Property magnate Sir Robert Jones has died, aged 85. Photo / APN
Jane Phare looks back on the life and times of Sir Bob Jones, one of New Zealand’s most successful, colourful and controversial businessmen.
He didn’t suffer fools, loved boxing, smoked a pipe, liked to buy buildings on corners, disliked mobile phones and couldn’t stand people wearing sunglasses on their forehead.
Property magnate and rich lister Sir Robert Edward Jones died today, aged 85, at home in Wellington, closing a chapter on one of New Zealand’s most colourful characters.
Since forming his property company 64 years ago, Jones had amassed a $2 billion portfolio of major commercial buildings in Auckland, Wellington and Glasgow, Scotland.
Jones lived in a grand home in 20ha grounds overlooking Wellington Harbour and Lower Hutt, with a glorious garden tended by fulltime gardeners, a far cry from his humble beginnings as “a state-house boy from Naenae”.
But although he was a Wellington identity through and through, there would scarcely be a Kiwi baby boomer who wouldn’t know a Bob Jones anecdote.
Who could forget the startling TV footage showing blood pouring down reporter Rod Vaughan’s face after an enraged Jones collected him with a left hook in Tūrangi in 1985.
Vaughan and cameraman Peter Mayo had choppered into a tranquil spot where Jones was fly fishing in the Tongariro River near his holiday home.
They, like other media, were after an interview with the then-leader of the short-lived New Zealand Party, formed in 1983, a year before Robert Muldoon’s snap election.
Jones’ party divided what would have been National’s vote, helping the David Lange-led Labour Party to win the 1984 election.
The following year Jones announced he was placing his political party into an 18-month hiatus and journalists were hunting him down.
Jones was convicted on charges of assault and fined $1000. He asked the judge if he could pay $2000 to do it again. (Jones and Vaughan later buried the hatchet at one of Jones’ book launches, posing for a photo in which a grinning Vaughan pretended to return the punch).
Jones also got offside with Muldoon, who was also the minister responsible for New Zealand’s SIS at the time, after accusing the Prime Minister of using his SIS powers to spy on the New Zealand Party. In response, Muldoon sued for defamation, a case that he lost against Jones.
Jones knew what he was doing when he delivered that left hook to Vaughan.
He was a lifelong boxing fan and something of an expert, commentating and writing columns on the sport, and earning a university blue in boxing at Victoria University.
In 1957 he won the New Zealand Universities lightweight boxing title.
Jones was clever and witty, and liked to think that people understood his brand of humour and satire. But sometimes they didn’t.
In 2020 Jones dropped defamation proceedings – one of several he was involved in over his lifetime - against film-maker Renae Maihi who launched a petition to strip Jones of his knighthood after he wrote in an NBR column (later removed from the website) calling for a Māori Gratitude Day instead of Waitangi Day, suggesting Māori do chores for Pākehā out of gratitude for existing.
Jones denied he was racist and claimed the column had been written tongue-in-cheek. But in reality it was an example of Jones not reading the room, not realising that what he might have got away with in the ’70s was unacceptable and hurtful more than 40 years later.
Realising that a few days into the court case, Jones withdrew his defamation claim and paid Maihi’s legal expenses.
Apart from that, he didn’t much care who he offended including his brother, acclaimed author Lloyd Jones who was short-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2009 for his novel Mister Pip, later made into a movie.
Bob Jones sniffed at his brother’s success, saying he gave up reading Mister Pip a third of the way through and that his younger brother was wasting his talents trying to earn his living as a fiction writer.
In the same breath, Jones would point out he had easily outsold his brother’s books with his collection of novels, essays and various non-fiction books on property, boxing, his memories of former Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon, and one book tellingly called New Zealand The Way I Want It, covering his views on everything from politics and the economy to abortion and capital punishment.
Critics of his novels would accuse him of being racist, sexist and a misogynist, but Jones disagreed, arguing it wasn’t his problem if people didn’t understand satire or humour. Nor did he particularly care what people thought.
Considering himself a sharp wit with a pen, he published two collections of his most stinging letters to various authorities and figureheads dating from 1970 to the 1990s.
Jones was a voracious reader who owned thousands of books, dismissing television as “unmitigated garbage”.
He thought children should be encouraged to read more and was keen to support young women from refugee backgrounds, providing university or tertiary scholarships.
Robt. Jones Holdings is currently funding 63 students and 130 women have already graduated.
He had an eye for buying the right building, making a point of buying buildings on corners, with two street frontages, or freestanding towers that let in plenty of light.
To that end, his company bought the bronze mirror-glass Fay Richwhite tower building at 151 Queen St, on the corner of Wyndham St, where its Auckland offices are headquartered. The company now owns 35 buildings with around 1000 tenancies.
It was a business that made him extremely wealthy, and he appeared regularly on the rich list. He was known to be a good landlord. One former tenant described him as “fantastic”, adding “nothing was too much trouble”.
His own offices were immaculate, his desk obsessively neat. In Wellington the walls were decorated with original cartoons by his friend Tom Scott, paintings and framed promotional posters from his books.
Good artwork hung in many of his commercial buildings, and tenants were able to borrow paintings and rugs free of charge to decorate their offices.
In terms of newspaper copy there was never a dull moment in Jones’ lifetime. In 2015 he was ejected from an Air New Zealand flight after refusing to follow crew instructions while he was seated in an exit row.
Three months later he took delivery of a private jet, a Cessna Citation Mustang, writing in a column that he should have done it years ago to avoid ...“The incessant and unnecessary hostess babble over the intercom, the utterly childish and pointless screeching safety video...”
He liked red wine and was an unapologetic pipe smoker, famously asking the Fire Service if he could turn off the smoke alarms in his building for an hour or two so he could smoke his pipe at one of his legendary parties.
Jones had no time for anyone who mumbled, spoke sloppily or used poor grammar. He couldn’t abide people who wore caps on backwards, carried water bottles or talked on their mobile phones on the street. He once warned a journalist he would not speak to her if she arrived wearing sunglasses on her head.
One source said he would frequently yell out to passers-by if he saw them doing something that enraged him, including groups of people laughing too loudly at restaurants.
Lifelong friends say they learned to ignore Jones when he was at his provocative best.
“I would just laugh at his offensiveness,” one said. “Why take a spoon to a knife fight? He was what he was. He’s irreplaceable really.”
He loved a long, riotous lunch and would deliberately invite people with strong opinions and opposing views, far more fun than a bunch of people who agreed with Jones.
One lifelong colleague who did not want to be named told the Herald: “You’re not really a good friend of Bob’s unless you fall out with him several times.”
He charmed women and had several long-term relationships - including two wives - throughout his life, producing nine children, with four women.
One source said he remained on good terms with his ex-partners, buying them houses and helping to support them.
“He is very generous. You never see any of them in court do you,” the source said.
He once told a magazine that all of his children had been “produced by diverse women without my consent, my participation having been fleeting”.
He said in one interview that he never understood monogamy.
“It seems to be unnatural for me. Variety is the spice of life.”
Sir Robert Jones is survived by three sons and six daughters. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family after a brief illness. The family have asked for privacy.
Jane Phare is the New Zealand Herald’s deputy editor of print.
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Three-bedroom home in wealthy Auckland suburb sold for just over $1.6m.