Are your savings in gun stocks?
KiwiSavers had already made it clear they don’t want their money going into weapons, but most fund providers didn’t listen.
Alarge majority of KiwiSavers wanted gun-free KiwiSaver schemes even before the shootings in Christchurch, but providers have not responded.
Out of the 254 KiwiSaver funds on the market, only 16, offered by seven different KiwiSaver providers, are weapons-free, said former Green MP Barry Coates, who is just weeks away from launching Mindful Money, an online service letting people see whether their KiwiSaver fund is invested in things like weapons.
Coates paid Colmar Brunton to poll New Zealanders about what companies they wanted left out of their KiwiSaver schemes, and it reported that 78 per cent of respondents rated it as ‘‘important’’ that their money was not invested in manufacturers of either military or personal weapons.
Drilling down further, 40 per cent said it was ‘‘very important’’ to them that their money was not invested in makers of personal firearms, with another 23 per cent saying it was ‘‘important’’, and a further 15 per cent saying it was ‘‘somewhat important’’ to them.
Colmar Brunton found that personal and military weapons both ranked as equal sixth in the list of business activities KiwiSavers wanted to avoid supporting.
The only things people felt more strongly about were animal cruelty, human rights abuses, labour rights abuses, tobacco, and alcohol.
The survey was carried out in August and September last year, and the shootings in Christchurch may have heightened resistance to savings being channelled towards producers of personal weapons.
‘‘There are very few KiwiSaver funds in New Zealand which don’t invest in any weapons,’’ Coates said.
There are not many personal firearmsmakers like American Outdoor Brands (owner of Smith & Wesson) available to KiwiSaver funds to invest in, though there are many makers of weaponry for militaries.
But Coates did not see a hard distinction between classes of weaponsmakers.
‘‘Very often military weapons get into the hands of terrorists and individuals,’’ he said.
Several years ago there was an outcry over KiwiSaver funds investing in companies involved with nuclear weapons, antipersonnel mines and cluster munitions.
But Coates said: ‘‘Most of the
New Zealand providers excluded those, but they didn’t go any further.’’
People had to take ethical decisions about where they wanted their KiwiSaver money invested, Coates said.
‘‘Somewhere down the line, people need to make a judgement on particular issues. What tends to happen is people never make those judgement calls.’’
That left them trusting their KiwiSaver provider would invest ethically.
Going weapons-free in KiwiSaver will be easier when Coates’ Mindful Money service launches, but it is already possible.
The Simplicity KiwiSaver scheme went weapons-free in June last year.
Simplicity founder Sam Stubbs said apart from low-cost rival KiwiSaver scheme Juno, he was not aware of any other KiwiSaver scheme that was weapons-free.
Both the Christian KiwiSaver scheme and Amanah KiwiSaver scheme, which was designed to adhere to tenets of the Islamic faith, both also exclude investing money in any company that makes weapons.
Coates said some KiwiSaver scheme providers such as Booster, AMP and ANZ did have ethical funds which were weapons-free, without having taken the step of making every fund in their schemes weapons-free.
Stubbs said gun-makers had not been good investments anyway.
When Simplicity was deciding whether to go weapons-free, it looked to see how it would have performed had it never invested in guns, alcohol, or tobacco, and the performance would have been better without all three sectors.
‘‘They ended up not only being a less ethical investment, but they were bad investments as well over the past five years,’’ he said.
‘‘If you asked the average KiwiSaver if they wanted their money invested in these things, they would say no,’’ Stubbs said.
It is not the weapons-makers that have been the epicentre of investors’ anger after the Christchurch shootings.
The shootings were livestreamed on Facebook, and videos of the killings were distributed on it and other social media channels, which has led the NZ Super Fund, and some KiwiSaver providers like Milford, to challenge the social media platforms to take responsibility for allowing the publication of murder videos.
Most KiwiSaver funds also own
‘‘To Facebook, KiwiSaver funds are a ‘rounding error’, but the sovereign wealth funds have got a fair shot of getting the ear of Mark Zuckerberg and co.’’ Sam Stubbs of Simplicity
Facebook shares.
Stubbs applauded the NZ Super Fund’s stance, but called on it to rally other sovereign wealth funds to demand change from Facebook, which appears to have become the world’s largest distributor of murder videos.
‘‘It should be able to lobby the other sovereign wealth funds to take action,’’ he said. ‘‘To Facebook, KiwiSaver funds are a ‘rounding error’, but the sovereign wealth funds have got a fair shot of getting the ear of Mark Zuckerberg and co.’’
Mark Ryland, chief executive of Milford, said: ‘‘The sharing of such content across social media is devastating. Not acknowledging any responsibility for their platforms is not acceptable. Social media companies need to provide genuine assurance around their course of action.’’