Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on Chris Hipkins defending using taxpayer-funded private super scheme for holiday home

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has defended using a generous publicly funded private superannuation scheme to pay off the mortgage of his family holiday home.

Hipkins confirmed he pays the maximum contribution, but he also contributes to KiwiSaver, meaning the full amount of contribution will not be paid towards the super scheme that owns his home.

MPs are allowed to direct these savings into private superannuation funds, which Hipkins has done.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper explained further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's coming out thirteen to five. Barry Soper, Welcome to
the studio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Good afternoon, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Do we still want to talk about Nasville and the
Pharmacy Conservation Trust? Would you rather talk about it? Would
you rather talk about this man, mister n I do,
who is up as a labor candidate. He's at number.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thirteen, very high.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Unlucky for some, lucky for others. Well, it's unlucky for
him today because.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It seems he didn't cub anybody informed.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well he claimed he did, and said Chris Hopkins. But
then we got now Richard Chambers saying I only found
out last night. Mark Mitchell only found out last night.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah. Look, it's just unacceptable. And this man is not
a junior policeman, police superintendent, so he's been in the
police obviously a long time. He was the ethnic Ewian
community's national partnership manager with the police, so he held
a very high position. And Chris Hopkins said, he said, look,

(00:52):
everything is in line. You know, he did all that
was required of him. Well, Mark Mitchell, he said today
the Minister that he only was made aware of Naidoo's
political aspirations last night, for goodness sake, ahead of this
morning's announcement, and it seem that that view was corroborated

(01:14):
by the Police commissioner today who had spoken obviously to
Nadu and he was Richard Chambers was told that yeah,
he was standing and he only found out yesterday as well.
So look, this is not good enough. It was put
to Chris Luxen. He says, it's disappointing that Nadou didn't
declare his interests earlier.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
We expect public servants and police to be politically neutral.
I think it would have been advantageous for him and
for the Labor Party frankly for him to have declared
his political intentions to his employer, the police. I think
if a Canada wants to run for office, they need
to declare that with their employer pretty early.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, and you know you can see that. And of
course that's important because the point that Mark Mitchell has
made is that this police superintendent he would have been
privy not just to highly sensitive information being the position
that he held on the police, but also what the government,

(02:11):
the National Party was planning further down the track. Now
you know that's you know, I wouldn't say that this
nine fellow would be inside of trading. But nevertheless, it
opens itself to having a knowledge that you shouldn't have.
He's standing as a candidate for an opposition.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, and it's just transparency, which is something
that the Labor Party has been caught on too many
times over the last five years.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Okay, while we're on the subject of Chris Hopkins, do
you want to talk about him using a super fund
to pay his holiday house mortgage. The difference between him
and Foster is at least he has a mortgage, whereas
Foster didn't have a mortgage.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
But I.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Found it fascinating that he's using a super fund, he says,
to pay off a mortgage on a holiday house up
there Copty Coast. But either the very slow payers or
he said, the family has had this holiday house for
forty years. Okay, have you had it for forty years?

(03:15):
You're using your mortgage money to pay sorry, your superannuation
money to pay a mortgage.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Now, hold on. When it comes to capital gains tax,
don't they say something like the family home is exemptant
and nothing else is like batches?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You know, I just found his claim because I'd love
to hear his explanation. I'm sure, you'll ask him, why
is he using a superannuation fund to pay for a
mortgage that on a house that the family has owned
for forty years when he was just a little boy.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, exactly. Maybe he's reversed mortgaging it well to pay
for his retirement after picking up his massive, massive superannuation
that he gets from being a parliamentarian and former prime minister.
For a very brief moment of time, Okay, stop me there.
Nationals announce a policy ike labor. They announced the list.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's hardly an earth shattering policy. It's doubling the permanent
baseline funding for the Q two A National Trust. And
what that does is it provides money for farmers to
build fences and what have you, to ensure that they're
respecting the conservation of the land that they own. And

(04:29):
when they double, when they say they're doubling the funding,
that's if they're re elected, it'll go from four point
two to about eight point five million years. So it's
not a lot, but it's a permanent thing. Act leader
David Seymour he's welcoming National's commitment to increase the funding,
saying it reflects an idea champion by Act, of course,

(04:49):
and when the Prime Minister was told that, he was
absolutely delighted.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
That is awesome that we've got by partisanship on a
critical idea and that the good farmers of New Zealand
can know it between the respective government parties, that I've
got support, which is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Is that exciting?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Is that what you want to see?

Speaker 1 (05:07):
His learning isn't He's learning has played?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Do you know? I thought that too.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
I thought that was a quick repulse, quick repast.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, and I think it was quite funny.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Fantastic, so very soper of course, to our political correspondent.
It's coming up eight to five. It's News Talks MB.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
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