Money Talks: Michele A’Court on the ‘most terrifyingly, traumatically poor’ she has ever been

Michelle A'Court talks about career choices and money with Liam Dann. Photo / Frances Carter

“Money was an impolite subject of conversation,” comedian Michele A’Court recalls of growing up in the 1970s.

A strong advocate for social justice, A’Court says she started out actively rejecting the pursuit of money in her education and career choices.

But she now sees discussing it, understanding it and shining a light on issues like how much people get paid as important for promoting a fairer working world.

“My mother would have said it was very gauche that someone would have mentioned how much they paid for a car or what their house was worth or how much money they had - [that] was completely unacceptable.

“At the same time, you knew who had money and who didn’t.”

A’Court says she remembers her parents “being horrified” later on, at the end of the 1990s, when she helped set up the New Zealand Comedy Guild.

“Part of that was to set pay rates for a brand-new industry with freelancers who were getting wildly different amounts of money,” she says.

“I helped to set up the guild so we could all talk to each other about how much money we were charging so we could all put a value on ourselves.

“I remember my parents being shocked that I was having conversations with my peers about how much we would get paid for a job. It was the only way we could find out what we were worth.”

“You would find out that you might have gone off to do a gig for a company, host a dinner, and they were paying you $500, which felt like a huge amount of money, and then you’d talk to one of the boys, who maybe had radio job and maybe had a higher profile, but maybe not much more than you did, and they were charging $3000.”

A’Court talks about the toughest financial years in her life - having left TVNZ (where she had starred on the popular kids’ breakfast show What Now).

“The most terrifyingly, traumatically poor I’ve been would be in the late ‘90s, as a separated parent, living in a house with a massive mortgage as a freelancer and not quite knowing where the next mortgage payment was going to come from.”

Asked what one political policy she’d love to see implemented to address financial equality, A’Court makes the case for a Universal Basic Income.

“Think about how people’s lives would change if they didn’t have to worry the way I had to worry in the ‘90s, and the way thousands have to worry now about food and shelter,” she says.

“The evidence around the world is not that, if people have their basic needs met, they will sit around and do nothing. If you meet people’s basic needs, they will do something extraordinary with their lives.”

Listen to the full interview with Michele A’Court here.

Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. You can follow the series on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are out every Saturday.