Annual peep shows politicians’ financial nous

And there are broader themes, too. Here’s what I can tell you about the money lives of politicians:

If you wonder why successive Governments have done diddly-squat to sort out housing affordability, consider that almost everyone in Parliament has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. With the exception of a handful of (mostly young) MPs, politicians of all stripes own property. Usually they register a family home, and sometimes an apartment or second dwelling in Wellington. But it doesn’t stop there.

You won’t catch an MP driving for Uber at the weekends. This is what you’d hope for, given we’re paying them big bucks to focus on their actual job. But there were a few side-streams of income: David Seymour received a fee for twerking up a storm on Dancing With the Stars (which he donated to charity) and Paul Goldsmith declared royalties and fees from book projects, which include biographies of John Banks, Don Brash, and Alan Gibbs.

Roughly one in three MPs are either the director of an (active) company, or have a controlling stake in one. Their businesses mostly involve farming, horticulture and property, but also include everything from kids’ clothing, to consulting, marketing, retail, and hospitality.

To recap: our MPs are saving for retirement, have diverse investment interests, keep their work-hours focused on the main job, and have made some lucrative property investments.

That last one makes me a little uncomfortable, insofar as they might find it hard to relate to the sense of urgency felt by those locked out of the housing market.

But on the whole, I’m not too worried about politicians having business interests, or earning the epithet of ‘‘rich pricks’’. These are the people we’re trusting to run our country. If they’ve shown some basic competence in their lives outside of politics, that gives me a tiny bit more hope that they might actually be worthy of making decisions for the rest of us.