Questions answered

I blogged this morning on the case of Bruce Burgess, as reported in the Herald, and said there were questions about how one is facing losing a property you purchased in 1989, because of a job loss four months ago.

Well either as a result of that post, or by coincidence, the Herald has updated their story and answered some of the questions. We now learn:

Mr Burgess told the Herald today the couple own two properties in Auckland – a house in Papakura and an apartment in central Auckland purchased “in 2004 or 2005” – but they were not currently returning any money.

This is presumably on top of the lifestyle block in Helensville. So the story now is that if you lose your job, and own three properties, you may have to give one of them up.

He said he paid about $385,000 for the Papakura property, though it was now worth about $340,000.

The apartment was purchased for “$260-something”, but he did not know the current market value.

So assuming the lifestyle block is worth at least $500,000 their propoerty assets come to over a million dollars.

But about four months ago, Mr Burgess – whose case was brought to the Herald’s attention by the Labour Party – lost his Avondale-based engineers job – and with it a $750-a-week paycheck.

And this was not disclosed in the earlier story. Now did Labour disclose to the Herald that Burgess owned three properties? Either Labour or Mr Burgess did not think this was relevant, or they did disclose it and the NZ Herald did not think it was relevant.

This is exactly why so many people are cynical about trusting what they read in the media. The Herald took a Labour planted story and ran it without checking the facts or even putting it through a logic check.

And Labour have shown us exactly what their priority is for all the money their pixies are printing. It is to give out welfare to a couple where one partner is working, and they have over $600,000 of investment properties.

This is not turning into a good week for Phil Goff. It seems he literally does advocate welfare for millionaires.

We see from this Twitter shot, that the story was obviously part of a Labour comms campaign. Goff twttering on it this morning, and asking questions in the House. So did Goff know this couple actually owns three propoerties worth around $1.4 million when he held them up as an example of why we should pay the dole to everyone?

I think Whale pointed out a couple of days ago TVNZ were running figures with the source being Labour. I hope they checked the figures before running with them.

UPDATE2: And it gets even worse for Labour. Duncan Garner blogs:

Labour has been dealing with Burgess for days over his plight and Goff has just given a vein-popping performance about poor old Bruce in Parliament.

“Why,” Goff asks, “should poor old Bruce be missing out?”

Why should 60-year-old Bruce lose his lifestyle block because his wife earns too much  for him to qualify for the dole?

Well, let me tell you what Phil Goff won’t tell you.

Bruce Burgess also owns two other rental properties on top of his lifestyle block. Burgess appears to have never told the Herald this.

But he did tell Goff. Oh yes. He told the Labour Party about his financial situation alright.

He told Labour he owned three properties. It’s just that Labour never told the media. Phil Goff never told the full story in Parliament about Burgess.

Labour did know about the other two properties. They told a deceptive story to the media and held this situation up as the poster child for their campaign. Shabby, shabby, shabby.