We can't trust MPs with trusts

When former Cabinet Minister Michael Wood was effectively fired for corruption after repeatedly and deliberately refusing to disclose a conflict of interest, it exposed an ongoing problem with MPs and trusts. The creation of the register of pecuniary interests was meant to resolve issues around MPs and conflicts of interest, by ensuring they declared everything. But many of them are rich and therefore conflicted by virtue of that wealth, and so tried to hide (and thereby enable) their conflicts behind trusts. The registrar has been having none of it, recognising that a trust is just a legal fiction, but some MPs still haven't got the message. And among them is National's Andrew Bayly:

A National MP who may be critical to his party's post-election hopes has confirmed he owns undisclosed shares in a successful software company that contracts to government agencies.

Andrew Bayly's shares are now worth AU$86,000 (NZ$91,600), according to a valuation prepared as SiteSoft International Ltd prepared to list on the Australian stock exchange.

[...]

Last night Andrew Bayly, who had been a strong critic of former Cabinet minister Michael Wood failing to disclose shares, insisted he had no obligation to disclose his own shares – because they're held in his family trust, the Paparangi Trust.

That's moot: MPs on Parliament's privileges committee say they shouldn't have to disclose non-property assets held in trust, but the Registrar of Pecuniary Interests Sir Maarten Wevers says they do have to. Even after Wevers confirmed that view earlier this year, and other MPs updated the register, Bayly made no move to disclose his SiteSoft shares.

Let's be clear: this is dirty and it is corrupt. The decisions Bayly makes as an MP - let alone if he is given Ministerial responsibilities post-election - could directly affect this firm. He should therefore declare his interest, however he holds it, so that we can ensure that he behaves properly. Given the clear statements of the registrar, his consistent refusal to do so can only be taken as indicating intent to behave improperly. And that is something we should not tolerate.

And the problem for Bayly is probably much larger than this. According to his entry in the Register of Pecuniary Interests, he has not one, but five trusts. That's five deliberately-engineered legal structures to hide fuck-knows-what and enable him to profit from his conflicts of interest. And with that amount of effort, you have to ask what exactly he is trying to hide.

Beyond Bayly, half of all MPs are hiding conflicts behind trusts. And because of those hidden conflicts, we can't trust any of them.

As I said when Wood was sacked, normal people don't have trusts. They're used exclusively by rich people to dodge taxes, criminals to launder money, and politicians to hide their interests and enable corruption. Our political system simply should not tolerate this. It is simply not safe to do so. Instead, we should bust those trusts, end the secrecy, and force anyone standing for or holding public office to make a full and public disclosure of everything they and their legal fictions own, so that we can see if they're clean or not. And if, like Bayly, they refuse, we are perfectly entitled to view them as dirty.