Ideas for 28 March 2010: Sir Robert Jones

Bob Jones is a one-off. He's something of an enigma, as well. He's irascible, he's often eccentric, sometimes rude and with an anti-establishment streak as long as your arm, yet he is extraordinarily generous.

Jones has been a prolific writer of columns and books, both fiction and non-fiction, since the 1970s. He's the older brother of internationally acclaimed novelist Lloyd Jones and a self-made property millionaire with something of a Midas touch when it came to commercial buildings,

As a businessman with a distinctly libertarian streak, in 1975 Jones backed Sir Robert Muldoon all the way to the prime ministership  then in 1983 founded the New Zealand Party precisely to get rid of Muldoon, who he said had stopped listening.

Asked to nominate people who influenced his own ideas, businessman and politician Sir Robert Jones came back with a surprisingly short list - his former school teacher Guy Bliss and the English novelist Evelyn Waugh.

On the Naenae College teacher who was his biggest mentor:

Jones's family grew up in a Lower Hutt state house and he was one of only six students in his year at Naenae College.

After their rocky start, a teacher named Guy Bliss had a huge influence on the high-achieving yet rebellious student.

"He was a very short, militant man.  He'd been a major in the British Army. Those days, we used to have compulsory military training, every Tuesday afternoon the army came around, and they used to make all the poor little buggers line up and I point-blank refused to do it. 

"Bliss, he led this bloody army nonsense, shouting and yelling at them all, and he hated me because I used to hang out teasing and taunting them from an upstairs window. My mother was called to the school [and it was decided] that I would read my history books instead, which is only too delighted to do.

"Bliss was terribly upset and berate and abused me. Having got that out of his system, I then had the most wonderful teacher that I've ever had in all my years.

Bliss gave Jones two important lessons, he says - always ask questions and everything is interesting.

"It caused me to devote probably eight hours a day all my adult life since to reading."

 

On the solace of a boxing gym:

The "very peculiar magnetism" of boxing attracted a young Jones to a Hutt Valley boxing gym at just 11 years old.

"We were kids, nobody got hurt. It was just accepted, that's what we did. It was good for us too, make no mistake.

"For me, it was also tremendously valuable. Life was fairly tough in those days, albeit we weren't aware of that. It was the norm.

"For two years, my father worked seven days a week, four nights over time, and we literally never saw him 0 that sort of scenario wasn't untypical. It's not that my father was negligent. He simply wasn't there of necessity.

"The dear old punch-drunk boxer, he put his arm around us. We listened to him in a way that we might not, perhaps, have listened to our parents."

 

On making a career in property:

"I hated working for people ... I still couldn't do it, which is the reason I treat my staff the way I do, with great indulgence.

"I couldn't abide the thought of being a civilised slave, I certainly wanted to be self-employed, but I didn't know what until I was fortunate enough to get an unusual illness and had to spend all this time on my back  - something that I've appreciated ever since I realised how unusual that was and what a luxury it is - namely thinking time.

"I decided, well, I better try and make some money. And  I knew nothing about that sort of thing. But then I thought, well, how can I do that quickly? I came up with an idea, which seems extraordinarily impertinent looking back, but that was the arrogance of youth, and it worked. And then I made a lot of money. Then I had to do something about it. 

"I got really, really interested in buildings... the older I get, the more interested I am in buildings."

 

On former NZ prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon:

Jones says Robert Muldoon was the most liberal of all the New Zealand prime ministers he met.

"He did have an old-fashioned sense of propriety and loyalty, but also he had that libertarian streak, you know, and I think he quite admired it in other people. Muldoon had a sense of hooliganism, but he suppressed it. He was a man of great character.

"Muldoon effectively made a career out of destroying or sitting out to destroy, although whether he set out to destroy, I don't know, He was ambitious. That's normal. He became leader.

"But he had the most appalling attacks launched on him, and they were totally unjustified. He was subject to the most vile abuse, and it was completely unfair and unwarranted. And of course, he was not the sort of man to turn the other cheek."
 

On English writer Evelyn Waugh and his son Auberon:

Jones has read Waugh's 1929 novel Decline and Fall around 50 times, and says it's a luxury, an indulgence, and "just as joyous every time".

"It's interesting to study his writing, the economy of his writing, the humour, the wisdom, I know a lot of people take offence at Waugh because he was quite provocative, stupid, nasty. He was a nasty man, and I'm glad I never met him." 

When Evelyn's eldest son Auberon, also a writer, visited New Zealand, though, Jones did get to know him pretty well over several shared meals.

"[Auberon] drank about three bottles of red today. I can match him on that. He smoked 90 Rothmans Unfiltered a day -  I certainly wasn't doing anything like that

"He never exercised and he looked terrible, but he was a wonderfully funny man."

Listen to conversations with other influential Kiwis like Moana Jackson, Dame Iritana Tawhiwhirangi and Sir Paul Reeves on Ideas, which ran from 2009 to 2013.