A new law to force MPs to tell the public what they own has been quietly shelved, so the Weekend Herald has gone looking.

The Weekend Herald searched Companies Office records for directorships and shareholdings and Quotable Value records for property holdings near the MPs’ homes, in Wellington and in other districts we believed they might have had property.

The Companies Office does not provide full lists of shareholders in large companies.

We have also listed ministers’ assets as they declared them in the Register of Ministers’ Interests and Assets.

Except for a few notable cases, most MPs are more paupers than princes, with only modest assets in their names.

Houses in the suburbs and small investment properties account for most of their capital, at least those on the public record.

MPs have quietly shelved legislation that would force them to reveal their assets and financial interests, so the Weekend Herald has done it for them.

Using only information on the public record, we searched companies that MPs are directors and shareholders in, and the properties they own.

It is only part of what the Members of Parliament (Pecuniary Interests) Bill would have forced MPs to disclose. They would also have to name every country they had visited, everyone who owed them more than $5000, anyone to whom they owed $5000, gifts they received, trusts in which they had a beneficial interest and a description of the trusts’ activities, and any extra payments they received.

The bill was introduced in October 2003 by Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen, who, incidentally, owns only a modest $310,000 house in Napier with his wife.

The bill was supposed to go back before Parliament this week, but was deferred until August 14 - by which time Parliament will have dissolved for the election.

It might not ever become law, although the Government is seeking to achieve the same result through Parliament’s own rules.

A law would have opened up the possibility that the courts might be brought in to referee.

But if it is made a parliamentary standing order, the responsibility for enforcement would lie with the privileges committee, and Parliament could determine any sanctions.

The Weekend Herald list does not name every asset of every MP - for the simple reason that it is impossible to find assets that might be in trusts, in MPs’ spouses’ names or in companies.

Legal experts say it is not difficult to hold assets in a way that is difficult to trace. The most common method is to form a trust and to nominate as trustees a lawyer, accountant or confidante. Property, stocks and bonds are commonly put into trusts.