Michael Barnett says National MP Simon Bridges will take Auckland Business Chamber to a new level

Michael Barnett wants business owners and executives who feel overwhelmed to ask for help. Photo / Michael Craig

Retiring Auckland Business Chamber CEO Michael Barnett takes High Tea with Jane Phare to reflect on 31 years at the helm, the highs and lows, the Covid-19 factor and why former National leader Simon Bridges is an ideal replacement.

Lunch with Michael Barnett almost goes horribly wrong. I'm running late after a wrong turn on the motorway, and my iPhone's GPS then takes me to the old Chamber of Commerce building in Mayoral Drive.

Barnett is waiting, and waiting, for me in the foyer of the Cordis Hotel, not far from the chamber's office in Symonds St. But Barnett is a problem solver. Don't worry, he says. I've arranged parking outside the Cordis. Just come.

When I rush inside, flustered, Barnett grins, gives me a hug and tells me to "breathe. Just breathe." It's something he's learned to do. Reduce stress, pay attention to mental wellbeing, don't let a small problem blow out of proportion.

It is a subject he will talk passionately about during our leisurely High Tea in the hotel's elegant foyer with jazz playing softly in the background and ladies-who-lunch laughing politely at each other's amusing stories.

The week before I told Barnett that I had to be the one to do his "exit" interview. We've grown old and gnarly together, I said. He's been with the chamber – formerly the Auckland Chamber of Commerce – for more than 30 years, first as its international manager then as CEO. I've lost count of how many times I've interviewed him. He was always there, on the end of the phone, the champion of Auckland regional business. No need for a pesky comms person in the way, or the questions-in-writing stonewalling. "The voice of reason" his colleagues call him.

Not even a diagnosis of throat cancer in 2010 would slow him down. He was never very far from the action, right through chemotherapy and gruelling rounds of radiation which today has left his throat scarred with burn marks. One time he did a lengthy interview in the back of a taxi on his way back from radiation, sucking on a lemonade iceblock to help cool his burned throat while we talked.

Barnett shares a photo of his radiation mask, designed to lock the head still during treatment. He took it home and an artist friend, Rena Pearson, created a piece of artwork in the form of a lamp. It's testimony to Barnett's sense of humour that neither he nor the artist took the whole thing too seriously.

The lamp is decorated with yellow daisies – a black-humour reference to "pushing up daisies" - red roses to mark where Barnett's cancer was, and where the burns were worst, and skulls across the chest for good measure.

After his treatment for throat cancer Michael Barnett had his radiation mask made into a work of art by artist Rena Pearson. Photo / Michael Barnett

But it's the inscription over the top of the head he likes most. "Exquisitely sensitive to treatment." They were the words used by Barnett's oncologist Randall Morton after his shocking diagnosis, encouraging words that gave him hope.

After discovering a lump on his neck, he remembers his doctor phoning with the cancer news. Barnett was at a business lunch and he stepped outside to take the call. He never went back in, he says, cried all the way home in the car. Throat cancer, pretty grim. That was until his oncologist uttered those magic words.

He's been clear of the cancer for nearly 12 years now but three years ago he received another blow. Barnett noticed he was starting to have trouble speaking. He drove out to Middlemore Hospital to get the results of tests that showed damage to cranial nerves caused eight years earlier by the radiation treatment that helped save his life.

The doctor told him straight: "The results that I have would indicate that long term you are not going to be able to speak," she said, "and you're not going to be able to swallow."

There is no treatment, he was told. Suddenly, the voice of reason was in doubt. But Barnett is still speaking and still swallowing, albeit with difficulty sometimes. He's learned to adjust, speak slowly and think about what he will eat in public. Pasta with sauce, and soup, are good choices. A High Tea with sandwiches and scones, not so good.

Some days are better than others. The condition gets worse when he's stressed. He's learned to "breathe, just breathe." Indications are that he will lose half the muscle in his tongue but he doesn't think that will be enough to silence him. Despite his diagnosis Barnett believes he will always be able to speak and eat.

But it has made him think that maybe, at the age of 72, it is time to ease back, to let someone else - Simon Bridges - champion the Auckland business cause. Barnett's proud of the chamber that his replacement will inherit.

Michael Barnett has built up a strong team at the Auckland Business Chamber ready for the handover. Photo / Michael Craig

Since becoming CEO he has steered it away from the "suits and oak-panelled boardroom" formality he encountered back in the late 80s, to an organisation he believes is far more in touch with the business community. In particular he championed small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) which previously had no voice, certainly not at government level.

It is a role that, more often than not, took up seven days of his week. Every weekday morning he drives into the city from his lifestyle block at Karaka at 5am, does a 6km walk through the city and the Auckland Domain before starting work. He might not do that every morning from July 31 – his handover day to Bridges – but he'll still be involved with specific projects, maybe 20 to 30 hours a week.

Barnett wants to finish what he started, specifically the First Steps NZ mental-health project for the Auckland business community, funded to the tune of $10 million as part of the Government's Covid-19 business recovery package. The First Steps online programme was launched just under five months ago and the website has already had 50,000 hits from business owners and managers downloading and listening to material.

It was support that Barnett realised was urgently needed after Covid-19 brought unprecedented pressures to the business community, faced with financial loss, stressed staff, closed businesses, and terrifyingly unknown waters to navigate.

First Steps is a joint initiative with the Government, the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and the Auckland chamber, and Barnett hopes to keep it going for the next three years and expand the programme nationwide.

"It's not just an Auckland problem and it's not a problem that is just going to go away at the end of the financial period," he says. "Business owners and managers don't necessarily want to be hooked up with a psychologist but they're quite happy to take some resources and self-direct, downloading, listening, reading, and trying to change their behaviours and do it in a discreet way."

Mental health and wellbeing is a passion of Barnett's and you get the feeling that as long as he can still talk, he won't stop speaking out. It is an area with which he is painfully familiar. In 2017 his eldest son David, then in his early 40s, committed suicide, a loss that devastated David's brothers Andrew and Scott (from Barnett's first marriage) and Barnett's two younger children, Finn and Madison, from his second marriage, to Kim.

Barnett recalls his close relationship with David, how they used to do "crazy" things together. There is both laughter and sadness behind a story he tells about the day he and David brought their 9m replica 1912 launch down from the Bay of Islands. They rounded Cape Brett by the Hole in the Rock to find mountainous seas ahead and decided to head for Whangamumu, the nearest sheltered harbour. While battling huge waves Barnett realised David had disappeared and, unable to leave the helm, started screaming his name.

"David was a clean freak," he laughs now. "He was up on the roof scrubbing off the seagull poop."

Barnett treasures those times with his son but he also knows how quickly, and unpredictably, they can come to an end. For him, mental health and wellbeing is a big one today.

"We have had the open conversations about diversity and about equal opportunity. Those same conversations need to be happening about mental health in order to break down the stigma attached to it."

But he admits that getting top executives to open up when there is still stigma attached to mental health is an ongoing challenge. He knows they'll be weighing up: "Is this good for my brand? Will this harm my career prospects?"

Michael Barnett wants business owners and executives who feel overwhelmed to ask for help. Photo / Michael Craig

His message to business owners and managers feeling stressed, overwhelmed and isolated is "It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to talk about it." He wants to encourage business leaders to talk about mental health in an open forum.

"We need more of that and I can see us going there. The more conversations we have, the more we normalise it."

Barnett also wants boards to take more responsibility to make sure their top executives are supported after hearing senior leaders confide in him about feelings of isolation. Boards have a responsibility for the wellbeing of the staff, particularly their CEO and top managers, he says, to encourage an executive to pull back from a gruelling schedule or not enough family time.

"I would like to think that increasingly boards will be wise enough and smart enough to see that wider responsibility."

Ideally what he'd like is a mental-health advocate, the John Kirwan of the business world, or leaders who are willing to speak out, to share their experience.

And there's another project Barnett's keen on pursuing once he's no longer CEO – turning unemployed kids who spend their days gaming into robotics whizzes. Right now it's more of a dream than a reality but he's getting there. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is on board, he's collated a selection of online international courses and he has a robotics company willing to help with the robot he needs.

Imagine, he says, if unemployed kids sitting at home gaming can turn those skills into automation and from there to robotics, earning $50 an hour and more, rather than the unemployment benefit. Teach them how to write a CV, how to do a job interview and how to search for a job.

Although unemployment figures might hover around 5 per cent nationally, Barnett says, in places like South Auckland that figure is closer to 20 per cent, mainly young Māori and Pasifika youths.

The initiative follows on from work the chamber already does. Over the years it has helped placed thousands of young unemployed people in jobs working with MSD. And last year it helped nearly 5000 young people get their driver's licences so they can get to and from a job.

Apart from those projects Barnett is looking forward to some leisure time; The Auckland Business Chamber role tended to eat into seven days a week at times. He won't be raising alpacas on his 6-hectare block but he will be going touring. He and his wife Kim have bought a reasonably fancy Italian motorhome, joined the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association, and plan to explore New Zealand. Then there's his son Andrew, and two granddaughters to visit in London. And plenty of cycling and walking to do.

Ahead also is a transition period, helping to settle Bridges into his new role by the July 31 handover. Barnett doesn't want to second guess Bridges' effectiveness, preferring to let the ex-politician form his own brand and make his own mark.

Former National MP Simon Bridges will take over as CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber on July 31. Photo / Mark Mitchell

He doesn't think Bridges' staunch political background will be a problem. The role as CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber is by necessity an apolitical non-partisan role, he says. He thinks Bridges will adapt; he's smart, well educated and has good connections. And the days of whinging are long gone.

"I think there's a greater potential these days to be a solution provider rather than a whinger. Instead of sitting on the sideline and saying 'you're wrong' I think there's a much greater expectation within government that what you might do is front up with an alternative."

So is Bridges up to that? Barnett is tactful. "There might be opinions he's expressed in the past where he might need to moderate or learn. I think that he understands that's what's going to be required. He has a big brain so the capability is there."

It's an appointment that Barnett, as a member of the chamber's board, supports. He thinks the chamber, under his watch, has done well – the day-to-day operations run smoothly, with the help of a top team; they help businesses with complex paperwork for international trade; help with business advice and have been vocal about issues facing the business world.

But Barnett thinks the chamber can do better in terms of advocacy -"step up" he says – and this is where Bridges comes in.

"I think we [the chamber] could probably be more strategic in some of the issues that we pick up and we could be better researched. Some of that will come from the intelligence of the individual and some of it will be through access to networks that I don't have.

"When I look at the next five years, that's where I think our strength could grow and I think he [Bridges] will be ideal for that."