right.
I thought the right-wing were supposed to be the “numbers guys” and better economic managers. I doubt this will affect Seymour in anyway, but it will be used against him in the House or by his detractors on social media. A guy who likes detail so much, but doesn’t have an awareness of his own finances.
The bigger joke is his claim of not being able to own the property he is/was renting with other people. It is as though that $2M+ house is the only house in Epsom available and suitable for him to buy. He has taken over $1M+ in salary alone in the last 6.5 years and it will easily exceed $1.5M by the end of this parliamentary term. The poor guy. Shame he can’t come up with a fully-costed economic plan to purchase a property for himself. Funnily enough, he does have one for our COVID economic recovery, though.
I apologise in advance – I have a pecuniary interest in Lotto. The gains are not yet realised – much like Seymour has an ‘interest’ in property which has not been realised. I don’t own the Lotto company, but I apologise for not disclosing my ticket until now. You should all apologise, because you all but Lotto tickets!
I just checked my employment rules. They don’t state I have to disclose an interest in buying Lotto ticket and, just in case, I checked the Lotto rules too. Nothing there either.
I believe there are rules in Seymour’s situation which hundreds of MPs in recent years have understood and followed. Many or most I believe would have been most assiduous about it too, realising that not being so would lead to embarrassment and harassment.
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