Infratil boss right back in the game

Lloyd Morrison. Photo / Mark Mitchell

After a battle with cancer, Lloyd Morrison tells Liam Dann why he still has work to do

Lloyd Morrison is lucky to be alive. Last December he started feeling flat and run-down. He blamed the enormous year he had been through.

Running an investment company with $5 billion of assets, and campaigning publicly to try to lift the nation's economic performance, can take it out of you.

"But it turned out to be a bit larger than that," Morrison says.

Medical tests revealed he had acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), and after some initial chemotherapy at Wellington Hospital it was shown to have adverse cytogenetics (DNA abnormalities), which meant treatment in New Zealand wasn't going to deal with it.

In February he dropped everything and moved to Seattle, where he could be treated with experimental drugs at the world-leading Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre.

The prognosis was not good. Statistically, Morrison says, he probably shouldn't be alive.

But here he is, back in Infratil's Wellington head office, fired up and ready to talk about the challenges facing New Zealand.

Why bother? He's a rich-lister, he has a loving family, friends and is still deeply passionate about his business. So why worry about all the problems facing the country?

It is not a simple question with a simple answer.

Confronting death did not bring with it any great epiphany or revelation, Morrison says.

"I'm not really worried about dying ... I worry about it from my children's point of view."

He is still working on getting well and has chemotherapy every morning.

"I've been lucky enough to be able to track down some experimental medicine which has effectively saved me. Whether it keeps me alive for five years or more, that's another issue, but at least it has arrested what would have otherwise overtaken me."

Despite his retreat to the serene surrounds of America's Pacific Northwest, the aggressive cancer treatment didn't leave him much time for quiet contemplation.

Chemotherapy makes you very sick, nauseous sick. Often it has been "a struggle to get to the end of the day, let alone think", Morrison says.

As you'd expect, he is determined to spend more time with his family and close friends. Those relationships are stronger than ever, he says.

Then there is the business. He will always take an active interest in the affairs of Morrison & Co and NZX-listed Infratil, which he founded in 1994.

But he is clearly more than happy with the current management team and isn't keen to get in the way.

After a quiet year Infratil has been increasingly active in the past few weeks, putting together a bid for Shell's New Zealand assets and selling some of its smaller, less profitable investments.

He accepts that the market has lost some confidence in Infratil this year.

Its share price has dropped about 10 per cent and the company just reported a $34 million half-year loss.

But Morrison - who says his greatest business skill may be that he is not afraid to hire people smarter than himself - can't speak highly enough of the team.

He says the market has focused unduly on the smaller non-performing assets such as its European airports and failed to acknowledge just how well it has weathered the global financial storm. Certainly compared to, flashier peers across the Tasman - Macquarie Infrastructure, Babcock and Brown and the ill-fated Allco - it has emerged from the crisis in good shape.

Last year Morrison employed former Telecom number two Marko Bogoievski with a view to having him take over as chief executive at Infratil.

That may have happened a year earlier than planned but ironically, says Morrison: "It is better that I was away because with someone with my personality and history in the organisation it would have been hard to transfer the role with me still around."

The plan now is to add some value without getting in the way.

"I can add another dimension. I mean I don't know how long my life span is going to be from here. So there is no point getting in to a work scenario as if I've got a lot longer than is realistic."

But regardless of just how precious his time now is, Morrison does want to talk about fixing New Zealand.

In particular he wants us to confront the challenges facing the health system.

After getting his second chance at a state-of-the-art facility using drugs that didn't even exist two years ago, Morrison feels lucky.

"The problem I have is that the average New Zealander couldn't afford to go over there for treatment. So what do we do about that?"

There are two strands to Morrison's views on improving health care.

The first is practical. He'd like to see the New Zealand system - which he believes is basically pretty good - drop some of the bureaucracy that prevents it making the most of new drugs and treatments from around the world.

"If I couldn't have afforded to go overseas it might have been possible to send my stuff to the US. It might have been possible that if somebody paid for the drugs that were not available here, they may have been given to me here. And the costs would have been dramatically lower."

If a treatment was approved at Fred Hutchinson it would be inexcusable for a New Zealand hospital to reject that, he says.

That might require a less bureaucratic approach than we are used to.

"I'm sick of bureaucracy and that's what we need to get down to," says Morrison.

The second strand relates to wealth creation and goes to the heart of most problems facing New Zealand.

"I think the only reason people are feeling OK at the moment is because we've done relatively well compared to other countries in the recession. But that does not get us back to the living standards we expect," he says.

"The way things are going we aren't going to deliver in the education or health sector because we can't afford to. As our population gets older we are not generating sufficient wealth to keep up with world living standards ... full stop."

The issues Morrison was talking about a year ago, when he launched the Measurable Goal for New Zealand campaign, are more relevant than ever.

The country needs to introduce a culture of accountability, he says.

"One of the best things that can happen in health is measurability and accountability. We need to start measuring the performance of individual hospitals not only one against the other in New Zealand but against peers internationally. That's the same in our education system. We must start to measure the performance of teachers."

That kind of talk will send chills up the spine of health and education workers and Morrison knows it.

"Doctors and teachers don't like the idea. But it is helpful. It is something that allows you to improve and learn. If people aren't there to try and do better to educate people or make them healthier then they are in the wrong system."

His views might tempt some critics to brand him a right-wing ideologue.

But while Morrison does believe in the power of private sector discipline to drive efficiency, his views aren't easily pinned down. A big fan of Barack Obama, get him talking about the state of the US health system and he sounds like someone Fox News fans would call a socialist.

"The American system is appalling, where you have tremendous capability, sufficient wealth ... that's the quandary, where they've got 41 million on the poverty line or below. It's not a system to admire. I believe real wealth is everybody being better off.

"I think most New Zealanders are egalitarian so I'm vitally interested in a place where everybody is better off."

So too are our nation's leaders, one presumes, but it would be helpful if they would also make themselves more accountable, Morrison says.

He is concerned that the National Government is pulling punches in the pursuit of short-term popularity and is missing its chance to transform the economy.

"When I look at New Zealand from afar I'm not confident that there has been any significant change to improve our relative performance. I don't think that is going to come about in small increments or without significant change and commitment and I'm not sure that there is strong evidence of that from this Government."

To its credit National has set up working groups to look at the tax structure, capital markets and the goal of catching up to Australia economically by 2025.

But those will amount to nothing if there is not some measurability and accountability applied to the findings, Morrison says.

"If you really want New Zealanders to be better off you need to not just make this government accountable but the next government as well. If we have proper measurability it will be up to Labour and the Greens and anybody else to come up with ideas about how we can improve living standards."

Morrison is wary of focusing on Australia. Infratil does plenty of business in Australia and the market can't be ignored "but is considerably less important than the remaining 70 per cent of our market".

Suggestions that the NZX should merge with the ASX or adopt the Australian dollar rile Morrison.

A stock market merger was floated again this month by New Zealand stock exchange veteran Don Turkington in a speech to a Sydney audience.

The whole idea is just "wet", Morrison says.

"Don's a nice person but he and a number of others wanted to sell it for $12 million [back in 2000]. It would be ignorant and destructive to make it part of the Australian market unless you believe New Zealand should become a state of Australia.

"We are very lucky to live next to Australia," he says. "But [we] are better off with this country being independent, flexible, adapting and being competitive in terms of policy and rules.

"The worst thing that could happen to rugby in this part of the world would be the Wallabies and All Blacks to merge. We're lucky there are two strong rugby nations next to each other. Competition is good."

If people want to move to Australia then go for it, he says.

"I'm very pleased to be a New Zealander, having been forced to be out of the country for nine months. So I intend to make sure that every little bit of time I've got counts.

"I don't like to vegetate, I have to get my health right, have to keep relationships strong. I have to be careful not to get involved in too much and dilute my efficacy."

But he is passionate about the need for public debate in this country and wants to be part of it.

"I feel I have limited time to make a contribution so I want to make it material."

LLOYD MORRISON


* Age: 52


* Home: Wellington


* Married with five children


* Founder and major shareholder of investment company Morrison & Co and NZX-listed Infratil


* Infratil (founded in 1994) has a market cap of $880 million. Its assets include TrustPower, Wellington Airport, NZ Bus and Infratil Energy Australia


* Morrison & Co is contracted to manage funds on behalf of New Zealand Super Fund. Including Infratil, it manages $5 billion of assets