Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before he travelled to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
It’s not easy to keep up with the Joneses, especially during a cost-of-living crisis. At 84 years old, Sir Bob Jones is more interested in the world, and has more interesting observations to make about it, than any other big-business owner in NZ. Its hard to keep up with this Jones, but not on the money front – in terms of reading, writing and public commentary. So Sir Bob gets the inaugural DownToEarth.Kiwi Prize for “NZ Billionaire who doesn’t take himself seriously and who has things to say to help NZ that make sense”.
He has stuff in common with Elon Musk. Though he hasn't invented as much, Jones has a big achievement even Elon hasn’t pulled off – he single-handedly started a new political party and had the genius to name it, “The New Zealand Party”.
Winston went and plagiarized the name, adding the word “First” to the end of it. By adding that word, Winston turned his party into one more nationalistic and protectionist than Sir Bob’s more liberal and libertarian one. Had MMP been in place back in the 1980s when Sir Bob started his NZ Party and won 12.2 per cent of the vote, he would’ve had more seats than the Greens won at our last election.
What's impressive about Sir Bob is that he’s never been afraid to write and say what he thinks, often infused with comedy. Not so practically every other billionaire in NZ who mostly have, in my view, betrayed folks like me. They’ve never been supportive. They mostly give money to all political parties. One of them once told me that he didn’t care who was in power, since he makes money regardless.
Others have rebuffed me when I’ve pleaded for moral (never monetary) support (since I run on a zero budget) saying, ‘Look mate, my philosophy is, if you’re making money, then don’t rock the boat.’ I heard that line at the NZ Initiative whilst attending its meetings on behalf of a wealthy libertarian Kiwi who’d decamped abroad with his French citizenship. Another (almost) billionaire, Alan Gibbs, like Sir Bob, has also never been afraid to publicly air his political views. They are warrior types.
As for the rest of today’s Kiwi rich-list types, when they’re quoted in the news these days, it’s mostly to tell us what good people they are and bleat about how they would like to pay more taxes because they believe in equity, or that capital taxes are a good idea. Or they try pretending they’re in favor of some dubious social cause that wont help NZ’s prosperity but is rather due to their own private aim of wangling social standing and making their employees like them more. They know who they are.
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
