Sir John Key reunited with Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast. File photo / Greg Bowker
Sir John Key reunited with Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast. File photo / Greg Bowker
Over summer, we’re revisiting some of the biggest and best podcast series from the NZ Herald network throughout 2023. In June, former Prime Minister Sir John Key joined Paula Bennett to discuss what his life has taught him about career and success.
Sir John Key credits his education as oneof the main motivators that saw him go from a council house to the highest office in the country.
Key’s well known as one of our wealthiest Prime Ministers in recent memory, having worked in the financial world for years overseas before returning to New Zealand to take up politics.
Reuniting with his former party colleague Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast, Ask Me Anything, Key credited his mother, who raised him and his siblings as a single parent, with pushing him towards commerce.
“She’d come out of Austria invaded by the Nazis, ended up in the UK, ended up with a husband that died when I was five or six. And so had seen her life completely ripped into pieces and had realised that in life they can almost take anything away from you, but the one thing they can’t take away from you is education.”
He said that drive is one of the things that also helped him get to the ninth floor of the Beehive, and believes that anyone can achieve the same if they have that motivation regardless of that background.
It’s one reason why Key is not a fan of the recent IRD report, which showed that while wealthier New Zealanders pay more tax overall, they pay lower tax rates than other earners.
Key said the analysis was “so pathetic” that he doesn’t see why it was published, and lambasted the idea that all of New Zealand’s problems can be blamed on the rich.
“I know what my taxes are and I know I was on that list cause I was made to fill it out, and I know there’s a hell of a lot more wealthy people that are not on the list that are a lot wealthier than we are. But I know how much nominal tax I pay and the answer is, a truckload. Mm-hmm. So yeah, when 2 per cent of people are paying a quarter of all personal tax and 25 per cent are paying, or 20 per cent are paying about 70 per cent of it, well, if that’s not enough, what is enough?
“Last time I looked, we want people with ambition doing things, hiring people. That was a lot of what I tried to do when I was Prime Minister. I tried to build ambition, and have New Zealand proud of the fact that we are the rockstar economy and that we were punching above our weight and that we were gonna win.
“And it wasn’t just the All Blacks and it was like the infamous changing the flag. It was nothing to do with what was actually on the flag. It was about can we find something that we can all coalesce around, that makes us feel good about being a Kiwi and we’re happy to show it in the way the Americans do, and actually, even frankly, the Australians do or the Canadians do.
“So I think you build that national psyche of ambition and I do worry that in the last while that’s starting to seep away.”
Max Key with father John Key in Hawaii. Photo / Instagram
His ambition did come at a cost for his family at times. Key’s son, Max, earlier this year spoke about the tensions he felt towards his dad growing up, saying that he “hated him” at times.
Key admitted that while it can be tough to hear things like and that Max faced a tough time in the public eye, particularly on social media, knowing that beforehand wouldn’t have changed his career plans.
“If I had my time all over again and I thought through and understood a little more clearly or maybe thought more deeply, would I not do it? I think the answer is, if I’m really being honest, I would do it, which feels a bit selfish, but I would still do it because there was just such a massive drive within me to want to be Prime Minister.”
Despite his drive to succeed, Key, who is chair of ANZ and sits on other boards, does hope to slow down his output soon. Key remembers one conversation when he was Prime Minister with former National MPs Tim Groser and Chris Finlayson, where those two were talking about how great it would be to die at work
“I walked over and said, ‘you two need to get a life. I’m going to be on the golf course in Maui or somewhere’,” Key recalled. “So I still hold strongly of that view, which is I’m not going to work forever. I am going to do less stuff over time. It’s hard cause the things you get offered are great, but ultimately I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that sort of says, look, I hope that I live till I’m 100 or 90.”
Listen to the full podcast to hear more from Sir John and Paula on advice for being ambitious and achieving your goals
