Labour Party leader Phil Goff's Wellington investment property which he is looking to let, despite saying he would sell it 18 months ago, is his superannuation, he told TV3 last night.
Goff was looking to rent the two bedroom Thorndon apartment for NZ$380 a week while living elsewhere in Wellington, TV3 reported.
The median rent for a two bedroom flat in Wellington is NZ$310, according to data from the Department of Building and Housing.
In a media statement, Goff said the property had been let for the past decade. The most recent tenant left three weeks ago after a three year tenancy.
Over the last 10 years the median sale price for dwellings in Wellington Central has risen 73% from NZ$301,500 in November 2000 to NZ$522,500 in November 2010, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand.
"When I ceased to be a Minister following the 2008 election, I could not move back into my property because it was tenanted. I instead moved into a rental property," Goff said.
Goff said he had been trying to sell the property by way of private sale. “I’m negotiating with two people that have an interest in buying it," he said.
"Before the property can be sold, there are several maintenance issues that need to be resolved. For example, a shower has not been working properly. While this has been fixed temporarily, I have been advised that it will take until late January to be fixed permanently," Goff said in the media release.
'It's my superannuation'
“Why am I renting it out? Because it’s an investment property, it’s my superannuation," Goff told TV3. He was looking to rent it out on a six month lease, TV3 reported.
A newspaper advertisement for the apartment said it was in a quiet tower block with harbour views. No pets or smoking are allowed, and it would suit a professional or retired couple. Whiteware and a carpark were provided.
Here is the media statement sent out by Goff before the TV3 story went to air last night:
Today I have been approached by TV3 regarding my investment property in Wellington. It is important that the facts are made clear.
My accommodation arrangements are within Parliamentary rules. There is no rort here.
The property has been let for the past decade from when I became a Minister in the fifth Labour Government and I occupied a Ministerial house.
The most recent tenant departed three weeks ago after a tenancy of three years. That tenancy commenced when I was a Minister.
When I ceased to be a Minister following the 2008 election, I could not move back into my property because it was tenanted. I instead moved into a rental property.
I have been exploring the options of renting and selling the property, with the help of a friend, who also works in the Labour Leader’s Office. He has been helping me in a personal capacity.
Four people have viewed the property in the past fortnight with a view to renting the property. One of those people was a friend of Jason Ede, a senior National staffer working in the Prime Minister’s office. He declined the property this morning. I was contacted by TV3 this afternoon.
There has also been interest from the most recent tenant and from a neighbour to buy the property. A real estate agent has also viewed the property and took photographs yesterday. The agent provided advice about value and sale options.
Before the property can be sold, there are several maintenance issues that need to be resolved. For example, a shower has not been working properly. While this has been fixed temporarily, I have been advised that it will take until late January to be fixed permanently.
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30 Comments
After all the grief they gave to English, who was within the rules too but paid back the money and is not claiming his entitlement, it makes Goff look like a fool and if he leads Labour into the next election it just goes to show how shallow their talent pool is.
The worst thing is a taxpayer funded staffer is showing people around for him, no doubt a highly paid one which has cost us more than the $257 that Pansy Wong repaid and resigned over.
Phil - a lot of peoples' superannuations have been destroyed under Labour's watch during the time of plenty. This is pretty rich coming from Labour's leader now.
Mr Goff, get with the game and look to Bernard Hickey as a guide - you too may need to take a haircut, an awful lot of your constituents have had to, and they did not have the benefit of waiting for things to get better like you do, all at our expense!
I can imagine Mr Goof apart from claiming for all parliamentary allowances, he might as well claim for any income tax losses on investment property..
There isn't anything illegal about this but there is a clear distinction to what he is allow to do and being morally right.
Typical politician... a bunch of liars
David Farrar has his take on this at Kiwiblog:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/12/goffs_judgement.html
"Then to compound his already multiple misjudgements, he defends his renting it out as “it’s my superannuation”.
"Can you think of a phrase more likely to piss off the voters? Because Phil Goff is one of those rare MP on the old gold plated parliamenary super scheme. After 30 years in Parliament he will leave with a massive superannuation payout – well into seven figures.
Now if I were John Key, I'd call an early election to co-incide with the scheduled By-Election for Botany. That way he gets to say (1) "I'll save the electorate the cost of Pansy's By-Election~ and she can re-stand to let her elctorate give it's verdict on her" (2) The oppostion is in disarray! Get in before a 'third force' can marshall support and (3) Get 'the first term' out of the way, and get a mandate to push ahead with what needs to be done in ouir floundering economy.
Come on, John! The political planets will never be better aligned.....
More to the point Nick .....regardless of your political leanings.....this is a sure sign of John Boy feeling the heat of the spotlights and trying desperately to deflect some of the burn.
The cut n dry of it mate is that Key is looking less n less THE MAN as the weeks pass a clueless money trader simply lacking the expertise required for the job.
That said.... your strategy is probably there thereabouts sound.....from what I'm seeing ..hearing ..daily ,..the hordes will come out and vote en mass next Nov.
Default mode.
???.
In electoral terms, Goff has laid a massive turd that is very whiffy. However much he tries to polish this, I doubt it will get any less whiffy. Applying sheen of "This is a prime ministerial office dirty trick to draw attention to my massive turd" does not alter the fact this is a whiffy, massive turd.
I've been surprised before and I will be again. And one of the bigger surprises is if he is still labour leader at the next election after this news. I'll be moderately surprised if he makes it to Jan 31, 2011.
It shows again in stead of concentrate and lift production - the real economy, politicians are more interested on their own world – the NZproperty addiction.
Reading Farrar's blog another greedy Labour leader.
One only has to watch how he walks and one knows how he talks.
Speaking of haircuts.......did you see Bernard's Mad Max.." bad guy".. revisited doo......oooooooohwhee time for another doubleshot with Bolly and this time maybe lean on him a little.
Bernard...while you don't strike me as the litigious type...you have to consider suing the stylist before the evidence gets lost in the regrowth....eh..?
SOme good points from another site;
Phil Goff has managed to not actually break the rule on accomodation funding, yet still manage to get himself seen as hypocritical, having broken his word, demonstrating a sense of entitlement, and inappropriately using taxpayer funded staff to do commercial business for him.
The issues are quite complicated, so let us start from the beginning.
At some stage in the 1990s Phil Goff purchased an apartment in Wellington, and lived in it. Parliamentary Service would have paid him an accomodation allowance up to the level of the interest on his mortgage.
Then he became a Minister and got provided with a ministerial house. So he moved into the Ministerial House (which by chance was two minutes from where I live) and rented out his apartment. Nothing too out of the ordinary here.
Then Labour lost the election, and Goff lost his ministerial house. At this stage he had a choice. He could move back into his apartment, or he could rent out a new apartment at taxpayer expense and continue to rent out his apartment.
By this stage it is almost inevitable that the mortgage has been paid off. So if Goff moved back into his own apartment, he would not get a taxpayer funded accomodation allowance.
Goff has claimed he could not move back into his apartment as it had tenants. This is a red herring. S51(1)(a) of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 states that only 42 days notice is needed to terminate a tenancy if the owner wishes to live there. With the election loss in early November, the apartment could have been free by the end of December.
But Goff chose the route which is of maximum benefit to himself. Now he is far far alone in doing so. In 2008 such arrangements were still secret as john Key and Lockwood Smith had not opened the arrangements up to public scrutiny. So I don’t judge harshly MP’s decisions in the pre-transparency era.
But then we had the transparency and Labour ripped into Bill English for his accomodation allowance use. Note that Bill English was actually found by three Speakers and the Auditor-General to be entitled to a Wellington accomodation allowance.
At that time Phil Goff was asked about his situation where he claims an accomodation allowance, and gains rental income from his property in Wellington. Goff could have defended his right to do so, but instead he pledged “The flat is currently tenanted and I plan to sell it”, as reported by TV3.
That was a very clear indication that he planned to sell it, no later than when the tenants moved out. He could incidentially have sold it at any time the tenants were there – in fact it is probably easier to sell with tenants in it. He had 18 montsh to live up to his word and sell it, and quite simply has just not bothered to do so.
You might expect such a mistake from a junior MP, but from the Leader of the Opposition it is worse. If you make a public commitment, and in a time of such scrutiny on these things, you should follow through on it.
But worse the current tenants moved out, and Goff doesn’t sell the place as promised. He advertises for new tenants. And worse he gets a member of his taxpayer funded staff to be listed as the contact person, and on four occassions show people around the apartment – during work hours.
This is a breach of the rules. That is using taxpayer resources to help Phil Goff make private money. It is in fact the exact thing they hounded Pansy Wong for.
It staggers me that the Leader of the Opposition would agree to having one of his staff be listed as the contact person for his private investment property. That is massively bad judgement. Of course Goff may not have time to do it himself – but there are specialist property managers such as Quinovic who will do it for a fee. Basically Goff chose to use a free taxpayer funded staffer, rather than pay for a professional.
Then to compound his already multiple misjudgements, he defends his renting it out as “it’s my superannuation”.
Can you think of a phrase more likely to piss off the voters? Because Phil Goff is one of those rare MP on the old gold plated parliamenary super scheme. After 30 years in Parliament he will leave with a massive superannuation payout – well into seven figures.
Then Goff blunders again on TV3. He defends his staffer working on renting out his apartment as doing it as a friend, not as a staffer and not in paid time. But this is clearly untrue – at least two of the interviews were done during the day.
I’ve worked for a political party leader, and yes they can be yogur friend as well as a boss. I’ve gone around to their place to fix their home PC (which you could argue anyway is needed for work). But when doing this, always on a Saturday.
Having a staffer find tenants for your investment property is an appalling error of judgement for the man who wants to be Prime Minister.
And in the media today, Goff carries on saying that he was entitled to do what he did, as it was within the rules. Has he learnt nothing from the last 18 months – that the public hate hearing those words “within the rules”. If he was smart, he would apologise for not keeping his word and most of all for using taxpayer funded staff to find tenants for his residential investment proper ty.tyty
They desperately want to win ............. Seriously , they do !
The problem is , that they're so far up their ivory towers of largesse at the tax-payers' expense , that they don't know that many hate them . 50 % + of the population abhor Labour . Some of us despise their welfarism , and are long-term anti-Labour . And many more are sickened by the 9 years of Clark & Cullen . The gay years of politics . The ramping up of government spending , far in XS of GDP growth . The intrusion into your parenting , light-bulbs , daily bread ( folate , anyone ? ) , and shower-heads . The arrogant " we know best , sit down and shut-up " attitude that they gave us .
Goofy , Klinger & Cunny are an integral part of that era . ... They promise to bolt onto the government's seriously dopey policies of '99-'08 . More of that crap ........ not less !
Goff the hypocrite! What's new?
This is why the 9 year property bubble was NEVER stopped under Labour ( nor National i might add) They are all in it up to there eyeballs including other insider corruption. They won't stop the power companies BECAUSE they have their dirty little fingers in there, they won't stop the Telcos ripping people off with termination (cross network) rates BECAUSE they have their dirty little toes in that.
Corruption the whole way year after year, election after election! And WE deserve to be played for 'mugs' BECAUSE most of us are! "We get the government we deserve".
I am asking and asking;
Why is it a conflict of interest for lawmakers to hold shares in businesses that might be affected by laws they pass, and not a conflict of interest for them to own investment properties that might be affected by laws they pass? Or in this case, obviously NOT pass i.e. land supply liberalisation, CGT's, etc
No wonder the Clark government presided over 9 years of property bubble, if cabinet ministers in it held investment properties. And they made such a fuss over John Key's TranzRail shares. HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY
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