Kiwisaver - ethical investment?
After I caused a spot of trouble for Dr. Cullen by pointing out that NZ Super Fund is investing our taxes in nuclear weapons manufacture etc, I thought it would be interesting to see what they were doing about KiwiSaver funds and responsible investment. And of course it turned out that no-one in Treasury or govt had given this much thought.
So in order to head off further trouble Cullen announced that he would make KiwiSaver providers disclose their responsible investment policies. Now because it was an afterthought for Labour, the responsible investment disclosure policy won’t kick in till April 2008, which is long after the first round of people choose thier provider. But I thought at least its happening.
But then I got to wondering how would they decide what the disclosure requirements would be, and Jeanette submitted some written questions to find this out. And it turned out that Cullen had done a bit of a swifty by appointing a committee to develop the disclosure requirements that had no independent experts on responsible investments. It is of course an old trick - if you’re made to do something you don’t want to do, then appoint a committee to implement it that is fundamentally hostile to the idea.
So the committe that is to decide the responsible invesment disclosure requirements has government officials plus three reps from the industry and no-one who could be considered an independent expert on responsible investment. I did a release about it and there was a good story on Radio NZ. We need some independent experts on responsible investment on this committee. It’s not good enough to leave it up to the same people who thought it was ok to invest in nuclear weapons manufacture.
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I see in a very recent Consumer magazine (NZ) that they had looked into this Sustainable Ethical Investment. Joy.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Great to have waived this flag in front of the gov’t, but the whole concept of Socially Responsible/Ethical Investment all sounds good on paper but in reality it’s a different story…Many of these SRI/Ethical funds often include big global bank names (BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Westpac etc ) who, make no mistake, are lending to sectors that wouldn’t qualify for entry into any SRI fund on their own merit. e.g If Westpac lends to British American Tobacco, then by investing in Westpac you’re indirectly supporting a tobacco company… These SRI funds often have piles of cash on the side which get invested into securities such as US T-Bills & US Treasuries=indirect funding of the US war machine amongst other activities. Beware all the big nasty corporates such as Nestle out there with fancy written corporate governance/sustainability policy statements (”Corporate Greenwashing”), all very cynical attempts to be considered as contenders for this sector. Better to avoid these funds and instead do serious due diligence name by name with very strict criteria bearing in mind above comments. This aside, the investment industry in NZ needs cleaning up. Gareth Morgan is bang on the mark with all the corrupt practices he has recently exposed. These should all have been addressed & resolved PRE-Kiwisaver launch.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:13 pm
KiwiSaver can invest in the hedge funds that will crush Bollard and our dollar. Then our pensions will grow fat as our fund managers loot the country in the wake of the currency crash.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:44 am
George Soros & Co took on and won the war with Bk of England, RNBZ has nowhere near enough in its coffers to fight off hedge fund traders & the likes of Mrs Watanabe. Kiwsaver should also be free to invest in commodity funds, great tools to hedge against inflation and coming USD collapse, particulary those heavily weighted towards oil & gold (some view this as the ultimate ccy, their theory being 1USD isn’t worth the paper its written on, and they’re probably correct).
June 24th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Boot
Note that the difference here is that we’re not defending a high price but promoting a low one. If the Reserve Bank prints a hundred trillion NZ dollars to buy foreign currency (and we can if we want to pay the price in import inflation) the value WILL come down.
The reverse side, defending a high value of the currency is much harder.
The opposition isn’t Soros but the Fed, which has its own printing press and the race to the bottom is not a desireable outcome either. The situations aren’t symmetric with defending a higher currency vs forcing it lower.
Either way the RB needs assistance from the finance minister in setting rational levels of taxation and making policies that don’t encourage the speculation. That assistance has been if extremely short supply except to the extent that the Finance minister has been sequestering money by running a surplus (which would cool inflation if only it were locked up in the super fund or used to pay down debt).
I would agree with the comment on Kiwisaver, although I would be loathe to trust a fund manager to do anything but lose my money.
Personally I’d prefer a couple of bars of Silver. I don’t trust the Gold because there is too much gaming in that market, and while oil is harder to ultimately deny its day, the big players have too many advantages for my taste.
respectfully
BJ
June 24th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Generally I agree with boot about ethical investing. You cannot invest ethically in an an unethical economy.
But that is economic fundamentalism, and just because it is true, it is not very useful.
It is possible for investment funds to publish a code of ethics and then only consider investments that “pass” the code.
That is then useful.
W
June 24th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Russel, good post. Since when has the Government considered ethical investment? Looks like we may see a bit of funds transfer in March 2008, then.
However, employees may not necessarily choose their provider, many may not even know where their funds are invested. Their employer may make these decisions for them unless told otherwise by savvy employees. People in current super schemes may find that their employer has opted out of their current schemes in favour of KiwiSaver, making Kiwisaver a defacto 1 percent annual pay rise - payable at retirement age - with no real increase in savings and a real decrease in wages.
Thats just as unethical as investing in nuclear weapons manufacture.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:23 am
mixed polling messages for the greens over the last couple of days..
the herald digi-poll has them under 4%..
yet the listener readers poll has them kneck and kneck in a three-way split with national/labour..
(wot to make of those conflicting messages..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 25th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Phil
I suggest that someone of your limited ability (as professed above) to interpret polling results might eventually come to realise that different sectors of the demographic were polled by the two publications mentioned.
I myself seldom read the Herald, but never miss the Listener.
Got the point yet? The smart people were asked the right questions, by an intelligent use of the journalistic medium.
Time for me to go and start cooking, ignoring TV1 and perusing TV3 for signs of intelligentsia.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
so..katie..everything is just peachy-dandy..eh..?
4% support..?
nah..!..nothing to worry/think about/re-evaluate there..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 26th, 2007 at 1:03 am
phil, for goodness sake read what katie actually wrote!
June 26th, 2007 at 5:01 am
I very much doubt whether there are any polls on offer which actually take a sample of the NZ population which is anywhere near accurate, so I tend to view them much like those sun sign horoscopes-fun to read, but not to be taken seriously.
June 26th, 2007 at 9:36 am
kevyn says..
“..phil, for goodness sake read what katie actually wrote!..”
yes..and..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 26th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
phil,
if your brain was as big as your ego you woldn’t need to ask that question.
June 26th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Whoa there Kevyn! phil u raises legitimate questions, and deserves to be treated with respect. I also think it likely that phil is highly intelligent.
The topic of polls might be best discussed on its own thread, however.
June 26th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Katie.
So dumb people read the Herald and only “intelligent” people with superior political insight read the Listener so therefore they will be the ones that will count this coming elections? No wonder Labour won the election? Only the “intelligent” Listener reader’s votes were counted!
Kevyn.
I know that Phil can be a little annoying. But dude!
June 26th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Kevyn
You know what you did.
Please don’t do it again.
BJ
June 27th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Um, folks, I never actually accused phil of lacking intelligence, sorry if I gave that impression.
Should I respect someone who accused me of being trailer trash? Westie yes, trailer trash never.
If phil had phrased his response to katie as succinctly as sleepytreehugger he might have started a good debate on the merits or otherwise of political polls.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:34 am
kevyn said..
“..Westie yes..trailer trash never…”
(heh-heh..!..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 27th, 2007 at 10:52 am
It’s actually nothing to do with who reads the Herald. The Herald’s political poll is not a poll of their own readership, it is a poll of wider society. It happens to be biased against the Green Party, as is the TV1 poll, because of the methods they use to try and get an accurate sample. In contrast NBR polls are biased in favour of the Green Party, because of a fault in the way they go about trying to get an accurate sample. If the polls reflected the bias of the publications or their readers, I doubt that the NBR would be the one with the most pro-Green results.
I tend to assume that the TV3 polls (and the Sunday Star times ones, but they only do them in election year) come closest to giving an accurate result.
The listener’s poll WAS a poll of their own readership, and an extremely unscientific one at that, because it was only the people who choose to reply. It probably gives you an accurate picture of how popular the various parties are among the subset of Listener readers who like filling out readers’ poll.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:09 am
thank you kahikatea for saying what i couldn’t summon up the energy to..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 5th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Russell, Does Land Transport NZ have an ethical investment policy for the funds that it has to invest at the start of multi-year major transport projects? Since it can no longer pre-commit funds from future revenues (standard practice between 1924 and 2002) and now has to have the funds available it must have several hundred millions invested somewhere.
July 14th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Wouldn’t it be nice if this thread stuck to the topic - which was “Ethical Investment” in case you’ve all forgotten.
For those of us free to choose our own KiwiSaver provider, can someone please recommend an ethical one.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:49 am
There seems no “ethical” investment choice…. I would therefore be inclined to one that is NZ owned and operated, and there are a couple of those.
I note that damned few of them advise of their rates either.
Makes me a bit unhappy that there is no insurance provided for any of them, now that we have added Bridgecorp to the stack of dead losses that have consumed the cash of NZ investors.
That has to be ONE of the most important reasons why NZ investors choose to invest in housing… the near total lack of meaningful oversight, transparency, regulation and just plain honesty in the rest of the investment environment here.
respectfully
BJ
July 14th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I spoke to Asteron yesterday - they are apparently launching their ethical Kiwisaver fund in the next couple of weeks. If you ring them they will put you on a mailing list to send the investment statement once it’s all ‘official’
August 19th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I am waiting to hear if Prometheus can offer Kiwisaver. Does anyone know of any other truly ethical investment plans? Surely there are some other options out there???
August 20th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Hi Ecomonkey -
I did some research on this it’s here -
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR11066.html
Basically only Asteron at this stage - Prometheus still investigating whether to do it.
cheers
Russel
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Thanks Russel - interesting report.
I have received info from Asteron but to be honest, negative screening on it’s own just doesn’t work for me. IMHO it is not true ethical or socially responsible investment to simply avoid investing in certain companies. Investment in clearly ethical & sustainable companies is well overdue.
I hope the options change soon, in the meantime, I’ll keep holding out for Prometheus - fingers crossed!
October 26th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Asteron offers a “responsible” option as one of 7 or so to choose from. Problem is there is a 7 year minimum inverstment period if you choose this. So no good for people like me who want to take advantage of the first home buyer govt. contribution within the next few years. (Checked this out with Asteron a couple of months ago - probably still current info.)
Does anyone know more about this Gareth Morgan character?
(yeh i kno this is a real old thread and probably everyone moved onto different topics bit i’m still interested!)