Unprepared: The Looming Disasters Threatening Our Communities in New Zealand with Raf Manji

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How do we live together as communities? A very challenging future in terms of climate change. People always thought I was slightly a bit weird. I worked from when I was about 14, every school holiday. When I look at our politicians, they're not doing very well. You know, people talk about New Zealand. It's like a third world country now. Well, that's mean to third world countries.

The Alpine fault.

A lot of local people will be pushed out of homes and businesses.

I can't deal with that all myself. To think about it overwhelms me.

It's almost too big for people to think about it.

It's the end of the world.

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.

Raf, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

I'm glad we could make this space because I know you're a very busy man and you have been for quite some time, but I know most people will be looking at this going, hey, I know Raf as the leader of the opportunist party, but I want to take a step back from that and go, who's raf? Where'd RAF St?

Yeah, totally.

So you and I are both New Zealanders. We both live here, but we chose to come and live here and make it home. Where did life begin for you?

Life began for me at Barnet General Hospital in North London. And for many Kiwis who've been to London or lived there, they'll know the Northern Line and Barnet is the top of the Northern Line, so that's where I was born. So, born in North London to an Irish mother from Dublin and an Indian Pakistani father. He was born in India, ended up living in Pakistan, but that's a whole different conversation in terms of partition and yeah, I guess a very unusual pairing at the time, back in 1966 when England won the World cup, that's why that year is famous. And yeah, so I'm originally a North Londoner I guess, and I'll say now I'm an Arsenal supporter. So I'm still weeping on the football results this year. But yeah, that's, that's kind of where.

I grew up and when you grew up, so, you know, what was your, your environment? Where were you very well off? How did you live?

Not really. I mean, in a way both mum and dad were immigrants. Dad worked as a banker, so he was a clerk in a bank at a time where banking was not, it was not the sort of banking as we know it today. It was much more traditional. So it's quite sort of a white collar job, not particularly, you know, highly paid and we had, yeah, grew up in fairly modest environments and mum and dad both worked and in fact dad, when he came to London, I think it was in 62, he worked during the day in the bank as a bank clerk and then he'd go and work as a short order chef at a milk bar in Marble, architect, flipping burgers and milkshakes, that kind of thing. And then he had a late evening job as a porter at a hostel in I think Russell Square. And that's where he met my mother because he was the guy basically came around to lock up all the hostels and stuff. So. And you know, there was sort of male and female hostels back in the day and he met my mum there. So yeah, after they had me, I mean they both worked. Dad would come home from work, mum would go out and work. Then she worked as a Teflonist, you know, sort of on the, on the phones, you know, the switchboard operator in a hotel doing night shifts. So it's quite hard work for them. And you know, Mum also worked as a cleaner and you know, she'd take me along to cleaning jobs and things like that.

So really grounded upbringing.

Yeah, they were always short of money and they'd always had people sharing, you know, their flat or things like that. So. Yeah, but when you're a kid you don't really notice, of course, these things if you're fed and watered, that's generally the main thing.

And do you feel like you're upbringing, the values that mum and dad instilled in you have impacted who you are today as a parent, today as a friend, as a partner.

Yeah, in some respects I think because we never had a lot of money, so it's not that, you know, we went without, but we didn't have a lot of luxuries. And so I think even though I ended up in a career which was extremely well paid, I wouldn't say I'm tight, but I've never had the appetite to spend a lot of money, so. So I don't. I've never been a big spender. I mean, there are things that I do like to spend money on, like nice holidays and things like that, but not consumer goods. In fact, I mean, a funny story, I was working. So I worked in the city in trading and I think I must have been, I don't know, 27ish, 28. And I was invited to play in a charity cricket tournament organized, you know, like city firms, and actually was sponsored by Fay Rich White, which was a New Zealand investment banking company back in the day, this would be the early 90s, and I hadn't played cricket for ages. I played a lot of cricket at school and I didn't have any kids. So I went off to the local sports shop down in Moorgate and I bought myself a cricket kit, A bag, some pads, a gray nickel scoop bat, gloves, my own box. And I realized actually I'd never had that growing up. So I played cricket. I was in the first 11 and things like that. But I never had my own gear, it was too expensive. So I just used the stuff out of the kit bag, including the box. The kit bag, box and things like that. And I kind of thought. And it wasn't expensive, you know, I thought, oh, okay, I've got my. I can actually, I could afford to buy my own cricket bag, but I hadn't had one. And so things like that, you know, if I don't need it, I don't tend to sort of buy it. So. So yeah, probably invested reasonably wisely over the years and not being a huge consumer. So I think that probably comes from growing up without lots of kind of extras.

Yeah, I do spend a lot of money on books. That's my kind of. That's a weakness in mind. I like books because actually they're not that expensive. I think for the pleasure that you get from them.

Yeah. And the different things you learn from them. So talking about books, just while you brought that up, what are you reading right now?

Oh, that's a good question. I'm reading. I couldn't even tell you then. What's the name? It's an Indian author and it's called Something Burning. And It's a story.

About social media and corruption and the sort of nationalism in India.

I can't remember the name of it actually. And actually I'm quite poor about that. I don't always paid that much attention to the author's name or the book. I just want to read it.

Yeah, get the information.

So I've just finished a sci fi book which is really interesting and it was called Delta V and it's the second in a series by an author, Dennis Suarez, I think, and it's about deep space. Asteroid mining is quite, it's quite fascinating from a technology point of view because there is a lot of tech out there in terms of space mining and available minerals up, up, up in space and the ability to generate solar energy in space and beam it down to Earth. I mean, all sounds far fetched, but the technology is not that.

Yeah, but I guess the way we converse on FaceTime, that sound far fetched 20 years ago.

So when I'm reading books I like to sort of mix it up and I'll read non fiction, then fiction, non fiction, then fiction. So I've got Salmon Rushdie, book is next up and a mixture of Kindle and sort of paperbacks. And yes, I read every night before I go to sleep, whatever, you know, at least 20 minutes. And it's quite important for sort of the wind down at the end of.

The day, of course, because I'm sure your days are full.

Yeah. And I love books and I, you know, I think the one thing, you know, when you grow up, you know, not with, you know, a lot of money and stuff, you can go to the library. So I used to go to the local library a lot and sit there, read the books and take the books out. And I still remember buying sort of one of my first books and you know, you had to order it in and it was probably something to do with Greek myths, which I loved. I was really into sort of classical myths back in the day. And yeah, the excitement and where books can take you is pretty exciting. And I'd still read the Famous Five and Blythe and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I'll read most things, but reading, I'd say, is probably my favorite pastime.

That's so interesting you say that because I have something people say, james, what do you do for fun? I read like I love reading when a new book arrives at the house. Like I geek out on that.

Yeah.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Caroline jlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

And articles, you know, so. And that's the beauty of the Internet, I find, and the beauty of a medium like Twitter, which, you know, has a lot of downsides, but, boy, it has opened up the reach in terms of information that we just never would have had before. I mean, I read this massive article the other day from Boston Review. I never would have got that in the past. I never would have even known about it. And, you know, that's a joy, that kind of. That ability to access information free for anyone on the planet with an Internet connection.

What I like about that, Raf, is that you are seeking to be informed, not just with an O3 mind, but with the whole global mindset. You can serve here at the highest level in New Zealand and in Christchurch. I think that's so important. I want more leaders to be thinking with the global mind, to bring back all those learnings for our amazing city and our amazing country. Now there are career politicians, and that's what they do. And then there are people who have went out into the world, lived like the rest of us have had to fight the fight and pay the bills, and they know what it's about. I see you as someone who's went out and not done the career politician thing.

Done the opposite. Yes.

So you get it. Now, tell me a little bit about what did you do when you talk about when you worked in, say, finance in London, what did that look like?

Well, it's quite interesting. So when I was at school, I worked from when I was about 14, every school holiday in what was known back in the day as temping. So I'd go and do temporary work and mainly clerical work, but also, you know, accounts work, or essentially it's just ticking stuff off, whether it's a reconciliation or has an invoice been paid, or adding up the invoice and adding up the accounts, et cetera. And because my mother had retrained and got into what was then known as personnel management and she ran a staff, you know, an employment bureau as it was called back then. So she'd say, she'd say to people, oh I'm sending my son out to you. You know they'd call up and say look we need someone for a couple of weeks and I'd go and do that stuff. So I was very used to working in a sort of office environment and after university where I'd sort of worked all the way through university I ended up working at a stockbrokers in the City of London. This was just before the 87 crash so pretty wild time to be there and you know, did six months there, saved up money and then went traveling overseas and that's when I came down, ended up in New Zealand and when I went back I ended up temping again when I got back and I ended up working at this bank, Bankers Trust which was a US investment bank. And whilst I was there, you know, I got to know people on the trading desk. I was working in the swaps department, like derivatives which for people, you know, kind of interest rate products which were quite new back then. And alongside that as sort of a habit or aptitude I'd picked up at university was gambling. Horse. I fell in love with horse racing, just loved the horses obviously my Irish side coming through and I had a very good friend at Union, he was mad on horses, horses as well and he introduced me to it and we spent a lot of time at the racetrack like hey dog and places like that. I was at University of Manchester and you know I just enjoyed playing cards and just gambling on anything really. It was really probability and odds and risk taking and so I used to, I used to bet a lot with the traders on the trading floor and in the end they said look, why won't you come up and work with us? And that's how I got into trading and yeah, so that was a slightly, I guess, unexpected turn. I knew I'd probably work in finance in some respects but I didn't really have any idea what I would do and So I spent 10 years doing that and you know it was, it was a great lifestyle, it was pretty full on and I think after about 10 years I kind of thought okay, what next? Like what am I going to do with my life really? You know by that time I'd had two children and it was like oh well what does the world look like? I've got these kids now, why? And what are they going to do and what kind of world are they going to grow up in. And I started to explore that a lot more, which was probably unusual for most people because most people you're in a job where you're getting paid well, what's to worry about? But I can. Obviously there's a social conscience kicking in the back and I think sort of on the. On the Irish side of the family. You know, my grandparents were very community focused in Dublin. Yeah, they ran the youth club and you know, they were very focused on.

Yeah, supporting the community and service. And so my mother had also probably brought that characteristic like she did. She worked for the Samaritans or volunteered for the Samaritans. And back in those days they called it being on the phones. I think they might still do it then, you know, so you'd actually go somewhere and stay overnight and, you know, basically answer calls like Lifeline, that type of thing. And so it's kind of used to that in. On one side of the family. So that obviously ethos was there. And I always remember it was quite funny because I joined Amnesty International in the early 90s and I would do their annual collection where I lived in Islington, on Islington High Streets. I'd be out there on a Saturday with my, my little tub and you know, I'd run into people that I knew from the city and they'd sort of be amazed. It's like, what are you doing? You know, it's like, what, what are you doing? It's like really a weird thing for you to do. I don't think it's such a weird thing now, but back then it sort of seemed, hold on, you're this kind of investment banker guy trading global markets and here you are collecting. It's like, ye not. I didn't see any issue there with that. So people always thought I was slightly a bit weird, you know, And I had the. It's hilarious story where I had the. In I think 98, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was like the 50th anniversary and they had this great poster and I put it up on the trading floor behind my desk and I had some colleagues over from, from New York and they came through and they looked and Ravi, you're a communist or something. And it's like I said, have you heard of Eleanor Roosevelt? She was the person behind this thing. And they were like, oh, really? We didn't realize. I said, yeah, the United States used to be quite focused on things like human rights. They kind of lost their way a little bit. But yeah, it was, it was an interesting pathway. And I Think life can be a bit like that. You don't always have your life planned out, but you sort of get into things. I think for me anyway, I've always been someone who's like, oh, yeah, I'll have a go at that. You know, I'll try that. And I think after that sort of 10 years where, you know, we'd had a nice lifestyle, it was like, what next? And I felt a big pull to get away from just making money and what's my purpose in life? And you talk about leading with purpose. And I think I'd got to that point where the opportunities for me were leading in the financial sector.

Being managing directors or global heads of this was offered all these types of jobs. And I thought, actually, I don't want to do that because I'm not interested in leading this thing. I was quite happy working in it, but I wanted to do something else. So I left and everyone went, well, I think you've got to have a. Yeah, you got to have a certain lack of worry about what people think or being, in a way, kind of tied to stuff. So that. And I probably. I guess my attachment style is probably slightly avoidant, so, you know, or ambivalent in some respects. I never got attached to the lifestyle or to the money. To me, it was just kind of a means to the end. And yes, I lived in a beautiful home and all the rest of it, but I can live very simply at the same. Most people can't. Most people can't turn off what they used to because they're so invested in it. And I think they're invested in it also from a. A status point of view. But if you see that, that's not you. It's just stuff, you know, and people sometimes lose themselves and the stuff. And I saw I was surrounded by people who could not get out of that and. And I said to them, I said, the problem you've got is your opex keeps going up, so you keep all the money you're earning, you're spending and. But you're also digging yourself into a lifestyle that if you don't have, you'll find quite difficult. I never kind of had that. So, you know, I never had a Porsche or, you know, all the accoutrements that people get or a second home and things like that.

Why didn't you. What was different about your mindset where you're like, I don't need that stuff.

Yeah, basically I don't need it. And also I look at it financially goes, that doesn't make sense. You kind of got another depreciating asset. And so like I said, yeah, we used to, you know, love traveling. I love travel and you know, stay in nice places and you know, that was the luxury part of things. But in terms of home life it was just kind of the same. Just lived in a nice house but we still just did the same things. I'd still get on the bus or get on the tube or whatever and we just had one car which was like the family wagon. That was enough. And I think the same here as well. And I, and I think that's that sort of sense of kind of knowing who you are and what you're about and being comfortable in your own skin in some respects and not having to, you know, show off, as it were, or not get sort of sucked into maintaining a lifestyle that isn't always that good for you or that supportive for you. And money is, you know, a tricky beast, you know, we all need it and anyone who says, oh, money's not important, no, money is very, very important and, but obviously beyond a certain level you're kind of, your marginal return on that extra dollar lessens in terms of your, that well being impact. Certainly in terms of consumer good impacts. Yeah, you just keep buying stuff but it's not actually going to improve your lifestyle. I mean you can only be one place at a time. So you can have seven houses but you can only visit them once at a time. So you can certainly make your life comfortable, but it's incredibly important. And I think financial literacy is something I'm very passionate about and I think it's not a surprise that when, you know, we moved to New Zealand to live, the first role that I kind of took on properly was working as a volunteer for Christchurch Budget Services. Because I thought I want to do some volunteering, but what, what skill have I got to offer anyone apart from, I don't know, you know, doing sort of a manual type job? I thought, well, I'm kind of an expert on money, so why don't I go and help people with their budgets? And that's what I did. And yes, it's a bit simpler because it's generally, you know, $600 in, $650 out. So it didn't need any financial engineering. It was just to kind of help people get on top of difficult situations that they were in and then start to develop a different approach to money. But when you've got nothing, a lot of that stuff doesn't, you know, it's survival. Yeah, there's a lot of people just.

Surviving and that's the stuff that you're equipping them with doesn't come naturally.

It wasn't taught.

It's. These are behaviors that they've developed. So you're interrupting that behavior and giving them these skill sets that come naturally to you.

But there's also people who are just in positions through their personal circumstances or their ability to earn money or the life that they've had, their childhood where they're carrying a lot of weight, which is kind of like personal debt as well as financial debt. So you almost. I found myself actually doing quite a lot of what I would call almost life coaching stuff. So I'd be sitting with a guy who's, you know, might have been divorced, you know, single parent, house is a mess and it's like, right, let's get a space on the kitchen table or something to do the work. So we might want to. Oh, put this stuff in the sink. Oh, the sink's full. Oh, maybe we'll kind of empty the sink. I like washing up. I'm very domestic. So let's kind of wash up the kitchen and it's all tidy. Let's have a cup of tea and sit down, you know, eat basic stuff like that. You know, it's that. That sense. I mean, how do you get some order in your life? I mean, I'm quite big into kind of order and writing lists and things like that. And I'd certainly like to have a clean kitchen and I like vacuuming and all that kind of stuff. So I'm probably a little bit weird.

You're a modern man.

Well, maybe. Yes, yes. And I think I was. My father modeled a lot of that stuff. Of course, my mum completely says, oh, you just remember, like, the one day a week he sort of cooked. But dad was a great cook. I mean, he taught my mum to cook. He taught to cook Indian food, which she became, you know, amazing at.

And he always cooked once a week on a Sunday and he ironed his own shirts and. Yeah, so I sort of picked up.

Equity in that relationship.

Well, there was a little. I mean, he worked very hard, so he wasn't around a lot, but he sort of liked to do that stuff. And he'd always be at the kitchen sink or the kitchen bench, you know, chopping onions or whatever, and he'd always have a tea towel over his shoulder. And I've inherited that. And my boys, who are both good cooks too, have inherited the same thing. And I just think it's quite funny.

Genetics at play right now?

Well, there's just these tiny little things that kids can copy, you know, the tea towel over the shoulder, you know, it's great. Yes. And the idea, you know, I've said to them, look, what do I want? You know, I mean, they're lovely kids, but it's like, okay, learn to say please and thank you. That will get you a long way. And for God's sake, learn to cook, clean and wash because no one else. Don't assume anyone's going to be looking after you. And they can do all that stuff. So I think, right, I've done my parenting job, you know. Yeah, they'll survive. They'll survive. Yeah, they are surviving.

I want to know, and I'm sure the listener wants to know as well. So you're in London, you had an incredible job. Clearly you were very highly sought after. You probably could have moved to 30 or 40 different other places in the world. Why New Zealand?

Well, this, this goes back to my sort of backpacking story. So when I left London, I think I just turned 21, left university, worked, saved up some money to do the OE or as we called it, you know, gap year back back in the uk and I met a Kiwi girl traveling as you do in Bangkok, of all places, in a guest house in Bangkok. It's no longer there, unfortunately. We did go back to search it out in the Khao San Road, which some people might be familiar with. And, yeah, we ended up, you know, traveling together and ended up back in New Zealand. And then we came back together to London, where we were for 13 years. And I, you know, and then we'd had children and in the back of my mind, I'd always thought I'd love to go and live in New Zealand. You know, I just fell in love with Christchurch coming here and, you know, hitchhiked around the south island back in the day and it was just, you know, staying at campgrounds and it was freezing cold. But it was, you know, I remember standing outside Geraldine in the south island and waiting for someone to pick us up, which took like an hour. And I just thought, where is everyone? I mean, this is like incredible, you know, for a Londoner who grew up, you know, going to school on the tube, on the bus, just people everywhere the whole time. And it's like, there's no one here in this huge landscape. And I thought, this is nice. And so, you know, we were back in London. We would come down here every two years for a long summer holiday, like a six week holiday. And, you know, then as the kids came along, they would come too. And I always loved it because coming off a trading floor and going to. We were staying out in Southbridge back then on a farm and I thought, oh, this is so nice. And like, I would go in into Southbridge or leased into the dairy and have a chat and it'd be awesome, you know, a different world, you know, the pace of life and people talk to you in London, nobody talks to each other and don't drive around. And yeah, we got to the point where, you know, we flirted with the idea of coming here and I nearly moved here in 96 to Auckland and that's when I was at Bankers Trust, me. And that's when, you know, I was potentially going to do a job swap with John Key, who was going to. He wanted to leave Auckland and come to London, which he eventually did. And, you know, we explored that deal and I almost, kind of almost moved. But in the end, you know, my wife probably then was like, oh, I don't really want to go and live in New Zealand. So we. And the people in London didn't want me to go to New Zealand either. So they said, why don't you go to New York? So I went to New York and had a look and I thought, I don't really fancy having a one year old in New York. So we didn't do that. So in the end I actually left and then John left and went to Singapore and then eventually went to London. But after I left the city, I think that was when I really started to think more seriously about coming down. And the kids were 5 and 7, so it was like, we either go now and start them off in school or we stay in London. And it was actually, you know, we'd been on holiday in the south of France in a nice lovely village in Provence, and it was all kind of, you know, the pace of life, life was a bit. And I thought just like Christchurch here, you know. So we sort of started to, you know, talk about it in more detail and then we had 9, 11. And then I said, right, we're out of here, let's go. And so, yeah, we moved. We were here February 2002, so we sold the house, bought a house here, came over and put the kids into school. And that first year I just renovated this big old villa and it was great. And then I went back to university and that sort of started that next kind of phase of life. So in a way threw off that old life and almost started, started from scratch. You know, and I remember people found it quite puzzling. I thought, what's this guy doing? He's got this nice big villa and he's going to university. And it's like, that's something strange. There's something strange here. And then. Yeah, and then Prue went to university, too. And it's like we just sort of restarted our life.

Did you go back to university?

Because I wanted to, you know, I guess restart and explore things. And I. I mean, I had gone back to university when I was working in the city part time, and people thought that was really weird. But I. I had a thirst to start learning and I studied. What did I study? International human rights law and social psychology, which actually was probably one of the best papers I ever did because it taught me about group behavior, you know, which you learn a lot, trading markets, like the herd and how people move. But it was. It was such a fascinating course. And, yeah, when I came here, I thought, okay, I'm going to go back and do a degree. And I did political science. So I was interested in that. Loved that. Not that I wanted to get into politics, but I was. You know, I'd spent so much time studying global macro economies and I wanted to learn a bit more about the politics of it. And I've done a bit of politics in my first degree back in the day. And no, just really enjoyed it because I could drop the kids at school, go to uni for the day, come back, pick the kids up from school, and it was like, that was the lifestyle that I was looking for. I could do sports coaching at school, I could do volunteering. I had the work life balance. There wasn't a lot of work, but it was really good. Loved it.

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And like, when we think of those again, career politicians spent their whole, whole life building up to that. At what point did you start going, I want to turn my head to that. That seems interesting. Did you go straight to, hey, I want to be in central government, or how would that start?

I think, you know, I'd always been, you know, because I was very much into those early stages of sustainability, particularly in the 90s, and, you know, my focus in human rights with Amnesty. So, you know, I was definitely attracted to the Green Party and I'd flirted a little bit with potentially getting involved. And I'd often say there was a Green Party MP in Christchurch, Kennedy Graham, who was probably more traditional green, like into environmental issues, global politics, that type of thing. And I said, oh, that sounds interesting, Kennedy. I could, you know, offer some experience in finance and sustainable finance, but I don't. I look at your party stuff. It all looks a bit weird to me and that's not my thing. I said, if you want me to do this, I can do it. But he said, oh, you've got to join the party and then you've got to do all this stuff. And I thought, oh, no, I don't really fence. I wasn't really interested in all that stuff. And it looked a bit weird from the outside as well. And so that was kind of as close as I got to it. And I think even though I did a political science degree, I wasn't particularly interested in politics. I mean, I would certainly. I would write to MPs, like one of those annoying people who writes letters in and say this thing like pre financial crisis, you know, 2004 and 2006. I wrote to the, you know, finance minister and MPs, including John Key at the time, who was the opposition finance spokesperson, and say, I'm a bit worried about the finance companies. These look a bit dodgy. And actually, John was the only person who ever replied to me because obviously. And he said, yeah, I agree with you, this looks pretty bad. And of course they all fell over in 2007, but that was about as far as it went. I mean, National Labor, I didn't really know much about them. My parents weren't political. We never taught politics at home at all, really. And they both come from, as, you know, conflict backgrounds, where actually we've moved on from that and we don't really want to be talking about Politics too much.

And, yeah, so for me, it wasn't until the earthquakes and even after the earthquakes that politics sort of reared its head. And that was at the local level, which is something I'd never considered at all.

And that's when, yeah, it was Leanne, you know, he was running for mayor. Leon Delzell in 2013 said, look, would you consider running for council? You know, you've been doing stuff in the community. You're chairing the Student Volunteer Army Foundation. You're on the board of a Christchurch arts festival. Are you connected into the community? Would you consider running? Because I need someone with finance, financial background to deal with the financial mess the council's in. And I sort of said, oh, I don't know about that, but I said, okay, if you do it, I'll do it, you know. And we brought a few other friends along as well to sort of say, well, will you stand as well? We all actually have to pitch in here. So it was a completely different approach. It was very apolitical approach, actually. We've got some issues here. So you could say it was more of a kind of technocratic impulse. It's like, how do we fix the problem? As opposed to, this is my political belief or ideology. And I think that's why I'm regarded as a sort of fairly pragmatic, centrist type person, but still with some radical ideas, but generally not tribal in the way I approach politics.

And right now, when you think about New Zealand, first of all, what does it mean to be a New Zealander? And then secondly, what do we need to be conscious of as New Zealanders? Where are we headed and what kind of leadership, you know, is needed to help us get there?

Wow. What is it? I mean, that's a good question. And, you know, prior to taking this role as leader of the Opportunities Party, I was sketching out a PhD proposal and the working title was what does it Mean to be a citizen in the 21st century? Because this is kind of where I'm at, you know, the Student Volunteer army response, you know, that civic response to a major disaster and how, you know, a centralized government function comes in over the top of everyone, sets the rules, tells you what you can do, what you can't do, whereas actually the community is already doing stuff for itself and it's self organizing and people know each other and there's a lot of friction there. You can see that also happening up in the Hawke's Bay again, even though everything we learned here, and I think coming out of that, you know, so Even as I was sitting there as a counselor, I was constantly thinking about this issue. It's like, okay, what does it actually mean to be a citizen now when you become a citizen in New Zealand, which we've both been through, so you fill out tons of forms and pay tons of money and have your X rays and all that kind of stuff, and then you get, you know, you get your certificate, hey, you become a citizen and then you troop off to the town hall to be presented your certificate by the mayor. So off you go and you go up and you shake hands and you get your certificate and you get your pot plant or a book or something, and that's kind of it. And I kind of thought, well, that's a bit weird. It's like, you know, there's got to.

Be more to it than a monumental moment in your life, right?

It is, but it's sort of almost, it doesn't get treated with the gravitas. And I'm sure for some people it is really exciting because, you know, you're a citizen so you get the passport, there's a sense of security. But what's on the other side of the fence? What, what, what kind of duties do you have? So, yeah, you have lots of rights as a citizen, but what kind of duties do you have? So I'm very kind of focused on this from a philosophical point of view, an academic point of view, but also a practical point of view. So my work with the student volunteer army and the aftermath of that and trying to work out what legacy do we have from this? Or is it a sort of one time thing and you shut it down? And we kind of kept the thing going and we built some small steps without really knowing where it would go, but trying to sort of keep that ethos of service, particularly for young people and a sense of purpose. And now it's kind of, it's got legs again. So Covid came along, SVA stepped up.

The flooding in Auckland and the cyclone, SVA stepped up, you know, so we've kept that going for over 10 years, which I think is a great achievement because often it's quite difficult to keep things like that going. But I think it's got a lot further to go. So I mean, one of the policies that we've got at the Opportunities party is this is what we call the Teal card, which is essentially a digital app for under 30s. And part of it is a new civic service program. And I'm kind of a bit obsessed about this, but I think I want all our Kids and potentially new citizens to go through a sort of a, you know, not heavy duty like annual or national military service and one year, but to do these, these small courses in civic literacy, financial literacy, community service, conservation, maybe a sort of a five day camp together where you're in the New Zealand outdoors to get a sense of what does it mean to be a Kiwi. So if you ask me as a, let's say an immigrant to New Zealand, what does it mean to be a Kiwi and what's New Zealand about? It's, you know, the outdoors. You know, it's the outdoors. It's nature, but it's people and it's community and it's that, that sense that people will rally together. And what we're missing up here is what's that social cohesion bit? You know, we haven't defined it and of course, you know, we have the treaty sitting here and we have this sort of slight struggle over our identity. You know, we had the flag referendum, you know, so I think what is it? And that's not a question for me to answer, it's a question for us to discuss. You know, you look at the citizens assemblies in Ireland at the moment, they're doing great work and a big one around drug reform at the moment. And maybe that's what we, we sit down and we discuss those issues because we need to bring in the 30% of people who are not born in New Zealand and then their descendants. You have obviously Tangata Whenua and then you have others who have been here for a decent amount of time. And so if you think what, you know, if you ask people from outside, well, what do you think of when you think of New Zealand? You think of, oh, 100% pure. So you think of nature, you think of kind of the All Blacks. You might think about the Haka, you might think, oh, it's just a cool place. People are really nice and friendly and it's like a sort of, it's a package there. Now, when I think ahead to the future and.

A very challenging future in terms of climate change and potentially, and it might be in 30 years time, might be in 50 years time, billion people having to move because it's too hot to live where they are. So that's that big swathe of Middle Earth and south, north and south. How are we going to deal with that? What can New Zealand offer in the way of living together? We're a small population in a big landmass. You know, you compare our landmass to say Japan or to The United Kingdom or to bits of Europe, how do we prepare? So for me, I think until we get some, just even start the journey of what it means to be a citizen, what does civic duty look like? And of course for a lot of people, oh, why should I do that? Or I can do my own thing and it's like, yes, you can. But when you have a disaster, you can't contract out, you know, unless you've got pots of money and you can just get on a plane and fly out if you want to stay where you are. You're reliant on the people around you, you're reliant on your community, then you're relying on your, you know, government structures and your disaster recovery. And I just think we have to start preparing our population.

In a different way and not always. And I think that's what we did in Christchurch. And for me, you know, sometimes Christchurch Canterbury epitomizes a bit of all aspects in New Zealand because we've got urban and we got rural and we've got a lot of resources, water, we've got mountains, we've got food.

And I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from what's happened here in the last 10 years. But I'm also excited when I, when I think about working with younger people in the next generation. It's all there. I mean, I think we can achieve these things. And I, I think cycling back to, you know, the word purpose is like, what is our purpose on earth? And everyone will have their own particular why and that's cool. But how do we live together as communities? And how do you know, I mean, the nation states are made up thing, let's face it. But how do we, how do we create that sense of, of citizenship? What does it mean having a New Zealand passport? You know, what does it mean having an Irish passport? You know, they're both quite similar. And I used to have this conversation actually with the, the former Irish ambassador here, Peter Ryan, great guy. It's in Nigeria at the moment actually. And let's say, you know what, Peter, you know, Ireland, it's like New Zealand just the other side of the world. Rains all the blooming time and it's green and you know, people like a bit of a crack and it's easy going, people are friendly, but there's a bunch of issues there as well. And some of those issues go back a few hundred years or more and we've got a lot in common and we should have a much closer relationship. I think now you Know, got Trevor Mallard. That might happen, but, you know, you know what it means to be Irish. You know, you know, that doesn't matter where you are in the world. And I think the same for Kiwis. When you go around the world, say, I'm from New Zealand, it's like, oh. People go, okay. You know, it's always a good feeling, it's a good response. You know, so what, what can we do to build on that? You know, it's like, yeah, something happens. We'll roll up our sleeves and get stuck in and try and help.

So, Raf, I want to ask you a question. So I was once at a keynote up in Nelson, and this incredible duo from University of Canterbury came along and modeled the AF8. And I was like, well, this sounds like the most amazing new aircraft that.

Supersonic flights to London.

Wishful thinking. And in fact, it was the Alpine fault. And I understood from all the research that it goes off every 300 years. And there's proof of that. And we're about 30 to 40 years past the due date of it going off. So they modeled it and said, these are the possible outcomes. And at one point they said that the pressure and intensity of it would be a thousand times that of the Christchurch earthquake, which I was here for. And that was shocking. So I thought, oh, okay, I'm a little bit back into my old ways of earthquakes are back. Then we've moved forward. That will not happen again in my lifetime. But actually, the statistics show that in the south island of New Zealand, it's probably going to happen in the next 50 years. 75% chance it'll happen the next 50 years, likely in my lifetime. So I'm starting to think at a community level, what will I do? What will I do for my family? What will I do for the people around me? You know, how are we going to respond? What's it going to look like from electronic, you know, eftpos machines will go down. I won't be able to run business online. A lot of local people will be pushed out of homes and businesses. So I'm thinking, I can't deal with that all myself. To think about it overwhelms me. Something. Okay, we need leadership here. We need people working together in this whole idea of being this civic responsibility. So, as the leader of the opportunities party, what do you think we should be considering? How do you think we should respond?

Oh, my gosh. I think, you know, going back to what you said, that it's almost too big for people to think about And I think one of our challenges as humans is that preparing for stuff. So essentially I'd say disaster preparedness is absolutely critical. Building resilient systems that can withstand shocks, preparing for a community wide response. And a lot of this stuff, you know, again came out of the earthquakes, the SVA and I mean I can talk about some of the details, but we have to, we have to sort of somehow either convince ourselves or show that some kind of evidence that we can cope with this. Because if you say something is too big, people actually will just switch off and go, oh well, nothing I can do. We'll just see what happens. The end of the world. It's not the end of the world if we prepare properly. So one of the things that we did at the student volunteer army, it was 2013, Hurricane Sandy in the States. Might not be the exact year, but that was a big shock to, you know, the east coast of the States. And one of our team had met a guy I think actually in Japan where there's the earthquake after the crychurch and Sam Johnson and Jason Pemberton, some of the team went up there and this guy worked for an outfit called Global Dirt, which was something like disaster and reconstruction team or something. And he called up the guys and said, hey, would you want to, I'm going up to New York, do you want to come and help out? So I thought, well that's a good idea. So I said like, who wants to go? So two of the guys, Jackson and Jason said, well, they'll go. I said, right, I'll get some money for you. And actually called up Paul Parker's office, said can you fly these boys out? And they did. They came up with five grand, put them on the plane literally within about two days. Met this guy, he's a sort of ex marine guy. And they spent two weeks working on the recovery for Hurricane Sandy. Now two things came out of that. One, they ended up working with the National Guard there using the systems that they developed post Christchurch earthquake, which was essentially an online platform for booking what was going on. Standard stuff now, but essentially it was one of the, one of the students from University of Canterbury doing his computer science degree, knocked up this system where you would book a job and then people could see when they'd done the job. So it's like someone calls up, can you come and take the silt out of my house or do whatever they book it, send the job out to somebody, you know. So this is, yes, this is a guy just doing his degree. This is a great thing about Young people and students, you know, and anyway, they took that tech to there in the States where you had these huge volunteer groups and they'd all come with their massive marquees and set up, and then they'd all troop down the same street and knock on the same doors. Do you need X, Y and Z? Said, actually, just have one system. And then when you go and visit a house, ask them, what do you need? Is it water, Is it power, Is it food, is it blankets? And then you just code it in and then the deliveries can be made so it's more efficient. So they ended up working with the National Guard. Anyway, so they came back and that was great. Great. And one of the things they brought back with them was an idea from the guy at the Global Dirt Organization was that they had this incredible box that they carried around and you opened it up and it had a satellite system and it had a sat phone and it had solar power. So essentially it was a mobile comms unit. And I said, geez, why don't we have them in every community in the city? And to be honest, everywhere in key centers around New Zealand. And we sort of looked into it, but, you know, nothing we couldn't get, you know, again, couldn't get government to look at it or whatever. Anyway, what happened during Cyclone Gabrielle, all the power went out. There was no comms. There was no comms even in hospitals, in courts. And I'm saying. I'm saying, do these people not have sat phones? No. You know, so you talk about the power going down, things like eftpos, that's absolutely critical. So when we talk about disaster preparedness, there's a lot of stuff that we can be doing at that, say, resilience level. You know, every MRI in the country with a backup comms system, you know, community centers, hospitals, you know, courts, police. Now, of course the police police had them. But you remember, comms was a big deal in the recovery from the cyclone. So you speak to the tech companies, you know, Spark, Vodafone, two degrees. The. The personal bit, which I think is really important is that, yeah, as much as we don't think this stuff's going to happen, or it's a hassle, or it's a redundancy cost. You know, you've got to have a bag packed. I've got grab bags all over the place. I just like, because I'm such a hoarder, I just keep kind of. Okay, I'll have that. And then I'll put this battery pack in and a one Square meal, which will be like eight years old, but probably still. You can still probably eat it. If I think there's some us like the meals ready to eat ration thingies, they last 100 years or something. It's weird stuff. I don't know what's in it.

You may die from the consumption of.

It, you know, in an emergency. So you have your personal stuff ready and even other things like tools, like good tool kits, but, you know, your community and I think the thing about this civic service program and what I would implement as, you know, leader of the Opportunities Party and all the rest of it is a civic service program where everyone is trained. One of the things we offer, first aid. Everyone in the country has done a first aid course. Now that is a huge investment in basic social and civic resilience. You know, you know, you can dress a wound, you can set, you know, a break, things like that. That has a huge impact in terms of personal recovery. You know, driving lessons, making sure everyone actually has. Knows how to drive because we still, you know, people will still drive vehicles.

The, the conservation, you know, the basics in water management. You know, if we train everyone in, in that kind of civic and kind of civil response. I call it the four Cs. So it's essentially, if I can remember them all, so like community engagement, conservation, civics and civil defense. Now that's. They're all really important and they're all entwined. But if you want people to have a sense of citizenship, imagine that when you become a citizen or you grow up here, you all do this same course and that brings everyone together.

There's a sense of belonging.

Yeah, but it's a unique thing. It's a unique thing. It doesn't have to take up huge amounts of time. You can do it, you know, the odd afternoon here and there, and it's funded.

Then you create this idea of a citizen that no matter what happens anywhere, people can respond. They can go and look after other people if they're okay. They can administer basic first aid. They can, you know, build shelters. I mean, you know, we've been through it here, and there are plenty of people who were living under tarps and using buckets for toilets. And I mean, I remember actually after the earthquakes, I did some, in the very early days, I did some toilet deliveries, well, chemical toilet deliveries with the army. And, you know, I remember being kind of shocked at. You turn up at this house and this old couple were there and they'd been on their own for like two or three days. This was Right after the earthquakes and no, you know, sewerage was off and using buckets and old people and they were kind of on zoom and it was just like, oh, my God, this is grim. But that's the reality of what happens. I mean, we see it on the TV shows all the time. There was a great show recently about the Mercy Hospital experience in New Orleans where they were cut off for five days. It only takes place three days and society collapses. So that, that initial response is critical. How do we allow people to buy stuff? You know, so a system for. I remember as a local supermarket, I think Fennelton, New World. Yeah. They were doing. They just got the book out. He said, right, everyone here basically shops here all the time. So tell your name, loaf of bread, pint of milk, you know, that type of stuff.

And that's trust and that's community building.

Yeah. Now, if you've got strong communities, that trust system works. When trust goes, you will have looting, you will have gangs, which we did.

See a bit of that too. Yep.

And there was a bit of that up in the Hawkes Bay particularly where you have, you know, gangs with guns. They will immediately go, well, if. No, if there's no police around, we're now in charge. So without a strong community response.

You'Ve got problems. So I guess to summarize, you know, disaster preparedness is critical at a kind of systems level. So, yes, like your sat phones, you know, your comms.

Backup power, you know, solar around the place. But the civic preparedness is critical. And the only way we can do that is by enhancing our sense of ourselves as citizens, because that's how we're going to come together and look after each other.

Makes sense. I think of my friends in Switzerland and Israel and they have these programs. Some of them are military service for a year. But there's a sense of whenever they travel the world, they're like, hey, you've been. You've done your year? Yeah, I've done my year. And they know the basics and they know how to use different equipment and basic first aid. And that's stuff that truly we do lack here. And in Britain, where I grew up.

In Ireland, we had nothing there. And it's, you know, I mean, France actually looked at a new national military service model. The army actually said they didn't have any interest in it, so they're doing a national civic service model. But for a year, and, you know, friends and I have said, oh, you know, what about, why can't people have a year off to do things like The Peace Corps, that type of thing. And I said, look, yeah, but let's do the, let's do the basics first. And if it, you know, it's hard enough to get that, but I think we can get people signed up to that. We can fund it. It's a huge investment. So it's just a huge investment in our people. And the downstream effects of that are so positive. You know, one of these kids wandering around doing ram raids and stuff. Do they have any idea of. Of who they are, any purpose? No, they're living in a purposeless environment where there are clearly no good role models or direction or pointers. And we got to get on top of that. That's a huge problem.

And if and when you step into Parliament, what is your key focus, the thing you're most passionate about making a difference in, stepping up for?

Look, I mean, I can talk about particular policy, but I actually think it's having a different voice. It's talking about these sort of things. It's talking about, you know, we always get a bit scary about the vision thing, but actually being open about the challenges that we need to address, talking to people about how we might address those. So I think that kind of, you know, that, that civic support and civic structure is really critical because it impacts education, it impacts health. I mean, we've got to sort out housing. So we're very big on the housing issue. But when I look at politicians, and no offense to them, I don't get any interest or excitement in anything they say about anything. You basically got one bunch essentially trying to defend things they're not doing very well, and the other bunch basically trying to find things the other side are not doing very well and go on about them the whole time.

And the only people that lose out here are the citizens.

Yeah. And that's why people kind of turning off. And you see that just in the general polling, that the shift away from the sort of. The two major parties tells you that. And also fringe parties and not small parties, fringe parties over here. That's just a symptom of a problem that people are losing when people lose trust. We've seen it in the US A lot of that has economic issues like deindustrialization and high male unemployment is a huge issue, but people having no sense of what they're supposed to be doing, no sense of what the future looks like, no sense of community and falling by the wayside, seeing that there is no, I guess you could talk about a social contract. You know, there's no social contract. Anymore. They have that social contract has been around and it's very strong in other countries. And in a way, those other countries are probably doing better. You know, when people talk about New Zealand, oh, it's like a third world country now, well, that's a bit mean to third world countries who are actually moving forward and they have a better sense of purpose, you know, and the politics is all very different, but people have a sort of an understanding of structures, rules, what they're supposed to be doing, how they're supposed to be doing it. And yeah, different levels of freedom, but generally people are moving ahead and it feels like we're stuck. And this could be just an Anglo Saxon problem that we've reached the end cycle of a system which has kind of denuded us a little bit of these other things like purpose.

Like, you know, civic engagement, like community. And we've got it all here, but we're just losing it. You know, the sort of the glue is becoming a little bit unstuck.

And to me that comes back to, okay, it's top down. So how do we get the leadership mindset to actually connect us again? So what do you think is the filter that the leaders that are leading our country, they need to be looking through to ensure that we do develop a deep sense of purpose?

I think Wellington is a problem. And when I say Wellington, I mean the Wellington bubble. So that is Parliament, that is the public service. It's very insular, it's very inward looking. And, you know, if I put my political hat on, I think the centralization drive of the last six years of this government has been very damaging. They've stripped a lot of power.

From communities and whether it's from Auckland or Christchurch and all around the country, so people are going, well, we don't really have a say anymore. And it's not like we're getting good results out of it. You know, the hospital's a mess, the polytechnic's a mess. You know, crime is up. So there's a sense that what's happening at the moment isn't working. So I would be saying we should be decentralizing, we should be empowering local communities. And this was the. We talked about this after the earthquakes again and again and again. You know, empower local communities. They have the answers.

The resistance. Do you think, why is that not happening?

Yeah, Wellington. Wellington's the problem. I mean, I, I said it a lot and so I certainly, you know, annoyed a lot of people. But I'm looking at this very objectively.

Because we need leaders who are. Won't speak up.

Yeah, exactly. So because I'm not part of the political apparatus and I'm not, you know, I'm not beholden to them, I don't really kind of care. I can speak more freely and I did when I was a city council. I speak frankly and openly and, you know, equally offend both sides. But I was trying to represent what was going on.

You can be an advocate then when.

You can do that and then, you know, I see myself actually as a. A kind of a facilitator and an advocate. You know, it's not about me. I kind of, you know, I'm not looking for this massive career. It's. I'm trying to, yeah, essentially serve, but contribute in a way that I think I can. And I'm lucky. I've got a set of skills and experience that a lot of people don't have. You know, I'm not a spring chicken. So I've been around and seen a lot and I think I've got something to offer and I think, yeah, we need somebody same for. I'd be the same for people in Auckland to go to Wellington and say, hey, this is not the center of the country. You need to get stuff out of Wellington. And also the fact is all our communities are very different, but if you don't empower them, they will do their own thing. And if you lose them out of this system, that is a big problem.

That's right. And if you look at. I think a great example would be to look at elite special forces. They operate with decentralized command. And so when you look at the top commander of the sas, they don't make all the calls. In fact, they make very few calls. They have well trained team members and this could be well, well informed people around different parts of the country. And they know how to make decisions. There's trust. And I think that's a great model to decentralize the command and it's healthy in times of crisis and it's just crucial. So I hope that you can push that. I hope you can interrupt the behavior and the patterns.

I hope so. And in fact, the way that, I mean, when I think about the Opportunities Party as a political organization, the way I'm approaching it is very much that model. So, yeah, I mean, I, you know, big fan of the SAS over the years, used to read the books, you know, when I was younger and that model of decentralization and small units is really good. So I actually sent say to my, my sort of fellow candidates and colleagues, you do your own thing. So we have kind of a Wellington squad and an Auckland squad and a Hamilton squad and a Christchurch squad of one. But it is like, that's the way I don't need to know what you're doing every day, you know, so this kind of party control thing. But also you have to speak for your. And Auckland or your local ward might be different. I don't mind what you say. I mean, here's our basic principles, as.

Long as they're clear on the vision, principles, values.

Here's our basic policy. And you may not agree with all of it. And actually it may be. Need. Need to be different for a different place. So for Christchurch, you know, just an example around sort of the housing density stuff. It should be different for Christchurch because we did different stuff after the earthquakes. But it might work well for Auckland and it might work. That's fine, you know, so this idea, blanket stuff from Wellington. No, that's not going to work. This unit is going to do things differently and this unit is going to do things differently. But. Yeah, and our purpose is the same, though, which is essentially, we want better X, Y, Z, better outcomes. We want to achieve our objective, which we've been clear about. The objective might be affordable housing for people. Now, achieving that in different places might require different tools because the environment is different 100%. That's the problem. So if you. The biggest problem in this country is Wellington and the way that it operates when we.

I could translate that as well. And what I hear, when I hear that the biggest problem in this country is leadership. Because when I think of Wellington, that they. We look to them as our leaders, they're leading us. And to me, our country will rise or fall on leadership.

Yeah, See, I don't look at them as our leaders.

Yeah, there you go. Because there's that lack of. Hey, I don't trust. And.

Yeah. And I think, you know, I think when, When John Key was Prime Minister. Yeah, I think that would be his approach again, because again, when you're working in financial markets, you're working often in very small teams. And I think, you know, he was very supportive of Christchurch. Come down. Yep. Whatever you guys need to do, you do this. No sense of, I've got to control stuff, devolve it. It's basically, are you meeting the objective that you set? If you're not, come and ask me. Is there a problem? Is there something I can do? Is it. Whatever. And I think this is the. Essentially the political class in Wellington who operate a certain way who have a system of essentially how you climb up the greasy pole and all the rest of it. I don't care about that. So, you know, I think if we can disrupt that a little bit and send power back to the regions where it needs to be, you know, I mean, just as an example in the budget, there's half a billion dollars to make Wellington a science city, including a center of disaster resilience. And everyone else out of Wellington's going, why are you pouring more stuff into Wellington? We've got people all over the country who can do this research, stick it somewhere else. I mean, a center for disaster and resilience should be in Christchurch. You know, we've got so much experience down here, so it's that kind of thing and it's just a, it's a bubble and parliament's a bubble. And I guess my long term vision is actually we decentralize government and that's.

Probably having diversity in government is going to be very good and it needs to be more diverse. Having diversity in our boards of our companies is going to be very good. When you start to look at the studies around revenue, the companies that are more diverse make way more money and communities that are more diverse are healthier, they thrive more, they're more innovative, creative. So I love that you're willing to be the disruptor. You're not going to be popular with a lot of the, your colleagues, but that's okay.

I'm not here to be popular. I'd like to be popular with the voters so that they elect me. But yeah, I'm here to do a job.

I'm talking of the voters, I want to jump in there. I'm going to put a link to the party's website in the show notes as well. So if anybody would like to go and find out more about you, the party, what it'll mean for New Zealand if they vote for you. I'll make sure and put that in.

Cool, that's great. I mean, I think it's a really important conversation to have, you know, because it, you know, we, I mean we just released that climate change or climate policy today, be announced tomorrow. And it's called Climate Opportunities. You know, because we want to show people there are opportunities in everything. There are opportunities in every problem because you can solve it. So focus on how we solve it and then what comes out of that, you know, and if you're young, it's like you want to give them that sense. Okay, yeah, here's a bit of a problem. Go and solve it. How can you do it? You know, empower them to do that, give them some agency about it. And I think the job of, let's say, leaders is to allow that to happen.

You're shifting. What I hear is as a party and as a leader, you're helping to shift heart set and mindset for everyone to go, hey, there's a problem. But that problem presents a possibility, or in your words, problem presents opportunity. And I do think that's a major shift. And we need that as we become, you know, step into more of those cyclones and disasters. We need people with possibilitarian mindsets. And you're really facilitating that as a leader. So thank you.

Thank you.

I can ask you one last question?

Yes, you can.

So if we fast forward way into the future, it's your very last day here on Earth. And you know it's your last day.

Yeah.

And someone very young comes up to you, it could be a great grandchild or a grandchild. And they say, rafael, how can I lead my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

I'd say, look, be your authentic self. You know, that's it. That's all you can do. And as my dad always said to me, when I tell him about my latest idea, scheme, you know, role, he go, that's great, son. I know you'll do your best. That's it. That's what I'd say. Be yourself and do your best.

I love it. Well, Raf, thank you so much for sharing all your insights for creating this space today. And I want to wish you all the very best.

Thank you. Well, thanks for having me. Great to talk.

My pleasure. Thank you. Cheers.

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