Norman Russel William: Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill — First Reading 
Norman Russel William: Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill — First Reading 
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Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill. The Green Party will be voting for this bill because the Green Party is a strong supporter of ethical and responsible investment. I think it is important to begin by talking about the rationale behind a bill like this. Fundamentally there are two basic ideas. The first is the objective to make capital cheaper and more available to businesses that are acting responsibly. So for businesses that are not destroying the planet and hopefully are trying to make it a better place we want to make capital cheaper and more available in order to make it easier for them to expand and prosper. For businesses that are acting irresponsibly and destroying the planet we want to make capital more expensive and less available to them. 
There are numerous other ways that we can influence the behaviour of businesses but one way to do it is through the availability of capital—the cost and easy accessibility of capital. A number of large sovereign funds around the world have adopted responsible investment criteria in order to achieve that. 
The second major purpose of ethical investment is about us living in a way that we think is ethical and investing our savings—whether those are collective savings through the tax system such as the Cullen fund or our own superannuation funds—in a way that is ethical and making a living off them in a way that is ethical. Ethical investment is a system-transforming objective to move our economy in a much more sustainable and humane direction and its objectives relate to what is appropriate ethical behaviour. The bill before us tonight will make a small difference towards that and for that reason we support it. 
The Greens have been strong critics of Labour in the past over its approach to responsible investment so we are very pleased to see this bill. When the Cullen fund was introduced in 2001 my predecessor Rod Donald attempted at great length to put responsible investment clauses into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund legislation in order to make the Cullen fund operate in a responsible way. Unfortunately we were not able to do that and all we got was a clause stating that the Cullen fund was to avoid prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community. That resulted in the fund investing in whale meat in cluster bombs—in fact the Cullen fund quite liked cluster bombs; it was very much into them—and in companies deeply involved in human rights violations labour rights violations severe environmental damage and nuclear weapons systems. The Cullen fund had some very modest direction on responsible investment but its direction was so weak that it proceeded to invest in all sorts of things that most of us would find reprehensible—although obviously not all of us in the House. The problem with the original Cullen fund legislation was that although we tried to put in a responsible investment clause we were blocked at that stage. In spite of Rod Donald’s best efforts to put a responsible investment clause into the legislation the fund went off and started investing in all sorts of things. 
The fund is still invested in all sorts of reprehensible things even today in spite of the Green Party campaigning outside of the legislative framework to stop the fund investing in numerous things. We managed to stop the fund investing in whale meat tobacco and cluster bombs which is a great thing but it is still invested in for example BAE Systems and United Technologies Corporation which make nuclear weapons delivery systems. The fund is still invested in Halliburton which of course is a profiteer from the Iraq war. It is still invested in Rio Tinto and Freeport-McMoRan which are causing massive environmental damage and it is still invested in Wal-Mart which has very poor working conditions and is renowned for its union busting. Those companies with the exception of Halliburton have been ruled out by the Norway Pension Fund. The Norway Pension Fund is the second-biggest sovereign fund in the world. All the oil profits that go into that fund are invested in a way that is ethical. It has ethical criteria which means that it has pulled out of investing in lots of firms that our Superannuation Fund is invested in. 
For those reasons we support this bill as it makes modest progress towards cleaning up the sovereign funds so that they behave in a way and invest in companies in a way that is helpful to our future rather than detrimental.