Bennett David: Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill — First Reading 
Bennett David: Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill — First Reading 
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DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 It gives me pleasure to speak on the Ethical Investment (Crown Financial Institutions) Bill. This is a bill being put forward by Grant Robertson— 
Grant Robertson 
: So far you’ve got everything right. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: Well the next bit the member will love because National will not be supporting the bill. So that is the right bit about it. 
We need to look at the policy behind the bill first of all before we go into the detail of why we support it or do not support it. The policy behind it is not something that any party in this House will have a particular problem with. The nature of investment is such that countries are very careful about how they invest and also the institutions that invest for them. However although there is that policy of wanting to be seen as ethical in a sense this bill is not necessary. It is just an attempt by the Labour Party and by that member to try to get some publicity which they are definitely very short of. 
The nature of investment is that ethical investment happens now and will happen in the future. I want to go through two reasons why it is happening now. The first is very much the market. If we look at the market effect in investment companies that have a problem in the way that they conduct their operations are seen very poorly in the market eye. Modern markets are not big investors in companies that do not take an interest in the environment the community and the sustainable development of their people and their communities. We have just to look at what is going on in the US at the moment with a large oil company and see the effect of the market price of that oil company to give us a reflection of what the market says as if it does not even think it is investing in an environmentally friendly way or actually working in an environmentally friendly way. 
Why would we as a Parliament need to set these rules in concrete and in motion when the market is achieving the very things that the member wants to see achieved by forcing companies and corporates to conduct the affairs of their operations in a way that is seen as suitable in the public eye? In essence this bill is not even necessary because the market forces those organisations to act in a way that is respectful of what the public would demand. 
Grant Robertson 
: Leave it to the market? 
DAVID BENNETT 
: But public demands do change. Mr Robertson says to just leave it to the market. He thinks that is a problem. But the point is that public demands have changed and what was publicly feasible a few years ago may not be publicly feasible in a few more years’ time. So the market develops with public opinion and it would be very poor of this Parliament to hold public opinion to one level when we could look at public opinion developing even further in the future. Mr Robertson may do the opposite to what he wants to do by holding investment back to levels that are seen as publicly acceptable now when in the future we could see the institutions’ investment and the investing companies being respectful of the nature of public opinion at that point in the future. 
The other argument as to why this legislation is not required is that there are already established and developed ethical investment policies within our own institutions. If we look at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund we see a very good example of what we are talking about. The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation are signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment and that provides a framework for shareholders to work together to encourage companies to improve investment analysis on environmental social and governance risks. So in this way the Superannuation Fund is already part of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. 
The guardians are also signatories to the Carbon Disclosure Project; it requires the secretariat for the world’s largest institutional investor collaboration on business implications of climate change. Basically when it comes to climate change they are already part of an international organisational project—in this case the Carbon Disclosure Project—providing such a basis in respect of investment for carbon when we are looking at greenhouse gas emissions including a risk analysis and comparative data. 
The guardians are also a member of the Investor Group on Climate Change—the IGCC. That group is a collaboration of New Zealand and Australian investors who are focusing on the impact of climate change and the financial value of investments. It consists of many institutional investors across New Zealand and Australia and represents a large sum of money under the control of those companies and investors. We have achieved through current processes the results that this legislation seeks to achieve and we have also achieved those results through the market process anyway. There is no need for this legislation at this time so the Government will vote against it accordingly.