When it comes to the massive private wealth in New Zealand, the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is nearly dead. While New Zealanders once regarded an individual’s accumulation of enormous riches as somewhat unseemly or at least to be viewed with suspicion, with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the decline of our egalitarian ethos, unfortunately we are now more inclined to worship the rich. This adulation of the affluent is one of the key political agendas of the National Business Review in publishing the Rich List each year. The newspaper wants us to know about the ‘wealth creators’ and turn them into role models – despite the fact that their vast profits come from other people’s toil. Nonetheless the NBR’s celebratory exercise is a useful project that allows us to gauge some important aspects of the ruling elite in New Zealand, and it unintentionally shines a bright light on the vast iniquitous grab of wealth and income in New Zealand society. [Read more below]
Extremes of wealth in NZ
When the Rich List started in 1986 – near the beginning of New Zealand’s neoliberal revolution – the NBR could only find 55 individuals worthy of the list, and a mere $6.8m would get you a spot. Over time and with the burgeoning growth of the super rich in New Zealand, the newspaper had to constantly raise the threshold criteria, and by 2010 you needed to a net worth of $50m to be included.
So in studying the NBR’s 2013 Rich List you’re not just looking at ‘millionaires’ but extreme multi-millionaires. In fact there are six billionaires on this year’s Rich List. At the top of the list, Graeme Hart is worth $6.4bn. And the value of the whole list adds up to an astonishing $47.8bn – an increase of $3.5bn from last year.
Little reduction in wealth during the recession
One of the interesting aspects of the 2013 Rich List is that it shows how little the elite has been suffering from the continuing economic recession. In fact it’s obvious that for the rich, there is no recession at all. The sharemarket, for example, was up about 25% last year.
The luxury of the rich
Reading the 2013 NBR Rich List certainly gives you a sense of the outlandish and ostentatious luxury of New Zealand’s elite. For instance, Top Rich Lister Graeme Hart:
‘Hart is not shy about adding to his personal assets – recently adding on to the $30 million clifftop home where he and his wife Robyn live in Riddell Rd, Auckland. The 2ha property now includes a huge three-level banquet hall with a pool and piazza area to complement the main mansion, summer house, guest quarters and tennis court. He also owns property on Waiheke Island, two super yachts – the 190-foot yacht, Ulysses and the 77m Project Weta (also known as Hull U77), a property in Aspen and an island in Fiji’.
Another Waihekean, John Spencer, owns a luxury 49-metre super yacht, T6, that is apparently worth $81m. He also owns a $2.2m Eurocopter which he keeps ‘parked in a watertight hanger under the yacht’s deck’. Doug Myers and Alan Gibbs co-own a 59-metre adventure super yacht. Similarly, Andrew Bagnall has a ‘luxury nine-seat Gulfstream G200 private jet’. For Craig Heatley, ‘Home is a $13.7 million beachfront mansion in Takapuna, on Auckland’s North Shore. He also owns part of the $22.4 million Moturoa Island, hideaway in the Bay of Islands’.
Colin Giltrap the automotive millionaire is previously noted to have, ‘paid $5.5 million for a ninth-floor penthouse apartment overlooking Mt Maunganui beach, reportedly for use as a weekend retreat. The sale price for the four-bedroom rooftop suite at the Eleven development was a record for a Bay of Plenty home, easily eclipsing the previous record of $3.2 million paid in 2004. With views of the main Mount beach, the apartment has two lounges, four bathrooms, a rooftop infinity swimming pool, home cinema and parking in the basement for eight vehicles’.
Gary Lane brought a parcel of 11 Auckland properties from the Sultan in 2005 for $35 million – one of which was a $11 million property in Argyle St, Herne Bay. David Muller lives in a $10.5m house on Paritai Drive in Auckland. Lionel Rogers lives in ‘marble-clad Parnell home (built at a cost of $20 million)’. And of course, John Key ‘continues to own the family mansion in Parnell, holiday homes in Rodney and Hawaii, apartments in London and Wellington and an office in his Helensville electorate’.
One Rich Lister, Neville Crichton, makes his money from the ostentatious expenditure of New Zealand’s elite – especially luxury cars, Ferrari’s in particular.
The Composition of the Rich List
If you ever have the suspicion that the New Zealand Government tends to give out its knighthoods, ‘damehoods’ and other honorifics essentially only to those from the Establishment, then reading through the 2013 Rich List will reinforce such a belief. Many of the List have such titles:
Sir Owen Glenn, Sir Douglas Myer, Sir Michael Fay, Sir Peter Jackson, Sir Julian Smith, Sir Stephen Tindall, Sir Michael Hill, Sir Patrick Goodman, Sir Colin Giltrap, Sir David Levene, Sir Robert Jones, Sir Douglas Graeme, Sir Ron Brierley, Sir George Fistonich, Sir James Wallace, Sir Selwyn Cushing, Sir Patrick Hogan, Sir Eion Edgar, Sir Peter Maire, Sir John Davies, Sir William Gallagher, Sir Patrick Higgin, Sir Clifford Skeggs, and Sir Tim Wallis.
Politics on the Rich List
New Zealand is not a plutocracy - the rich do not actually run the country directly (despite the conspiracy theories of many on the left). We may live in an advanced capitalist liberal democracy where the interests of business have an extraordinary influence on public policy, yet to a large extent the areas of politics and wealth are not the same thing in New Zealand and this can be seen by looking at the Rich List, in which there are few politicians or even people overtly connected to parliamentary politics.
The most obvious political person on the list is the Prime Minister. John Key has a net worth of $50m in 2013. National Party president Peter Goodfellow is high on the list, as the Goodfellow family are worth $500m. Not only is Goodfellow busy running New Zealand’s ruling political party, but ‘with brother Bruce, has carried on with the overseeing of the family’s extensive business interests’. Apparently he has ‘a background with the party stretching back 30 years that included serving on the political party’s board since 2006’.
The National Party is linked with a number of other Rich Listers. Philip Carter, brother of National Cabinet minister David Carter makes money from property, having acquired the Carter Group empire that their father established, and is valued as being worth $120m. Ex-Cabinet minister Philip Burdon has a worth of $75m, and is one of the largest mushroom producers in Australasia. Apparently he ‘started his fungal business in Cyprus in the 1960s’. And the Foreman family are seen as being close connected to National through the Business Roundtable and their connection with Don Brash.
The Labour Party doesn’t appear to have any overt links with the Rich Listers, although the Gallagher family that spawned former Labour MP Martin Gallagher are there.
Various known donors to political parties show up here and there – Trevor Farmer (Act), Craig Heatley (Act), the Vela family (NZ First), and Doug Myers (Act).
Also related to politics, it’s interesting to read that business consultant David Teece – who apparently is ‘One of the most renowned business academics New Zealand has ever produced’ – has pointed out that his own ‘mentor Professor Oliver Williamson, who has recently been awarded the Nobel Prize for economics’ was ‘one of the secret architects of New Zealand’s economic reforms of the 1980s’.
Below are some further images relating to wealth and inequality in New Zealand
