Still a sucker for a bloody good story

By MICHELE HEWITSON

For a member of the filthy-rich club, Barry Colman's pretty down-to-earth. He wears the uniform of the gentleman publisher: the pinstripes, the blindingly white shirt. But his hair's mussed, his moustache more properly belongs on an ageing walrus and when he laughs he barks like a seal. There's a bit of the larrikin in Colman. He is definitely a Bazza.

Colman publishes the National Business Review from his glass office on the 31st floor of the Royal SunAlliance building. From here he can keep one eye on his launch, the MV Liberty, down at the marina. And another eye on his staff.

Colman enjoys journalists. Before he became really rich he was a journalist, and he has never stopped thinking like one. His recent appearance in headlines has to do with a bloody good story. One that just won't go away: the story of Peter Ellis.

Ellis, of course, is the convicted child-abuser who spent six years in prison. He is "the gay guy" who, according to Colman, became "the fall guy".

On the face of it, Colman is a most unlikely champion for the "gay guy". So much that he would object to the "champion" description. Colman and Ellis have not met, and it is unlikely they will.

But Colman is hot under his white collar about the Ellis story. It is a story he didn't publish in his own newspaper. To have done so would have appeared "self-serving".

Last Sunday Colman paid $20,000 to the Sunday Star-Times to run a double-page spread that appeared under the heading "advertisement".

The "ad" was a sampling of court transcripts of the testimonies of child witnesses in the Peter Ellis case. They came into Colman's hands after he signed a petition calling for a commission of inquiry. And after he had offered a reward of $100,000 for fresh information on the case.

He won't say who gave him the transcripts, or where he's keeping them now. Much as he likes a spot of intrigue, he is keeping the location safe because he doesn't particularly relish the thought of "the gendarmes" popping in to quiz him about the provenance of these particular papers.

The Commissioner for Children, Roger McClay, and chief social worker Shannon Pakura would have liked to stop publication. The transcripts, they said, could deter children involved in future cases from giving evidence.

Colman sincerely hopes children are put off: "I hope we can stop this nonsense. These children were traumatised by their counsellors and their parents. They're the ones who have a lot to answer for."

Read the transcripts, he says - he plans to put the full statements on a website - read the depictions of children kept in cages, of abusive rituals involving Ellis' mother.

And, says Colman, you cannot help but believe that Ellis "should never have been committed on such biased evidence".

He says he has not heard from the families of any of the children interviewed. He is abrasive in his outrage, but says it is not his motivation to cause "any more pain". But he finds it odd he's had no calls.

"If I thought he'd molested a child of mine I'd have been on the phone to Barry Neville Colman and let him have it with both barrels. But nothing's happened."

And there is a wider issue, he says. This is partly the reason he has never met Ellis. "This is a classic example of a really unfair trial, [and] a lot of other men have lost their children based on an allegation as flimsy as this."

Ellis is "the person who highlights the rest of the difficulties. This is not about Peter Ellis. This is about a matter of principle".

Colman has thought about meeting Ellis, but "what exactly is the point? I think I'm better off not being an immediate associate of his. I think it shows a lack of bias".

He has no intention of becoming the next Joe Karam. "I'm not going to devote my whole life to this single cause."

The reason he's stuck his neck out - "I don't need the publicity" - is because his nose was put rather badly out of joint when the petition, signed by more than 800 "prominent" New Zealanders, was "just rejected".

He would rather not have to do anything more. He is, he says, actually rather busy.

COLMAN has been rather busy, making money, since the 1970s, when his hack-to-high-flyer story began.

He didn't, he decided, want to spend his life worrying about payments on the car and the house.

There is no middle ground for Colman. He wanted lots of money or none at all. He entertained the idea of living on a commune in the Coromandel. Or so he says. It's hard to imagine Bazza as a beach bum.

Now he has more houses than he has time to stay in them: Sydney, Mexico, Lake Rotoiti, Glendowie, the 127-year-old Carey's Bay Historic Hotel near Dunedin, where he keeps his collection of Ralph Hotere paintings. He won't own a house that doesn't have a view of the water.

Money means "independence". And independence to Colman means, well, he has to think about whether he's going to share that information. He clams up about the most peculiar things.

He will, for example, offer that independence means popping out for Chinese takeaways and returning with a red sports car. That he and his third wife, Cushla Martini, once flew to Sydney, "didn't like our digs", went to the airport and chose another destination from the departure board.

But he won't tell me which destination. God knows why not. I suspect it's because not telling people things is a sort of game.

His wealth is given as an estimate by his own publication, the NBR Rich List. He's not giving any help. He says he's "pretty comfortable". This year the list estimated his worth at $100 million.

He's rich enough to have a corporate jet, which he bought because he and Martini got the pip when Air New Zealand dropped business class and they had to travel with hoi polloi. Of which he was originally a member.

His father was a saw doctor in Rotorua who played golf with the owner of the Daily Post. Which is how Colman got his start in journalism - that and the fact that English was the only subject he gained "double figures in".

He began amassing his fortune in Hamilton, where he walked out of the Waikato Times one day, legend has it, having told everyone he was moving to Australia - and having gone to the lengths of buying a plane ticket.

He opened the giveaway Waikato Weekender, having, again according to the Colman legend, taken a fair chunk of the Times' advertising with him.

When he bought into NBR in the late 1980s, his welcoming speech to staff included a firm indication of the Colman style: "We are not running a democracy here, we are running a business and I am telling you how it is going to be."

He didn't get rich by being nice. But he certainly enjoys the nice things about being rich. He has a box at Eden Park decked out as a gentlemen's club, and a $235,000 Hotere hanging at the Carey's Bay hotel.

And now, to his bemusement, he has acquired a profile as a reluctant campaigner for the rights of a man he will probably never meet.