Former Prime Minister Sir John Key

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

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It's not every day that I get to sit down with a former Prime Minister. And over the last few years I count my blessings that I've had an opportunity to sit down several times with former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir John Key. And recently he came to my leadership event, the High Performance Leadership Program, which was held in Christchurch over two and a half days. And he just shared so much gold with the audience. And then afterwards we ended up going and getting on some zip lines and it was just, it was fun. You gotta have fun when you're learning, right? But this episode is different in that it's in front of a live audience and really John goes all out and shares from the heart and you can get an insight into the man that he is and how he thinks and how he led. And I just want to take a moment to say a massive thank you to our platinum partners who are partners for the HPL Live event. And that's VVV Real Estate and Brannigan's. A huge thank you to both incredible parties look, during his term as Prime Minister, John had to navigate many tough situations and led the country through them, such as the GFC and the Christchurch earthquakes. John is an incredible leader and I'm so excited to be able to interview him and share his leadership insights with you. So sit back and enjoy the show.

He's an absolute incredible leader and I've had the pleasure of learning from him, listening to him, and I feel that we've all in some way been connected with John over the years. And so today's our opportunity to really get close and understand what goes on inside a high performance leadership mind. So John, without further ado, I'd love to start with when you think of leadership.

What comes to mind?

Well, I've just got a new leadership role actually because I went to go to the bathroom and I've joined the walking group that's out there. So, you know, apparently they're way better at solving the problems of the world than the current government is, which I sort of had to agree with actually. They looked like the average IQ was higher anyway, so.

And we're off, we're off now, you know.

So what comes to mind? Look, I reckon when you really think about we over complicate things actually. You know, life can be very, very complicated and you're only as happy as your unhappiest child type of thing. But you know, fundamentally I think if you look at say business from a starting point of view in many respects, and I think it doesn't matter whether it's solely business or whether it's running a school or being part of a team or whatever it might be, one of the first things is what does success look like? And can you write it down? Because actually what you find when you go to most places is if you go and individually ask the members of that team what is success for your organization? They'll write down 10 different things. They never write down the same thing. And you think they would, you'd think, oh, a company's making profit. Well, yeah, okay, maybe it is. But it's also about, you know, ultimately building long term brand loyalty and doing the right thing for the society and community that you live in. Because actually without that social license to operate, you're never gonna make it. Whatever. And you know, a sports team, you can say it's about winning, but when they get so arrogant and disconnected from the people that actually support them, then what actually happens is they don't go on and succeed long term. Cause it infiltrates their sort of community. And I didn't Hear Steve yesterday. But I think if you go back to sort of Graham Henry and I think Richie McC.

I think they made very significant changes actually to the All Blacks when they sort of brought in a culture that said, actually we're all the same. You know, the big guys don't just sit in the back of the bus. You know, the young All Blacks don't go and get the older All Blacks coffee, they carry their own bags, all that. And that was all just about building a culture. And I remember in the 2015 World cup, which, by the way, we never lost a World cup when I was prime minister, I'm just saying, you know, just in case you forgotten that little fact, we won both of them, you know, like when we turned up, we, we won the gold medal, all that shit. But anyway, I digress, but there was a really interesting story about the All Blacks were out at a little school down the road and they were throwing the ball around with some young kids and the England rugby team who were the home supporting nation. They were locked away in some swanky sort of joint and I think it sort of said it all. So I think the first thing is, can you define what success looks like and do you have a collective view of that? I think the second thing is, look, it's always people you sort of argue, but I came out of investment banking. That's absolutely true. When you're in parliament, I mean, your strongest assets go up and down the list every day. And without those people. And I think the thing is, can you work out actually how to connect with them and how to motivate them. Because often I think again, we think about the really big things, but it's often the little things actually that make a difference. And the last thing I'd sort of say is really about predictability. So it almost doesn't matter whether you're kind of on the spectrum, half crazy, yell and scream, go nuts, or you're on the other side where you're very chilled and laid back. I mean, every leadership style has its strengths and weaknesses, but it's when you start over here and you end over here that people go, whoa, what happened today? I can't work that out. Whereas I'm pretty laid back. I'm not really a yelling, screaming, phone throwing kind of guy. Other people I worked with have been, but it was actually okay. I sort of understood where they were coming from and I just ducked every so often and I was fine, you know, it was all good. So that's. They're the main things I'd sort of say, really as a starting point.

And in terms of role models, Steve mentioned this yesterday. He felt that we only have one or two role models in our life, true role models. And he said, that's our parents.

Yeah.

So if you think back to your younger days, what impact did your mom or dad have on your leadership?

Yeah, so my father died when I was 6 and I literally 5 or 6, and I have literally no memories of my father. So I actually grew up in Christchurch, went to Burnside High.

But I was born in Auckland. And so my family history, like some people may know it, but it was kind of interesting that my mother was an Austrian Jewish refugee. So in 1937 she got out of Austria and went to the UK and she was 16 years of age. And the way that sort of worked in New Zealand, we have a thing called family reunification. So say, okay, you're Irish, right? Okay. And let's argue for a moment. If you argue for a moment, you had no parents, but you had another brother that was living in New Zealand and a sister that was living in Australia. If you wanted to bring your sister over, then the way those rules would work is the New Zealand government would say the new. The nucleus of the family sits in New Zealand because two of the three of you are here and you have entry. That's all the guts of how some of that works. Lots of other rules, but that's one of them. So back in 1937, the rules didn't work like that. The way the rules worked were you could sponsor someone to come into the United Kingdom in the case of a woman, if you were married. So it's a good sort of old fashioned way of doing things. And so my aunt lived there and.

She wasn't married, Lottie. And so she actually paid a British soldier to marry her. And, you know, no love. So it's a bit like, you know, Celebrity island or whatever these damn things are these days, you know, you know, whatever. Married at first sight or.

I don't know, you sound like, you know, a few of these children.

Oh, yeah, Well, I. I'm forced to endure them now because I'm on the. On the couch, you know, obviously reading an Economist or something while Brain is watching. But we believe you anyway, you know. But anyway, so what happened was Lottie married this British soldier.

And so the interesting thing was Mum came from this actually extremely well to do, quite rich household. And her father had just died, he was a leather merchant but had very successful businesses in Austria. And her mother refused to leave and she Had a brother and the brother was two years older than Mum. And he also agreed to go, funnily enough, actually fought for the British army, was killed in friendly fire, actually, in the Second World War. But all of the rest of Mum's family went to the concentration camps and none of them got out. So they got over there. And so mum was 16. And so she'd been brought up in this household where they, you know, she only spoke German. They were very wealthy, you know, she had this world that she could predict and was really easy. And then next thing, she's in the uk, can't speak a word of English, Britain's going to World War II, she's got no family, no financial resources. The whole world sort of threw itself in its head. And so during the war, she became a nurse. And then after the war, she met my father, who was. Mum, was his second wife. And so they got married, but he was about 20 years old, so he was actually reasonably kind of. I'd say old in the context of things. He's basically my age. But he. Now. But anyway, and he died. He had massive heart attack and dropped down dead one day. And so Mum. Mum had. And Deb were in New Zealand and my sisters are both older than me. And what ended up happening was Mum went along to the accountant and said, look, I've got three children, my husband's just dropped down dead. He's got all these businesses, I don't know anything about them. Can you sort it out? And the accountant said, yeah, sure. She come back in two weeks. She went back in two weeks. And the accountant said, do you want the good news or the bad news? Mum said, oh, better start with the bad news, the bad news. And he said, well, you're broke. I said, ooh, what's the good news? He said, well, I'm a pretty good accountant, I can get you out of most of it. Mum said, ah, it's not really how I operate. So she sold the family home and paid off a lot of the debts and picked up my sisters and took us down to Christchurch, which is how we grew up, in the sort of infamous state house at 19 Holyford Ave. Which I tried to buy off the government at one point, but they didn't want to sell it, mind you, I tried to buy the whole street, actually, because I thought I could redevelop it. But anyway, it's a different sort of story.

But of course you did.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, I'm only kidding, you know, but the. But the long, short. So I never Knew my father. I have literally one memory of him. That's it. So. But my mother had, you know, to your point, basically had a massive influence on me. And so Mum was very Austrian and very Jewish. If you know anything about Jewish matriarchal mothers, they think their sons are the best thing in the world. So she used to say in front of my sisters, your brother is the chosen one. I will. Which I 100% agreed with. I mean, I get it. I totally get it. Hey, I used to say. I used to say to me, yep, List, if you just clear away those dishes, that'd be great, actually.

Thank.

Thanks very much, girls, I appreciate it. And mom used to say, the girls, I would have had a fourth if I had you to have a boy. She used to call me Toots, little Toots. He'll do something one day. And I say, yeah, your toots will do something. So, yeah, it's all going to be good. But Mum. But all jokes apart, Mum was very. But she was very, very determined. So she used to say, look, John, get out of life what you put into it. I'm not interested in excuses, I'm interested in outcomes. And so it didn't matter what you wanted to do, you know, if you went in there, I mean, I went in there when I was 15 one day and said, I want to be a horse trainer. That was like, no. Should we have a discussion about it? No. And that was the end of it, you know, but it was like, you're going to university, you're going to get an accounting degree. It wasn't this, like, this is what you're doing. But. But when I went in and said, oh, I'm going to be Prime Minister when I was 11, she goes, oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, no, that's all fine. That's acceptable. So she was. But she very, very determined and she. But she. Main thing she used to say to me is, look, you never really know how the circumstances are going to change. You know, I grew up in this rich house. If you asked me when I was 15, I would have thought, life's going to be great and I'm going to be, you know, married to some wealthy Austrian guy and life's going to be good, eating Venus schnitzel and enjoying things. He said, all that turned on its head. And then I would have thought everything would be fine in New Zealand. And then that wasn't fine and then it all just carried on. So her main thing was that really, she was a massive supporter and determined about education so she just said, look, they can take anything away from you, but they can't take education away from you and they can't take drive away from you. And I think so that's the main thing we tried to instill in our children, which obviously bluntly come from a different financial background, you know, and we're reasonably well off and so.

They enjoy the nice things in life. They don't have to worry that they can't pay their rent or whatever it might be, they're all taken care of. But the main thing I just used to say to them is, look, in the end you have to make your own life and you have to make your own luck and you have to do your own things and you can put up any kind of reason why that won't work. But actually the most, if you don't have self belief and you don't have drive and you're not prepared to work hard to get it, you won't get there. And I think, you know, it's like I used to tell kids when I used to go to schools, I mean, you know, has Dan Carter got a fantastic left foot? Yep, he does. But, you know, he also used to spend hours kicking thousands of balls over the post. So, you know, yeah, it's like one of the famous golfers said, you know, I'm lucky and the more I practice, the luckier I get. And I think it's that kind of attitude, really.

And the one thing I pick up from that and from reading your book a few years back was you were very clear on your vision at a young age. Mum, I'm going to be a millionaire or make a million dollars and I'm going to be a Prime Minister. And then the response to that was great support. You're not putting it down, but supporting you and get to work. So between the vision and then first milestone, what were the key things around you that helped you actually make those steps towards those outcomes?

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Yeah, so I mean, the money thing was really about, you know, I think financial independence gives you confidence. And I remember, you know, in the first debate in 2008, when I was up against Helen Clark. I'll tell you an interesting little thing at the moment, if you follow politics.

The deputy leader of the National Party is Nicola Willis. Right. So. And if you ever get a chance to meet Nikki, she's awesome. But she was my speech writer and she was my main policy person. I made a leave, I made a guy, I said, you gotta go out and get a job, otherwise you'll just be always in this political environment. So she went and worked for Fonterra and a few other things, but she is massively talented. So you know how you do these debates, and they're pretty heavy duty, these debates. You do, honestly days and days and days of training, like the books of stuff. You just have to, you know, so you don't make a mistake on any policy. You've got. They've got. Whatever's happened to all these things because they fact check everything you do and then you spend days of tidying up if it's wrong. But you also do all the mock debates. And Nicola played Helen Clark and she was better than Helen Clarke, actually. Way better. And I told Helen that too. Cause we do something together actually on things. Trying to save the Kiwi, believe it or not. Bird, that is. But yeah, Nicky's awesome. But they can't basically train you. In the end, you are who you are and your instincts are there on display. And that was the one thing I said to Bill when he became Prime Minister. I said, mate, just trust your instincts. Cause it doesn't matter how many briefing notes and how many people you have around you, you gotta trust your instincts. And that's what I do. That's what I do in everything I do, particularly in business, but equally in politics. If I don't think I can trust you or I just don't like the feel of it, I won't do it. And I've done some things where. Or not done some things where if I'd done them, they would have been either financially the right thing or they may well have been the right thing to do, but I would never have been quite sure. But I've had many things where I, you know, where I have done it and I've. And it's worked out amazingly well because I've had that confidence that I'm right. And even when I've done that and I've got it wrong, it's okay. You know, you can change your mind or you can get, you know, nothing in the. In the end really cuts you out, but. But you have to believe and, you know, you have to have that amazing belief, I think, that you're right and if you trust your instincts, you'll be right. But anyway, in that. In that debate that they always sort of claimed. I won that debate against Helen because of the one question they asked me, which was they said to her, are you rich? The question actually came from Barry Soper, who's actually a really good guy, but his nickname in Parliament was Barely Soper. So you can go and figure that he's married to Heather du Plesse. And I actually really like Barry. But anyway, he was really asking the question to ask me because he wanted to trip me up and he thought, I'll get screwed on this question. So he said. So the question was, are you rich? And what does it mean to you to be rich? Right? And Helen is, in the context of New Zealand, rich, right? She'd be worth two or three million dollars. You know, they had various houses and she'd been paid pretty well as prime minister and all this sort of. So in the context of the average New Zealander, she's rich. Oh, God. She couldn't answer the question. She's like, well, no. Yes, sort of, maybe, could be. You know, I can't understand, but I meet all these people and blah, blah, blah, right? And I said, yep, I'm rich. And that's cool, you know, like, I want more New Zealanders to be rich. But actually, what it means to me is that when the power bill turns up on the kitchen bench, I don't worry about opening the bill because I know I can pay it, and it gives me the confidence to do things I want to do, and I want New Zealanders to have that confidence. So the reason I wanted to make money wasn't just, you know, it's obviously value. There's a famous economist called Samuelson, and he said, money's value in exchange. So in other words, it's what you can do with it. I mean, the richest person in the graveyard isn't necessarily the smartest, you know, if you never spend anything, you never do anything, what's the point in having it? You know, it's only what you do with it, you know, but equally, it does give you tremendous confidence that you can. Nothing's kind of going to cut you Out. And you see that with health, you know, like we had. Unfortunately, my brother in law died about a year ago of cancer here. And I got to say, actually, I don't think the system worked terribly well, if I'm really, really honest. And there were many faults on numerous sites. But anyway, I had the smell alarm and it killed him. But we did everything we could to try and support him in various different drugs and various different procedures and lasted a year, but didn't save him. But if you didn't have access to those financial resources, you could never have done that. Now, in the end, you can't make the case if you just want to be crude about it. He died, but he still lasted a year longer than he would have. But I mean, it's that horrible feeling that you feel helpless. I think that's why you want people to be wealthy.

I think just gives them choice, 100%. And if we go back to your time as Prime Minister, what were your priorities? Because you can't focus on everything, you can't keep everyone happy. Of course you're going to have your critics, but what were the key things and objectives you were focused on?

On, yeah. And funnily enough, actually, I tell you one thing, I'm chairman of anz, which made $2.3 billion yesterday. So that was quite a good day. The office, funny enough, actually, I know it sounds like a lot of money, because it is a lot of money, but we have massive, I mean, we have a $220 billion balance sheet, we've got $20 billion of capital invested. You know, in bad times we lose money. So, yeah, like, I'm not defending, because actually I, I think it's a good thing. The banks are strong and they're making money, but they don't always make money. But the woman who's the CEO I appointed, Antonia Watson, she's awesome. She's doing a great job. And she's probably been, she's been in that job about four years now. But I always say to her, look, however long you think you'll be at the top, it might be less than you think. I mean, I don't know. But in political terms, the day you start is the beginning of the end. I think it'd be true for a sports person. It's fundamentally true in any business. Anything you do. I mean, we only have a limit, limited time on the planet. So, you know, you only have a. You know. And I just said to her, look, when I look back on being Prime Minister, the only things I ever think about was, did I go fast enough on some of the things that I wanted to do and what were the things that I wanted to achieve? And so because we don't live in this magical world where you can just ignore the environment that you're in, we live in the real world. So when I came in, we had the global financial crisis, which was huge. Then we had the Christchurch earthquakes, then we had various other sort of financial and other issues that went on. Then we had a bunch of different things that we were trying to resolve. So the first thing is that the priorities were really how do we get through those different things to make the country stronger. But I suppose if there was one underlying thing that you wouldn't write down, I wanted New Zealand to feel more confident at the end of it. The infamous sort of changing of the flag was really nothing to do with the flag. I know it sounds stupid, but yeah, you know, I kind of cared about it. I mean, like, I cared a lot about the issue, but the flag was just a symbol of who we are and that, you know, having more overt signs of patriotism. So when you go to America, you see flags and I spend lots of time in the States and, you know, they just fly flags everywhere. They, you know, even Australia, I tell you, I mean, their flag is pretty similar to ours, like kind of AKA identical, and you can't tell apart in half time. It's another reason wanted to change because it got put in front of the Australian flag so often. But the. But the reality was that when we want to show pride in New Zealanders, we wear a silver fern, right? That's what we do to. If we were. If you were in Istanbul this afternoon, you wanted to walk down the street and show people you're a Kiwi, you wouldn't put a T shirt on with the New Zealand flag first. You probably don't even own one. But even if you did own one, you probably wouldn't do it because people would go, g', day. They think you're Australia or they'd think you're something else, but actually you'd wear the silver fern, right? And I just sort of think philosophically, we are famously the last bus stop on the planet. We're a little country at the bottom of the world. No one knows us living. But if we could be more confident, more globally engaged.

More of the view that we were going to win.

Then I think actually we would be a better country for it.

I do worry, if I'm really, really honest. I look at today and I go, okay, so you've got virtually no migration allowed into the country. It's slowly starting to change. So unemployment's at these incredibly low levels. You've got every employer I can think of screaming for workers. But we've got 420,000 New Zealanders on a benefit now. Some of them will legitimately be unable to work. You know, they've got all sorts of issues, physical conditions, mental health issues, whatever. You know, there's a variety of different. So I'm not taking anything away from that. But what I am sort of saying, really, is that the only pathway out of poverty is work, and the vast bulk of people who are in poverty live on a benefit. That's just blunt reality, because actually income rates are low. And so the question for me was, how do you actually put in place those drivers to make people work? I think, because I thought if you do that, actually, you'll transform their lives, you'll make them do that. And there's a proven fact, by the way, like, you go and ask the Ministry of Social Development, they'll tell you. If you go through, say, Maryvale, pick a suburb at night, at 2 o' clock in the morning, the lights are off. If you go through Tokoroa at 2 o' clock in the morning, the lights are on. I'll tell you why they're on, because there's a lot of partying going on at two in the morning because they're not going to work the next day. And as soon as they get one person to get a job in that household, everything changes. Because then they get up and they make the kids go to school and they go off to work and everyone sees that their life is changing. So, you know, so I guess my point would just simply be whatever the things that you think are important. And they were, some of them for us, some very practical and some more high level. Just have them in mind and go after them because your time will run out. And I actually don't look back with regrets. I mean, I think it's a journey, not a destination. Being Prime Minister, you know, you're always gonna, you know, it's gonna leave some things. But, you know, I do. I do kind of think that that's. For me, anyway, that was. Look, they always say infamously, you know, the definition of a good Prime Minister is when you leave the country in better shape than you found it. And that is hugely subjective. So yesterday I was driving along the motorway and this woman in a. I just happened to notice the car was a Toyota Swift. Spent most of the Time between Northcote and the Harbour Bridge, pulling the finger at me. Now, it could be that I cut her off, but I was seeing my wife at dinner this last. Last night, and she said, well, you're notorious for changing lanes. Without indicating. I said, I didn't change lanes. She said, you're notorious for being on your phone. I said, hey, I have hands free. I was on my phone, but I was hands free. And she said, my wife eventually says to me, what do you think the reason this nice woman did that 10 times to you? And I said, cause she hates my guts, honey. And she said, oh, yeah, yeah, it's plausible. I believe that. Yeah, I believe that. I get it. And so my point being, in the eyes of that woman, if this was the reason, which I suspect it was, it's like it was just me, she'll always believe I didn't achieve that. And then in the eyes of some people who were supporters of mine, they'll say, you did do that. So the point is, you're never gonna please everyone all the time, but.

You have to.

I think it is true that a good Prime Minister does leave the country in better shape. And I think if that's the argument, you have to work out what better shape looks like. And some of those things are hard, but there are education standards and homelessness and all sorts of things, but it's also opportunity for people to get out, strut this stuff, really.

100% encouragement when we think about making decisions. So we all make decisions day in, day out at various levels in our personal lives, professional lives, making decisions in good times, it's easy.

It's easy.

How do you go about making the decisions when it's tough, when it's gfc, when there's a war, when there's earthquakes? How do you make clear decisions?

Yeah, I think the first thing is you have to realize you're never going to please everyone all the time. I mean, it's just a simple reality. I mean, Holyoke used to say, when he was Prime Minister, the party agrees with me, 70% of the time, I'd be about right. And that's probably true. So I think the first thing is you have to have real courage over your convictions. You have to believe you're doing the right thing. Like I said earlier, trust your instincts. Eventually you have to make decisions. I think you need clarity in that. You have to be able to say, this is why I'm doing that.

So Nicola Willis always used to say to me, and I think she's right, actually, it's all about motive. So if you're a politician trying to sell tax cuts, it's not actually that I'm lowering the top personal rate from 39 to 33. It's about I want New Zealanders to have greater incentives to get out there and take risks and to work hard and to make money. And as a result of that, I'm doing that. So what's my motivation and what's my method for doing that? And I keep saying to Chris Luxon all the time because I'm very close to Chris. I just keep saying to him, mate, you've got to tell them stories about why it is you're doing what you're doing. Cause we get it. We live in a world where it's just very simple to bark out the answer. And you might know the answer, but that's like you gotta look at any US presidential debate and these people are schooled like you cannot believe. And it'll be Obama getting up and saying, I was in Wichita, Kansas yesterday and I met Molly. And Molly's a mother of two and she's down on her luck and she doesn't have a job and so she doesn't have health. And they're painting a mental picture for you and why? Because that's what we can understand. Cause I'll tell you what, we all get really confused. If you want to know a really sad and depressing thing.

When you're Prime Minister, you end up doing all this polling, right? Which is focus group polling. So there are 20 non aligned voters who sit down and tell you. And we do it every month, right? We'd say name anything that has struck you that the government has done in the last six months. Name people in the government, right? Name this, name that. You go through the whole bloody lot, okay? Mostly no clue what they've done the last. You know, can't name a single thing. They get me in the government, they get me Bill and Jerry because he's a pretty big, big dude. That's it. They're the only people they can remember. Honestly, I swear to God, I remember Chris Finlayson, who Chris is like academically brilliant, eh? But this most acerbic and takes himself very seriously. And he came in one day cause they'd written an editorial in the Dominion Post about how terrible something he was doing was. I said, cool, Chris, you should look at this. He goes, what's that? I said, it's this month's polling. And he goes, why should I look at that? And I said, because less than 0.1% of people know who you are, so don't even worry about it. So it's darling. Now, he didn't seem to appreciate. Appreciate that. Well, I thought it was all right.

I love it. Anyway, it's funny you mentioned Chris Luxon. So recently I seen a. You put up a bit of a post sharing a story. He was at McDonald's flipping burgers.

Yeah, I saw it in news last night.

Yeah, really interesting. And when you and I chatted a few years back and I was telling you I've been interviewing different leaders and you said, james, if there's one leader that I'd like you to interview who I regard as one of the best CEOs that New Zealand has had. Yeah, it's Christopher Luxon. So I went ahead and did that and was incredibly impressed with his acuity, his insight, the way he delivers as a leader. So just to unpack that a little bit, what is it that you look for in a great leader? What are the attributes you see? And you go, yeah, amazing leader right there.

Well, part of it has to be a general belief that you want to follow them, I think. I mean, the most charismatic leaders in the world are often the people that they just have a certain thing about them. Now, partly office creates that. So the office of the President of the United States of America, I mean, it's like, it is unbelievable. Like it's a, it's a, it's a footprint you can't even imagine. You know, they turn up with two 747s and they fly around. You know, their car is the beast. The coffee cup they have is the seal. I mean, look, it's incredible. So you can't help but be like, whoa. You know, Although I don't feel like that with Biden, I've got to be honest. But you know, but with Obama and the others, you know, I kind of did.

So, yeah, I mean, I think part of it is that they have to be somehow along the line. They have to kind of inspire you. And they don't necessarily always have to have an A type personality. It might be that they are just, you're just in awe of their capacity to do the things that they've done and the respect for where they're sort of going.

So, yeah, I mean, I kind of look for that sort of. Do they have that X factor, I suppose, or that thing? Part of it is, you know, do I actually want to be with them? Like, are they actually half decent people really? But ultimately, can they gather around them the people that we need to make this thing work. Are they kind of doing the things that I want them to do? Is there some sort of balance about it?

And how do you grow leaders? So obviously you've had to grow teams of your own in politics, but also in the corporate world. How do you go about growing and influencing others around you?

Well, firstly, you have to give them space. I mean, I think, you know, I.

I think there's a difference between being so hands off that you never offer any feedback and you never get involved and you never dare to back them up. But equally, if you're all over them and you're doing it, you may as well be the person that's running the show. So you're only. Really. It's one of the things I worry about, actually, with working from home. We now live in this world where we work from home. That's the sort of trendy thing. We want to work from home. So at Anz, just to give you an example, we've got, you know, better part of 10,000 employees, 62% of our staff spend two days or less at home.

Yeah, two days, sorry, less at work. I mean, should I say two days less at work. So basically, the bulk of the workforce is coming to the work, is coming to work one day a week, and some of them none. And the reason I worry about that is people learn through young people learn through osmosis. They're just there. They're just sitting there. They just feel it, you know, they hear you having a discussion. You make them a better salesperson or a better this or better that, because they see it. And culture in every organization is different. And you can feel it. Like the culture in, you know, in a certain school is different from one school to the other. It doesn't mean that one's better than the other. It's just different. It's often set at the top. Like, I remember going to Westlake Boys. They've got an English guy who's the principal there, and I reckon he's phenomenally good. He's quite a young guy. And it's. And. But. But you go there be 1200 boys, and you go and speak to assembly. And he'd just walk in there, like, stop like that, like, not a sound, right. And afterwards I was walking around with them. I went a couple of times, and you're walking around and there'd be some boy walking around with his socks down and he'd just look at them, and next thing you know, they'd be hitting the deck and, you know, ripping their Socks up and you know, there was just that culture and then you go to other schools and there would be like whatever. And I don't know, I just didn't, didn't have that feeling. And we say this is a public school, I mean it's not a private school. So you know, I think there's, that, that is that kind of stuff, you know, I think, yeah.

It's interesting you mentioned about the work from home thing and your concerns around us. Let's take anz, got a 10,000 employees, a large amount of them not coming into the office. What are the repercussions, potential consequences of this over the next four or five years?

Yeah, so I think, I think so firstly for those young people, I mean, how do we notice them? I mean we can measure their workflow, you know, depending on what they do for us. But how do we, how do we, you know, so how do we mentor them and make them better? I worry that, as I said, I worry that there's a breakdown in culture. So we have a culture at Anz, it's quite a different culture. I came out of Merrill lynch and Bankers Trust, which were two sort of red meat eating, very investment banks. They were good and bad. They had strengths and weaknesses, but they were what they were. It was also probably a different time in the workplace, you know, it was just. But Anz's cultures are very polite and respectful. Like when I went on the Anz board and I'm on the group board in chairman of New Zealand. First couple times we sat board meetings, I thought, God, has everyone taken some sleeping tablet or something? Like it's quite quiet, you know, like I'd go to a cabinet committee and people would be ripping shit out of each other and it was like. But the reason they do that isn't cause they're. Well, they probably are testosterone filled or whatever, you know, a type personalities. But it wasn't solely that. The reason is cause. What happens when you, when you're in cabinet, we're bound by what's called Westminster principle. So that means that we're collectively bound. So you can have any row you want before you decide a policy or a position. But the moment you decide that law, everyone backs it. If you don't back it, the convention is you resign. And so what happens is people firstly know they've got to back it. So to back it, they want to panel beat it in the best place. They may never agree with what you're doing at the end of it, but they have to do that. Second thing is they're bright enough to know that actually it's going to be made better by people bringing different perspectives. So just to give you an example, if you. If you take someone like Jerry. Jerry, we used to say Jerry is Wolsten Workingman's Club. Because that could he not. Because he is there, by the way. He went to St. Beads and he probably never drunk at the Wilson Workings Club. But he. But he'd come in and he was quite earthy and he'd just go, nah, nah, people sitting them, nah, they're gonna buy that shit, you know, and we go. And we might not even like what he's saying, but we. But we would build it into what we're doing. Cause he was right for a big portion of the population. That's what they thought. And equally, you know, then we'd have Nikki K. Come in from the leafy, you know, you know, suburbs of sort of Auckland Central. And she. Her and Jerry be like, you know, and she'd be going, nah, nah, you're a Neanderthal. You know.

And so it was just different. And so. But you build off all of that sort of stuff and you. You learn all the different things that go on. So I think. And so the culture at Anz, when I went there, is different. And it's because they don't.

I think they would perceive being a bit aggressive as being that you were disrespecting the management or one of the other directors. And I don't know, I mean, to me, I'm just used to more robustness. I think I've learned to get used to it, but it is different. And that's one of the things I really worry about with working from home. And actually it's kind of fun going to work. I mean, I don't work now because I need money. I work because I'm so young enough to want to do some things that are different and hopefully make a bit of a difference in things. I do.

And I don't want to work like I used to work, but I enjoy doing stuff and being around things, I find it sort of invigorating and it's intellectually interesting to do things. So I've got more balance in my life now. But work, life balance, but I sort of enjoy it. So, yeah, I don't know. I think. But that's what I do worry about with this thing. Having said that, there are some good things, you know, so. Okay, yeah. Covid was terrible in the fact that we couldn't go anywhere. But I did teach a Company like Anz, which is really conservative that by the way, there is this thing called the Internet and you can have a zoom call and life's going to be fine. Right. Whereas I'm on Palo Alto Networks where, which is the largest cyber security company in the world. And I remember they wanted me to go on this and Nikesh who runs the shows, amazing guy, he said, yeah, we have five board meetings a year in Silicon Valley. And I said, ah, Jesus, five board meetings in Silicon Valley. It's better than, you know, like BP wanted me to go on their board and that's 10 board meetings in London. So I said no, we've got make sure on their advisory board because it's easier. But I said, ah, five, I don't know if I can get to five. He said, mate, if you turned up to all five in person, we'd think the same wrong with you. So you know, and this was like 2017.

Wow.

And ain't that the truth. But so the thing is, a hybrid model is quite good. But I do worry that, and I worry, you know, some companies are gonna wake up one day and go, God, I've got, I know there's been fraud or there's been stuff going on or do you know the number of people by the way? I mean we've seen quite a lot of this in the States. They've got multiple jobs, so they're a full time employee of Cisco and Palo Alto and so on. We've had about four of them at Palo Alto. They're that bright because they put themselves on LinkedIn for every different company and we see them. But some of them will have two full time jobs, right? And what they're doing, they're doing, they are actually doing their job. They're just doing 40 hours of work in 20 hours. They work their socks off. But they're doing it for two companies. So there is some interesting things coming out of it.

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Very interesting. Wow.

Now John, check out your employees, but.

You definitely could jump on LinkedIn. Folks, one of our first conversations was an interesting one. So I worked at a local school here in Christchurch and coming from Northern Ireland, public school and very working class town, went through primary and high school and didn't know of one kid that killed themselves. Didn't know of one, not in my whole town. Kneecapping was certainly more popular in Northern Ireland, but when I went work at this school, pretty incredible school here in Christchurch, in the decade that I worked there, we had 10 or more kids take their lives and I find this just truly mind boggling. And I started to look at New Zealand statistics, I was like, wow, we are winning in terms of we're like number one in the OECD for teen suicide, for domestic violence, child mortality. And I know that our reporting is a lot more accurate compared to some other countries like Italy and so forth. But it got me asking questions around why, what is it with our mental health? And we're talking about this working from home thing and isolating in Covid. What do you think drives the mental health statistics that we have particularly for our young kids and Maori, Pacific specifically?

Yeah, so the tragedy is you're 100% right that we have quite high stats, to your point. Yeah. Places like Italy, they're deeply Catholic countries and they won't admit that people are taking their own lives. So they're under report, but nevertheless, numbers very high. So.

I started looking at quite a bit because actually my son's school, he was at King's College in Auckland, they had a number of kids take their own lives. And I mean, yeah, I'd obviously seen stats and read stuff about it, but I guess when he started going to funerals, like far too many funerals and like all parents worry about children taking their own lives and if we're honest, everyone worries about that. I started thinking, well, yeah, what could we do about it? You know, like, I'm theoretically in this position to do something about it, so what could I do about it? So there was actually a guy, believe it or not, and he was a world expert in suicide, and particularly youth suicide. He came out of Norway or somewhere in Scandinavia, I think it was Norway or Denmark, and he was working in Masterton. And I rang him up, the Ministry of Health said, this guy's a world expert and he's here for two years. And so I rang him up and said, hey, will you come and see me? And it was kind of interesting. He goes, no, I'm very busy. You come and see me. I said, okay.

I like his style.

I go, yeah, I got nothing else else to do. Hey, yeah, sure, no worries, fella. So, no, but I thought, no, stuff it. So I got in the Crown car, you know, we went over the hill, went to Master. Anyway, he's very interesting guy on many fronts. First one thing he said to me that was very scary, he said, you know, okay, the stereotypical, that young person that might kill themselves is that they, they withdraw in themselves and they go in their room and they don't talk. And you know, all the signs are there, right? Well, firstly, a lot of young people do that, go in their rooms and go through patches. That's the first thing. The second thing is that doesn't mean they're going to kill themselves. The second thing is apparently 30 or 40% of all young people that commit suicide show no obvious symptoms or it's just not obvious. In fact, the last kid that killed himself at King's when Max was there.

He was the Max Segme. Of all the people that did it, it. He would never picked it. He was the happiest kid in the school.

So he was actually, you know, the guy that writes in the Herald died himself actually, recently, Brian Gaynor was His son, David Gaynor. And David's a lovely kid. I knew David Gaynor a little bit. And you honestly, you'd never have picked it. So this first thing is he just said, whatever you think, there's just going to be a group of people. So. And he said the reason it's very challenging is everything in your normal mental state is to stay alive, which is why people will survive with very little food or water. It's why they'll cut their arm off with a pen knife if it's, you know, trapped under a boulder. And, you know they'll do it. They'll do. Everything in your instincts is to live right? Whereas actually you're fighting that. So why is that happening? And then in New Zealand, if you look, if you really want to know the stats, this is the horrible reality, they may have changed a little bit. I know, don't. I don't think they've changed much, is that we lose about 100 youngsters a year. About 500 people a year commit suicide, but a lot of them are a bit older and some of them have got terminal illness. And maybe in modern world they'd invoke euthanasia laws that are there, which is why I was voted for euthanasia. But of the hundred young people, which I think are 18 or below, 90% of them are Mori boys. Okay, so that. And so the reason that the boys die in big numbers and the girls don't is typically the pattern has been girls take tablets and boys hang themselves and girls will often find them and so we can save them.

Whereas, you know, boys, there's no coming back from hanging yourself. And so basically, so then you go back and say, okay, well, so I got really interested and we actually started. We did a lot of stuff. We did a huge amount. And this is what happens in government, which is the crude reality is, yeah, I think it probably made the news for five minutes one night, if you're lucky, and they wrote the odd story, but it's not interesting. Like Trevor Mallard belting tohen around the thing, whatever. And so that dominates things. Whereas serious stuff actually doesn't get nearly enough attention because it's not controversial, you know, you're just doing something, you know, so. But anyway, I reckon if you want to know what I think the driver is, I think a huge amount of drivers are social media now, I think, I think, firstly. Okay, yeah, we're better at recognizing it. Maybe if you had, you know, whatever, whatever conditional symptom of mental health 30, 40 years ago, we probably didn't recognize. We probably didn't do anything about it. But.

But if I was to look at many of the girls Max has dated, which has been quite a long list, but let's say they're all honestly all lovely girls, all beautiful. I don't think he's dated a single girl that honestly hasn't had anorexia or bulimia or. Shit's a real worry, eh? You know, it's a massive worry. And I think they get on the Internet and it's not just girls, I mean it's, you know, you're too fat, you're too thin, you're too this, you're too that, you know, it's all these trolls. See, I don't look, see I don't look at social media. I had social media when I was Prime Minister obviously. And if you think about how fast and far the world has come, right? So Helen, when she was pm, didn't virtually had no social media, wasn't even really there. Like when we started we thought we were cutting edge. Cause we had Instagram, we'd put up the odd picture, you know, like there was no messaging on Facebook. We started building an audience. I mean Jacinda's got, got massive Facebook, big international Facebook following, actually huge, huge numbers. And so that's the media under which we all communicate. But if you go and look at the trolls on that stuff, I mean it is ugly. So even today I don't even bother, you know, I don't bother reading any of it. I never have. And you know, because if you really read that stuff, it would do you hidden. But go and tell that to a 15 year old and then I think there just are social issues. I mean if you're really honest, some of these married boys, they're up north or they're in Gisborne, they're very low. Levels of deprivation. Maybe no father in the household. Look, I went to Huntley High one time and it's a very low decile school and the principal said it was after school, it was like about 3:30 and they had these kids and they were young, young, larger, young Maori boys and they were running around playing rugby or doing something or whatever. And the principal said to me, there's about 50 of them. He said, what do you notice about those boys? I said they're all Maori or Pacific. He said they're large. Yeah, but no, I said they're all under 15 or something. He went, no. We went through about five things and eventually said none of them have got a father. None of them have ever had a father. So I'm not saying. I mean, we live in the real world. Divorce rates, 40% doesn't make you a bad person because you get divorced. Lots of people get divorced. My sister's had more husbands than I've had hot dinners. But, you know, as long as they wear a name badge, actually, the current one's fantastic. Guy. They've been there 20 years, it'll all be good. But the point is, she went through a few prior to that. But, you know, but. But the simple facts of life are that I think, you know, you do have some of these households where there may be no. No father, no family figure. Could be quite a lot of drugs, could be. Could be abuse. And we sort of wonder, you know, why these things are going on. So I don't know, but it. It's probably always been there, but, man. And it's not. It's just not an easy thing to resolve.

100%. Well, let's change course a wee bit. I want to. I want to ask you, bringing together your acuity, your knowledge, your research, you're constantly learning and growing, plus your gut feeling, where are we sitting right now? New Zealand. In terms of the economic cycle, where are we headed? What have we got to brace for?

Yeah. So if you go back to, say, 2020, you know, Covid comes along. I was really, really economically negative. I just thought, God, you know, I mean, I couldn't even envisage a world where you had a tourism business and no tourists could turn up. You had a coffee shop, no one could come to the shop. You had any business. I didn't even think we could run anz bank with a $200 billion balance sheet from someone's bedroom, which is essentially what we've been doing. I mean, run it from home. I just didn't see that world. And so why was it that we didn't have these terrible scenarios? I'll tell you the reason why. And that was that massive amounts of government transfers. So they. It wasn't anything new. And I'm not taking away from it. I'm just saying that what we did in Christchurch, where we paid people for 10 weeks and all that sort of stuff, and let businesses try and get back on their feet and pay their employees and stuff, they just copied that playbook and that was a good thing to do. And so where people had very low levels of expenses because you couldn't go out, you couldn't do anything, you couldn't actually spend money, you can't order takeaways you can't go out to nightclubs, you can't do anything. Max's girlfriend at the time, who was actually a hairdresser, she made really good money through Covid.

Because they came and moved into our house before it all started. They didn't spend a single cent and the government paid her more net than she was probably getting as a hairdresser. So they made money. And then the second thing was interest rates cratered and so the Reserve bank pumped money in the system, government printed money, and you're left with interest rates of 1%. Now, as we know, that led to all these kind of slightly weird outcomes in a way, but skyrocketing house prices and all these different things. So if I look at it today, the reason I'm a bit more nervous today now. I mean, I was nervous then and wrong, but now I'm nervous and I suspect I'm probably right, is that I do really worry that, just to give you an example, 40%, well, it's actually technically 57% of all of Anz's customers who have a mortgage with us have a mortgage that starts with a two or three in front of it and in the next six months they've got to roll that over and that will have a five in front of it. We think floating interest rates are going to 9%, we think mortgages are going to 7. So there's a huge amount of money coming out of their household. And just to give you an example.

When petrol prices go up, right, it doesn't take very long for torqueback to ring up and go, well, yeah, in real simple terms, if the government's getting 15 cents a litre and fuel's A$15, they've made 15 cents and they've only paid a dollar and now it's 10 doubled to $2, they're getting 30 cents, you know, so they get to. They should cut GST or cut each size, right, on fuel, because for nothing different, they're making more money, that is. Right, right. I'll tell you what's interesting, though. The GST tax, taken those times, stays exactly the same. Do you know why? Because people trade from steak to sausages, so they spend more money on fuel, they spend less money at the supermarket, or less money going out to dinner, or less money on something else, right? And what that tells me is the vast bulk of people spend 100% of what they earn. Relatively low saving rates consume everything they get.

And the maths in New Zealand, broadly, are a third of all people own a home with a Mortgage. A third of people own a home with no mortgage. And a third of people, rent and rents are going through the roof. Interest is going through the roof. So at least for two thirds of the community, they are paying a lot more. Now, the positive part of the story is we can analyze your data. Like when I first became chairman of Anz, I remember the guy who was doing the injection for me said, we can tell if you've got cancer. I said, mate, I thought you were a bank, not a hospital. Goes, yeah, I know, but we can tell. I went, oh, okay, yeah, you know, knock my socks off. What have I got? Then he goes, well, I don't know. You got anything? I said, well, so you can't tell if I've got cancer. There's no. I could tell because I can see in your bank account, I'd see your income going down. I'd see you making payments to your oncologist. I can see everything you can do. And we can and do. And on an anonymized basis, we can see everything that's going on. So we've measured the income in the last 12 months from Source of everyone that banks with us. That's 40% of New Zealand. So it's a lot. And it's gone up five and a half percent. So even though their interest rates are going up, actually what's happening is their income is rising. I know it sounds crazy, but it's definitely true. So they're getting wage rounds or they're doing more in different things. So at one level you might see interest rates go up quite a bit. They might survive quite well because they'll probably get pretty decent wage rounds over the next two years. But here's the challenge, and that is that over the last 20 years, anytime you've had a big problem, you know, the dot com crisis, any kind of thing, right? The response for the government has always been right or central banks pump the place with cash. And that's why the stock market's all rallied and everything's come right. They can't do that anymore because in an inflationary environment you can't do it. And I was in, in the same under Tuesday, Wednesday. On Tuesday night, the Aussie budget was held. Jim Chalmers is the treasurer. So Minister of Finance over there. They are left wing. They've got very little opposition, so you'd think they'd want to be popular. He got up and said, energy prices are going up 50% in the next year, 20% this year, 30% next year. But over the next 12 month period. And we're not going to give you anything for it because we know it'll be inflationary. So they're worried about less. And then you look around the rest of the world and they've got big things happening at them. Like it's not just Ukraine, but as a result of Ukraine. So energy prices in the UK, gas prices have gone 10x. Right. So just give you an example for a low to middle income household in the UK this winter, their power bills will have gone from 6% of their household budget to 40%.

So they literally will be saying, I'm not buying pizza, we're not turning the fire on, let's get three black blankets, we'll watch tv. I mean, they are going to cut costs, these households are going to have to cut costs. So I do sort of worry that, you know, and I heard Hosking this morning on the radio saying that business numbers were, you know, collapses, were getting a bit higher. Having said all of that, we see the first signs of stress. So New Zealand, at our last board meeting last week, New Zealand board number of people who have passed 30 days on their credit card is rising. We can see in things that are not in our space. But what, what I call the non bank sector, they are deteriorating. So buy now, pay later has gone from 7.5% delinquency to definitely plus 9 and probably greater mortgage sales are starting to increase. We are starting to see some stress, but man, it's very, still very benign. So I'm not doom and gloom, I'm just saying there's just more potential stress in the system.

And what are the controllables? So if you were back in office right now and you could see this, you had this information, what are the controllables and the levers that you think you would start pulling?

Yeah, so look, you have to get more out of what you're spending and you fundamentally have to spend less. So, you know.

I did this podcast a wee while ago and there were two university students and one's hardcore right wing. It's actually a girl because that's unusual because theoretically hardcore political parties, one side or the other, are typically right wing is more male orientated, left wing is more female orientated, but obviously. And the guy was left wing, right? And so he was really trying to get stuck into me and I said to him, okay, well name me one single social stat that's got better under the current government. Name me one because, oh, you're just being smarter. I said, well, no, I'm just asking the obvious Question. Name one. Like, number of people are homeless. Well, four times as many people live in a car that did when I was brother. Number of people want to benefit 23% more. You just go through every single step that you know, number of people, amount of time they're waiting to get into hospital, amount of time they're waiting to get surgery, ram raids. I mean, God, you know, how safe do we all feel in our house? You know, all this stuff go on and on and on. And I raise that because this government is spending so much more money than we did. So the point is, are they getting anything for it? Well, it's not obvious to me. So I think they've got to get some discipline back into place and start saying spend money wisely instead of just throwing money around like it's no tomorrow tomorrow, and then actually spend it on the things you really want. So when we ran zero budgets for three years on the bill, but we spend more money in health, education and wealth and science and less money on everything else. Some people might not like it, but that's the reality of any household. You've got to spend money more wisely. I think the other thing I'd sort of say is that comes back to that point I was making about confidence earlier that I just sort of think we've kind of got this attitude at the moment that, that, I don't know, that we. I don't know, we just don't seem to. We don't like well off people and we don't like businesses that succeed and well, okay, great. But you know, okay, just give an example. So they're all out belting anz last night, you know, Robertson Sound TV and that sort of stuff. Do you know we pay 5% of all corporate tax in New Zealand? We have 5% of all corporate tax. One in every $20 we buy it.

It's quite a lot. So, yeah, you can get rid of us if you want to, but there's a lot of mood you got to find from somewhere else, you know, and it's like, you know, I don't know, I get frustrated sometimes because obviously I know a lot of. For whatever reason, well off people, most of them are the most generous people I meet half the time, the least claiming the least credit and doing the most things. So don't we want role models? Don't we want people to be successful? I mean, the reason that we love the All Blacks or the, you know, Black Ferns or, or, you know.

Or Ireland.

Sorry.

Or Ireland.

Or Ireland. Yeah. But the reason we love those kind of people is because we think they're role models for our young people and that they'll aspire to be like that. Well, but I think we should also, you know, say, well, it's incredible if you can be Rod Duke and build Briscoes or you can be any nature of sort of business. I mean, Christchurch has got heaps of very, very successful men and women who've done incredible things. And, and I just know, I just think you want to, you want people to believe that they can. The fact that they might not want to is fine, but I want to encourage them. Like that's what we try to do there. Try to cut your oxygen, cut your red tape. And that's like, you know, it's like Donald Trump. I mean, okay, the guy's certifiable sometimes I get all that. But actually, when you look at what he did on the business side, I mean, there's other things, you know, a little more interesting. But on the business side, he actually cut, cut miles of red tape taxes. He actually permitted stuff that she happened, like the economy actually went well. It was just the other stuff that was nuts fair, which is quite a lot.

So if you were put in a position and you were a permanent resident in Hawaii, not a part time resident, and you had to vote and you had the opportunity to go Hillary or Trump, which way would you go and why would you go there?

Well, I'd vote for Trump, which drives.

I mean, she's a good little right wing voter, always voted national her entire life and she hates Trump. And I always say to her, which really drives them even crazier. I go, Trump is a symptom of the problems. He's actually not the problem. You might think he's the problem, but you only get there when people vote for you. And in America's case, only one in two people vote. So never any more than 25% of Americans have voted for their president because half of them don't vote and the other half vote for someone else. Right, but, but the point being, why did that group who bother voting want him there? And because it's because they think they like the messages he's saying, which is, your life ain't fair, China's not playing fair, all these different sorts of things, right?

So on the basis I'm never gonna vote for the left, don't care what happens, I'm never doing it anyway. And I don't agree with not voting, I'd vote for Trump. But I mean, there's a lot of Stuff. There's obviously a lot of stuff that, you know, some of the stuff is pretty incredible and, you know. But that's a choice, isn't it? If it's a bad. If you've got bad choices and you've.

Got to make our choice, you've got.

To make a choice.

Yeah, 100. And New Zealand tends to really punch above its weight in certain areas. Yeah. So we take the All Blacks, Black Ferns.

Yeah.

For example. Why is that? Why does such a small country with such a small population, why are we able to thrive when it comes to that high performance in that leadership end of things?

We just. On the sporting front, because I think sport's one thing that we understand and it's sort of neutral. You know, people don't necessarily want to go to work and talk about a whole lot of other issues because, you know, like in some countries that, you know, they'll ban Thanksgiving coming up in the next couple of weeks in the US and they'll ban discussions about politics because it's just got so hot to handle. And even in New Zealand it's got more polarizing, I think partly because of social media as well, I think. But I think. Yeah, but when Murray was the. Martin McCullough was the sports minister and ice prime minister, we put a lot more money into high performance sport. I saw Mike Stanley on TV the other day actually start, you know, acknowledging that, saying, you know, we've been much better resourced over the last while. And the reason we did that was because I reckon New Zealanders like to see our people winning. And you think about the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games, we've had remarkable results recently across all sorts of disciplines, all sorts of sports. And I just think that, you know, we. And we absolutely do punch above our weight. When you think about the population, the number of medals we've been getting at these kind of events, I think we just like to feel like we're doing that. And I always like the fact that, you know, there was a bit of, you know, into sport and out of court type of thing and tying up young people, you know, and they get them involved in some sport, they're far less likely to get into some, you know, big problem, you know, wear them out.

And also we live in a country which is sort of very much outdoors orientated. You know, we like all that. We like going out and sort of being there and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I think that. But that's just one part of it. But yeah, I think winning kind of matters. And it's like this ridiculous notion that we have in the world that we live in that apparently you can't keep the score if your kids are six and they're playing touch rugby. Well, yeah, okay. The only people who don't keep the score are the people who tell you you can't keep the score because the kids know the score. Right. The referee seems to know the score, but apparently we're not allowed to count that, you know, And I just reckon that's nonsense. That's not the real world we live in. The real world we live in, people do keep the score of all sorts of things. And by the way, we're going to keep the score when it comes to whether our missions profile is right. We're going to keep the score about whether our average income beats that of Australia. We're going to keep the score of how many drugs we're prepared to fund. I mean, there's nothing wrong with keeping the score, actually. Keeping the score keeps elected people who want to go into office honest to focus on the things that you think are important.

I truly agree with, you know, what you measure matters and keeping the score. So for the business leaders here, what should they be measuring? If you were to step into that business right now, now in a governance role, and that business was struggling, the great resignation stuff that they're talking about, the churn of their staff, what are the things that you would be saying, hey, I need you to be focusing on these. These are your measurables for the year. Yeah.

I mean, obviously it depends on what stage of business is at. And, you know, are you an early startup or are you a highly developed, successful business? There's a big continuum in there. But for the most part, what you always worry about, I think, is basically, are you making money? There are plenty of startups and plenty of businesses that there's no expectation of them to make money in day one because that's not the phase they're at. And in fact, actually, if they're not pouring it into R and D and development and growing, then actually the investors would be worried about that because it's not about today, it's about where it might be in five years. But philosophically, do you have a profitable. Are you on a track lease or are you profitable? I think the second thing is, are you keeping ahead of the competition? See, one of the things I worry about, about in, for instance, the banking space is that our competitors, we might sit around and want to believe our competitors are BNZ or ASB or Westpac they're not. Our competitors are Rocket. So go and have a look in the United States. The number one mortgage provider in the United States is not bank of America, Merrill lynch or any of these other guys. J.P. morgan Chase. It's Rocket. So Rocket is a fully online digital offering. And Rocket is huge. So the reason Rocket advertises at the super bowl, which is, you know, $5 million a commercial for 30 seconds or whatever, is because I'm making a truckload of money. And the reason they're making a truckload of money Anz Australia's we're about a year away from getting this done, but you would literally go online and you would get your mortgage. Everything would be done totally digitally, from soup to nuts in about seven minutes. And then you go along and say, yeah, okay, I'm going to buy this property, I'm going to do all this stuff. So my point is, one of the things I'd worry about profitability and the balance sheet and all those things, but I'd also worry about where am I in terms of research and development and all that sort of stuff. Again, if you go and have a look at it, go and have a look at the number of companies in the Fortune 500 that are there today, that were there, say, 50 years ago. I think the answer is there's about five of them. The car companies largely, that have survived and probably not in the form that they were.

So what happens is you can't imagine it, but the world just is so different.

I was at an Anz board meeting this week, and the CEO, he's a good guy, but he got up and he said, we're spending $2.1 billion in technology this year, and that's more than we spent ever in the history of the bank. And that's amazing. And that just shows you how right we are are. And I said, yeah, well, the greatest respect, that's cool. But is that the right number? Maybe it should be two and a half billion or three billion. He said, well, you're being ridiculous. I said, well, how many branches are you opening? And the answer is none. So the reason we don't open branches and the reason we close branches is not to be annoying to customers and politicians is because no one goes there. They're like ghost towns, right? No one goes there. No one wants to go to the branch. Everyone wants to go on Anz, go money and move money around and use Apple Pay or whatever you want to use. That's the future. So the fact that we run our whole life on that and so I would be really looking at if I was the company, if you don't have a really good digital strategy and you don't understand social media. So like for instance, Max does a lot of that for he's in part the Stonewood guys and so he runs the Stonewood key stuff and he looks after amongst the whole of things, I mean he's the investor with them, but he looks after all these social media and stuff. And he says really interesting when you look at like they're very Chinese and not to take the wrong way, but it's fairly linear in the way that they look at some things. So they'll just put a render of a house up and they think that's success. And he'll go, do you know what that's doing to the algorithm? It's turning everybody off because nobody looks at that because it's boring. Whereas you go and have a look at TikTok and what goes viral. It's quirky, weird stuff. Like I tell you what, they're interested in politicians. It's like when Bill did that pizza with bloody spaghetti on me. I rang him up and said, you're a loser. But I said Lisa'd be interesting. You know, like people are interested, you know, like that's what they like. They like the little sneak peek into another world and behind the scenes and the things they can't always see. So I think you gotta have, in the world we live in, you have to have a really good social media. I mean and ultimately is can you keep and recruit your staff? That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with people leaving. Actually McKinsey's are famous for you're either up or out, you know, you're either getting better or you're leaving.

But can you, you know, can you attract the right people? I would rather have, you know, one or two people I really like than 50 people that I don't think are very good. I think we sometimes kid ourselves that volume is the answer, but it's actually not the answer. It's about the quality of people we've got and whether they're motivated and actually fundamentally whether they like each other. I mean, there is an argument they don't have to be best friends and go to each other's houses for dinner, but do they philosophically, as a team, kind of support each other and want to be there? Because the teams. Because when I was in Parliament I had, I mean, by definition over time people moved. So I had three chief press secretaries in that time. But Most of these people, no one ever, you know, people didn't leave and. And yeah, sometimes they'd leave for some really big thing or I'd encourage them to go. Like my chief economic advisor, I sent off the imf or Nikki, I made her go out and get a job. Cause I knew she was always gonna come back and have a big role in Parliament. But my point just being that.

People wanted to be there. They liked it and they enjoyed it. They enjoyed it. I think when you're in an environment that feels like that even. It might even be like we would do, there'd be horrendous stuff. Like these guys would be working honestly 19 hours a day, six and a half days of the week. Cause they knew on Sunday I had to give some speech. It had to stack up on whatever we were announcing at national conference that was gonna get ripped apart. But there was just something about that. You know, at 2 in the morning they'd be eating pizzas and drinking Steinlager and writing the rest of the speech, which was half time while it was so incoherent. But the. Could be the way I delivered it. But the point being that, you know, they love. They kind of enjoy it. So, yeah, there's some soft stuff in there.

Thank you for sharing that. And just before we pass it over for some Q and A, one last question. I always like to wrap up with this last question. So we, when we connect, often talk about family and what that means to us, and family means a lot to you. So if we were to fast forward, it's your last day here on Earth and a dear one in your life, maybe a grandchild or someone very young, five or six years old, comes up and says, john, how do I lead my life with purpose? What would your advice be to them?

I think make every day count. I mean, you know, I always used to say to young people, you know, because I mean, I went to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of schools in the eight and a bit years I was Prime Minister. So it was like a lot. And I used to say to them, look, do you know that the average, the average man in New Zealand dies at 82 and the average woman dies at 84. And it goes up by two and a half years for every 10 years, right. So I was in the car. I'll never forget one time I was in the car with Max and he was about 14. And he said, how old do you think I'll be when I die? It's one of those kids questions that kids sort of ask Right. And I said, is there a reflection on the way I'm driving? And he went, no, I just sort of wondered. And I said, well, you know, the average man dies over to the average woman dies at 84, goes up two and a half years, but every 10 years. You're a bright boy, do the maths. Tell me. He goes, 100. And I went, that's right, you'll be 100. On average. On average you'll be 100. Right. So at one level we think, God, that's an amazingly long time. But on another, another thing, firstly, that's an average and secondly, it's such a short period of time in the history of things like Clinton was famous for. He had the moon rock that they bought back from, from Apollo 11 on his desk. And he used to, when people used to come in, they used to be screaming at each other in the Oval Office. He said to me, you know, I used to show them the moon rock and say, that's what a long time looks like. So let's just stop the yelling and get an answer, you know, And I guess, you know, it's like anything in life you can't put wisdom on, you know, like youth is wasted on the young people, isn't it? You know, type of thing. But so I'm 61, you know, like incredibly young looking, 61. I sort of accept that, but it's hard to believe, but I'm 61 and I can't, honestly, I don't feel any different when I was 21 than Christchurch.

Incredible.

You know, I weigh a bit more and unfortunately, but, you know, I've had lots of experiences, but.

I don't feel old. It's just that somehow time catches up with everyone, you know, eventually it goes through. And I always say to our kids, I was. And that one of the reasons when, you know, when I went into Parliament and I just really wanted to be Prime Minister, I mean, obviously when you're 10 and I wanted to be Prime Minister, it's different from when you're 40. And I actually ran for office and by the time I was 40, I, you know, you have to have that kind of a type personality and a fair degree of, you know, kind of either self confidence or arrogance, you can call it whatever you like. Well, I genuinely thought I could make New Zealand a better place. I genuinely thought wanted to do it right or wrong. That's what I thought. But the most important thing was I didn't want to die wondering. And I always used to say to young people when I went to school. I used to say, look, I'll tell you why most of you won't do the things that you should do. I'll tell you why. It's not because you're worried about failing yourself. Because actually most of you can probably accept that, right? You're worried about what you think other people will think if you fail.

So in the end, the reserve position is, well, don't do anything. By definition, if I don't do anything, then I won't fail. If I don't fail, then no one will criticize me. So it's quite a big step when you. I think that's what sports people feel when they go on thing. They feel the enormous pressure of being out there, but then they feel the joy euphoria. And that's probably what they miss actually when they're no longer there. And so I just sort of thought, I don't want to die wondering. And think of what I would say to them as, look, I'm going to die happy. I really am. I mean, you know, probably if I fly the helicopter I'm currently flying into the mountain, I won't be that happy for that second, but I'm going to die happy because I'm going to look back and think, what a ride. Like, I got to do amazing things. Like, it's a cool life. And that's what I would say to Max and Steffi. I don't care what you guys do, it's your life, you got to lead it however you want want. But don't get to the end of it with regrets. Get there and think, hey, it was awesome. And we live in the real world. In a world, if you meet someone that's a cancer survivor, they'll tell you, I worry much less today than I worried three years ago about the little stuff because I was up against the wall and I didn't think I was going to get there. But.

That'S nice. But we actually live in the real world where if the kids do something that annoys you, if it's, you know, to tell you they're gonna be home at 12 o' clock in the home at 3 in the morning, it annoys you or you. That's the real world we live in. And it doesn't matter how horrific whatever you're going through is, you'll still get annoyed by little. We're always gonna sweat little stuff. So don't even worry about the fact you worry about little stuff. Just accept it's part of life, but actually underneath it all, so many people it sort of strikes me just aren't really happy and, and I don't think it's just money. Cause a lot of the things that Brian and I do, we have lots of fun and like we get up in the morning most mornings and we walk around the domain where we are and thing and we get coffee and I kind of get up in the morning and I look forward to it. You know it's kind of fun. It's not. Doesn't cost anything but it's fun, you know And I think it's so easy to be negative but I don't know, do we really have that much to be negative about? I mean we're victims of tremendous luck. If we were born in Sudan life would be terrible. Or if we were born in Ukraine at the moment life would be terrible. 100 so you know we, we have a lot, a lot to be grateful for and a lot to celebrate and then just, just close your eyes and go for it. Because even if you don't get the, you know I'd way rather, I'd rather give it a go and fail than never give it a go and never achieved anything.

Thank you for sharing that great insight. Let's put our hands together for Sir John Key.

Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sam.