Written By: - Date published: 6:42 pm, September 10th, 2009 - 45 comments
Categories: bill english, corruption, housing, parliamentary spending -
Tags: MPs accommodation rort
More questions about English’s ministerial housing allowance rort in the House today:
Key wasn’t in the House to answer the questions and normally English would have answered on his behalf but, instead, National pulled one of it’s favourite tricks - using the Government’s power to assign questions to an idiot who didn’t know the answers (Brownlee) rather than English. Still the exchange was enlightening. Here are the important exchanges:
Hon Pete Hodgson: Can the Minister confirm that his deputy, the Hon Bill English, provided a signed document to Ministerial Services on 1 February this year declaring that he no longer had a pecuniary interest in his family trust, the Endeavour Trust?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The Minister responsible for Ministerial Services does not have a deputy. However, I can confirm that, yes, that is the case. The member will know that, because it was in an Official Information Act release that he received last Monday.
Hon Pete Hodgson: Would a Minister who claims no pecuniary interest in a trust but is still a settlor, or has a right to appoint trustees, or still decides the vesting date, and is therefore still one of only two people controlling the trust, be entitled to Ministerial Services’ funding for a residence owned by the trust?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That would depend entirely on the structure of the trust.
Hon Pete Hodgson: Would the Minister therefore advise his colleague the Hon Bill English to publicly release the trust deed so that these questions might be cleared up?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: What I am advising my colleague the Hon Bill English to do is to hold his head up high, because he is an honest man. He does not have to bend to the jealous and pathetic attacks coming from the Labour Opposition.
Hon Pete Hodgson: Has he sought an explanation from Ministerial Services or from the Hon Bill English as to why changes to the trust deed were purportedly made prior to the election last year, but the title was not changed until 12 March this year?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The salient word in that question is ‘purported’. We do not take actions in this case on the basis of what are, effectively, baseless allegations from the Opposition.
Hon Pete Hodgson: Will the Minister seek an explanation from Ministerial Services, or from the Hon Bill English, as to why changes to the trust deed were purportedly made before the election last year—that is what the Hon Bill English says—but the title was not changed until 12 March this year; if he will not, why will he not?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The answer to that question has been given publicly before. Quite often these things take time to effect, although the intention is made very clear at the time. It is quite a simple matter.
I’m thinking that Labour has some hint of how the trust is set up to create a fiction where English doesn’t have a pecuniary interest in the home he and his family live in while, in reality, he still controls it. It is obviously a rort. Otherwise, English would clear everything up by giving a full and frank explanation rather than hiding. It will be difficult to get a copy of the actual trust deed (it’s disgraceful that a senior politician can conceal their affairs like this) but as Labour keeps pulling at the threads, something is going to come loose.
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It does seem to be a nact meme. Put up monkeys to answer difficult questions
and not a peep on the TV news tonight or on radio that I heard. Why are the journo’s letting English and Key get away with it?
conditioning from Labour, they are scared of having their press gallery privileges revoked.
The main thing they should be following up is that English obviously set up the trust to rort the system. Legal or not he set it up so he could get as much out of the system as he could. Then he sat back while Bennett et al go stuck into beneficiaries for doing their best for their kids. THAT’s what they should be pushing – his immorality.
Smells like toast burning to me.
English’s exit would be welcome to Key, but a rather tricky one to manage.
Surely in the pursuit of openness and transparency the deed should be released. I bet a beneficiary would have to disclose the deed. Why should a Minister be different?
Marty G said: Otherwise, English would clear everything up by giving a full and frank explanation rather than hiding.
As I blogged yesterday, Marty, this whole thing could be sorted out, one way or the other, if English would produce the relevant documentation. That he does not, leads to the presumtion that he has something to hide.
And if he actually did give legal instructions to amend the Trust deed before the election last year, but those instructions were not actioned until 12 March this year, I would suggest that he should be shopping around for a solicitor who can action things a bit quicker than that.
It is plausible that his solicitor was tardy, but what he claims happened is an extreme delay for a relatively simple legal process.
My bet is that it is a rort. When he knew he was going to be a Minsiter, he saw the opportunity to maximise his pecuniary gain, and took it.
It worked, too – Brownlee scored a point with this:
Hodgson’s good at this dogged investigative gumshoe sort of thing, but buffoonery defuses his seriousness.
L
That’s scoring a point in your books Lew? Hell, why don’t they just get up there and do a stand up routine?… probably get them elected for life in your world
captcha (and I swear I’m not making this up) POLICY
Marty, Question Time is a stand-up routine. Its purpose is to hold the government to account, and to show off your debating chops. With this Q&A, Brownlee managed to not only avoid answering the question, but distract from the (very important) material of that question such that his quip is what’s memorable, not the question itself. It got played on Checkpoint. It’s what people will take away from the exchange.
L
It makes a mockery of the fuss they tried to create about well off families (tho a lot less well off than English) getting WFF. Brownlee’s dumb act shows the contempt the govt has for parliament – why bother to reply when their media pals will cover their backs?
why demand English open the deed for all to see? As far as i’m concerned all “trusts” should be opened for all to see, in fact I say trusts should be banned.
I ask .. why do people (read rich people) put assets into trusts?
re beneficiaries Ron .. there are thousands ripping us off. I know a few myself.
Why don’t I dob them in I here you say .. yeh right, not keen on having the house fire bombed.
Do you even understand what a trust is?
My point, Jabba, is that while PB was having a go at the to women highlighting the cuts in training support, and one of her bosses was sneakily setting himself up for a big rip off. And then HIS boss thinks that’s ok.
And no I don’t think you should name people here or anywhere else. If you have proof of benefit fraud you should take it to the appropriate authorities. Not that I think you have any.
You can’t ban trusts, it’s impossible. You’re saying you should ban people looking after property for others.
But then again the Left like banning first and then thinking later, if at all.
AS far as I can see the predominant use of trusts is to rort tax and other law. The system needs a total rebuild… of course we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater but the bathwater looks pretty damn dirty.
oh and trusts are a legal instrument, so, in theory, the law enabling them could simply be overwritten – bang, no more trusts.
So Papa Bear and Mama Bear own a family home. They die in a car accident leaving 1 year old Baby Bear.
Baby Bear doesn’t really have the mental capacity to look after the family home until he is much older.
Don’t you think we need some ‘legal instrument’ to leave the family home in the trust of someone responsible until he does have the capacity to look after the family home?
I’m pretty sure there’s an easy solution to the problem you suggest that doesn’t involve legal entities that allow people to rort the taxpayers as Double Dipton is doing.
Well please explain the easy solution to me.
The above is simple law school type example of what a trust is to deomonstrate to the jabba’s of this world what a basic trust is. There are numerous reasons why property needs to be in trust. It is not all about rorting the system.
I don’t see the need to restructure and in any case do not have an answer for how this can be restructured, perhaps you do?
How about all income earned by a trust is taxed at a flat rate of 30 or 38%?
Peter Dunne is moving to have the resident witholding rate, the default tax rate charged on investment returns when you don’t specify your tax code (eg, tax you pay on interest you earn on a bank account) from the current 19.5% up to 38%. So why not do the same thing for trusts while you’re at it?
Sure, there might be some people who are disadvantaged by this, but it would make trusts decidedly less easy to use as a tax shelter.
I came up with this suggestion with 30 seconds of thought – sure there are problems with it, but it is a *start*. If you’re saying that it seems to be impossible to restructure trusts to avoid rorting in some manner, when I have just shown a very crude way to reduce rorting, then clearly you haven’t thought too hard about the issue. Honestly there’s no reason why a bunch of smart lawyers and policy makers can’t sit down for 6 months and come up with some decent rules on the matter, other than simply the government not wanting to rock the boat and be thrown out at the next election (as they would be when their rich mates get pissed about losing their rortmachines).
What income does Little Bear’s trust earn.
Or the English family trust.
It isn’t earning income
Double Diptons rort isn’t happening because of the mechanism. It’s happening because of his dishonesty. Trusts in themselves serve a purpose. I’m not sure Bill does.
Sigh. Thank you for your mature and sophisticated contribution, Marty. Are you going to call for Labour’s MPs to reveal all the details around their trusts as well?
I don’t see where Mr Hodgson gets the better of Mr Brownlee. There is no evidence that Labour has any knowledge of Mr English’s trust. It looks to me that Labour is on a fishing expedition.
Yet again Labour is playing the man, not the ball. I hope at this conference they start getting some direction.
The law doesn’t enable trusts Marty. Trusts are enabled by settlors. The law can only regulate trusts so that (mostly) no fraud is committed on the trust.
Guys, this is way too breathless. The real story today is Labour’s retreat on the RMA reforms.
It is laughable to think English is on the ropes. The press did not cover it because there is no mileage in this story.
Being in opposition is a tough business and right now Labour is all tired tactics and no strategy. At this rate, there are many long years ahead . ..
And one more comment, The Standard has a critical role to play to rebuilding the centre-left, but right now all you are doing is making Labour feel they are doing a ‘triffic’ job.
Reinforcing abject failure will not put the centre-left back in government
When will the troughing stop ?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2853355/English-asks-for-taxpayer-funded-house-cleaning
Tim. English is the ball. He is the treasurer. Playing fast and loose with my tax money for his own benefit does not make me confident that he isn’t going to do the same thing elsewhere. Besides this whole thing reeks of blackmail material. I don’t want the treasurer running around with his bloody pants on the paddock. Makes it hard to say no when his fellow mp’s start pushing for their personal empires. That is not good for nz
Fast and loose LP? Nonsense. You want to apply a higher standard of accountability to Mr English than you are prepared to apply to Mr Goff, who owned a property in Wellington, rented it out and then took up ministerial accommodation.
Mr English hasn’t committed a major blunder yet like paying twice over the odds for a rail company.
No he has only been in for about 9 months, not 9 years. His track record in that time indicates that he isn’t up to the job, either at a personal level or professional.
Did Goff move his family to Wellington and then claim his family was still living in Auckland? In other words, lying to gain more benefits. Is he now standing accused of rearranging his affairs to maximize the rorting from the taxpayer?
No – I think not. So you are just being a nice little national party line spinner. Face it – there is no way to spin this to look like anything apart from the Treasurer actively trying to screw NZ taxpayers.
LP one could just as validly say that you’re being a nice little Labour Party line spinner on this issue. The difference is that Labour isn’t getting any traction on this any more than Labour got trying to dig dirt on Mr Key during the last election.
Except I tend to be in broad agreement with the Labour hierarchy rather than slavishly following their current lines. I use my own judgment on issues, which is frequently orthogonal to the hierarchy. Shows in my posts, and any recipient of my e-mails inside labour knows that. I get a lot of squirming when I start letting loose.
Oh, so this morning I was dreaming when I saw this:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2853355/English-asks-for-taxpayer-funded-house-cleaning
and this:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2853295/Come-clean-on-trust-Bill-English-told
On the fist two pages of my paper.
good point, Tim. This is the same as the John Key digging . .. . The public are not interested.
Bill English is a steady hand in a global crisis, whether you agree with his policies or not. That is why this story is not gaining any traction. He is hardly the weak link . . ..
And then there is English’s cleaning bill.
The temerity of the man astounds me.
Oops, sorry gargoyle – didn’t see you had already commented on that.
Read between the lines, his wife is the one pulling the financial strings on this.
She would be the one to know that this house is the same size as that one and wants an extra hour of cleaning.
She is probably the reason they gave up the rural delights of Dipton for the sophistication ( and work) of Wellington)
I suppose it is too much to suggest you might crawl out of the gutter for a whole day ghost. You really do the Labour Party no credit.
I have no connection to the labour party now or previously.
When an elected MP and Minister of Finance gives answers which dont tally with facts about properties that are from the public record then they can come up with the facts . Do you think for one moment if the paper trail supported English completely he wouldnt be sending it to every media outlet in the country.
The ‘claims for an extra hour of cleaning’ were in the Dompost. Its obviously a domestic matter that perhaps Mr English doesnt get involved with so that leaves his pushy wife.
The DP seems to have more info they will selectively drip …drip….. drip
“drip…drip…drip”
agreed.
Crosby|Textor will be in for some overtime managing Bill out of this one.
old bill doing a bit more”COLLECTING” eh. he seems to like that at the taxpayers expense. he wants more money fora cleaner.
he’s got lots of kids. what about them learning self reliance and earning their pocket money?
They are ‘rich pricks’ we have heard so much about be couldnt seem to find and their offspring the ‘spoilt brats’
regarding the comment “do I know what a trust is” .. no not really. I’m a regular jo blogs who has paid my taxes as required since Jan 1974 and am a novice in finance and politics .. I’m trying to catch up.
With the financial collapse both here an abroad, I see con artists protecting their ill gotten gains by way of trusts like (that thieving bstd who placed his porsche in a trust (or was it in his wifes name) and should be shot.
It seems these people risk your money and mine but protect themsleves from failure by using trusts.
There are 1000′s of New Zealanders who have lost all but everthing to these scumbags.
Sorry to be stupid and lacking the brains of some of you people.
jabba, I couldn’t agree more with the thrust of your post
thanks aj
sorry Ron, re do I know of benefit fraud?. I know of a widow who has a new partner with a disability??? who gets a benefit and she does as well as his “helper”. They subsidise their income selling drugs to the extend that both have Harleys, toured the states with said bikes last year and are looking to a trip to Germany this year. Not a bad life style paid by you and me.
Their drug connections are such that I will say nothing .. yes I am a weak link, happy to take them on one on one but cowards hunt in packs.