Tales of poverty, excess and financial lessons from Suzanne Paul, Sir Bill English, Rod Duke and more - Money Talks

Celebrity Treasure Island - Suzanne Paul. Photo / Matt Klitscher

On the NZ Herald podcast Money Talks prominent Kiwis share tales of money and how it has shaped their lives. The seventh season wrapped up this month. Hosted by NZ Herald business editor-at-large Liam Dann, the podcast talks to notable New Zealanders about their memories of money growing up, whether they’re any good with it, would like more of it and why it causes so many problems in society.

Here are some of the best stories from the guests this season, who have ranged from business leaders and politicians to broadcasters and comedians. All previous episodes of Money Talks - with guests such as Sir John Key, Brendan Lindsay, John Toogood, Sir Roger Douglas, Chloe Swarbrick, Brad Olsen, Dame Therese Walsh, Dame Joan Withers, Paddy Gower and more – are available free to listen on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Suzanne Paul

Every week on the Money Talks we ask guests if money has been a driving force in their life or whether it is a by-product of their success.

Businesswoman, TV star, infomercial icon and Celebrity Treasure Island returnee Suzanne Paul is the first (in more than 50 episodes) to just say it: “I do it for the money”.

“Earlier on a lot of people used to say to me, don’t let money be your driving force. Well, you wouldn’t say that if you grew up in Wolverhampton with nothing. It is my driving force and it always has been. It’s a powerful motivator.”

Paul isn’t exaggerating how tough her childhood was.

“The part of Wolverhampton I grew up in was very, very low-working class. We didn’t have a shower. We didn’t have a bath. There was no inside toilet, no hot running water. It was very basic,” she says.

Paul, whose mother left when she was young, was raised by her father who was caring but had to work long hours in a factory.

She says she didn’t realise until she was 9 or 10 that they were poor.

“If you’re only mixing with people the same as you, you don’t know how other people live. We didn’t have cars, we didn’t have telephones.”

There was no pocket money but from the age of about 11 Paul worked at a pub clearing ashtrays and cleaning up.

“I think I got 50 pence and I’d use that money for a dance class,” Paul says.

Briscoe founder Rod Duke

Despite having owned and managed the business for nearly 40 years, Duke has no plans to retire.

He enjoys golf and loves travelling and socialising with his wife and friends. He has invested in racehorses.

But his real passion is still retailing. It has been since he was a teenager.

Duke, who was born in Australia, left school at 16 to work in a shoe shop because he loved to sell things.

“I was just fascinated by the proposition of buying something and then reselling it for more than I pay for it,” he says.

“I was a very unusual adolescent, not particularly keen on school except for the sporting part of it. For me, it was all about preparing myself for the workforce. I was just dying to get into a shop and learn how to approach and sell to people, how to buy something for an amount of money and then sell it for a little more.”

His first memories of money are of counting large piles of it. His father was a bookmaker at the races in Adelaide and would get a young Duke to count the winnings every Sunday.

Rod Duke, interviewed by RNZ's Corin Dann for the RICH series Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

“I was about 10 or 12 years old. And, as is typical, a bookmaker fields at the races on Saturday. And then when he wakes up Sunday morning, he gets his betting bags, empties all the money and hopefully there’s a lot.”

His father would empty the cash onto the floor and tell the kids to count it: “‘I want the notes sorted this way, and there’s a rubber band that you put around them. And all the silver, you sort this way, and then if you sort it, then I’ll come down and I’ll count it out and put it away’.”

It is a vivid memory and one that may have shaped the young Duke’s passion for making money.

But he says it has never really been about the money itself. He started out chasing independence and then set himself targets for success.

“I think that [money] is a by-product but for me, it’s not a real motivation,” he said. “Making money for the business so I can support the 2000 families who work in the business, now that’s a bit of fun.

Sir Bill English

Former Prime Minister Sir Bill English talks about his personal relationship with money, growing up on the farm in Southland and how he made it to the top in politics with a degree in English literature.

“I think I was the only farm worker in New Zealand with scholarship Latin, in the early 80s. So I went off to Dunedin and did an English degree and an accounting degree.”

He also reflects on his early years in Parliament (he was elected in 1990) and the depth of the grim recessionary period in New Zealand history that started in the economic turmoil of the 1970s and culminated with the Mother of All Budgets during National’s term in the 1990s.

“It was pretty grim in my community, which I knew better than any others,” English says. “In the rural communities, the dislocation that went on as part of the deregulation of the economy was enormous. When I hear people talking about crises today ... by that standard of that time, that’s not a crisis.

“A lot of people lost their jobs and that went on for a while, longer than the proponents of deregulation and reform thought.”

English recalls the backlash to the cost-cutting by Finance Minister Ruth Richardson.

“That 90 to 93 [period] was pretty rough,” he says.

“There were protests, there were crowds pushing down doors to get into our meetings. There was no security in those days, so it was a pretty hard-edged introduction to the politics of change.

“It did leave a mark on me in the sense that it’s easy to advocate for change if you don’t have to look into the eyes of those facing the consequences,” he says.

Jack Tame

“From the moment that I had regular income, my mum would make me keep a balance book and every month I had to work out my sums. The rule was that I had to save 65% of what I earned and I could spend 35% of what I earned.

“So, I wasn’t blowing all of my money. I saved from the word go – very nerdily.”

Tame always had a passion for news and says he felt like he had “found his tribe” as soon as he started at broadcasting school in Christchurch.

But he still has an entrepreneurial bent.

Television and radio journalist and presenter Jack Tame has always saved money. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“I dip my toes in the share market as other people do with mixed success, to say the least,” he says.

“As a younger person, I definitely had an entrepreneurial streak and funnily enough, if I weren’t in journalism, as fulfilling as my job is now, business, commerce and economics are still really interesting to me.

“I think if I had another career, especially if I were starting now, that’s probably the direction I would head in.”

ASB CEO Vittoria Shortt

“Growing up at home, we were in real financial difficulty,” ASB CEO Vittoria Shortt recalls. “I remember going up to the dairy, we didn’t have any food in the house. But we had a whole bunch of bottles - I’m showing my age - you know how you could take glass bottles up to the dairy and swap them out for something?

“I remember dinner that night was taking the glass bottles up to the dairy and getting some sausages and the other bits and bobs and that was dinner.

“There was a sense of knowing that maybe other kids had some more money going on in the household,” she says.

Shortt says her parents shielded her from most of the economic pain but she recalls the emotional stress it caused.

“It’s kind of hard to know when you’re young and growing up exactly what causes what, you know. You listen to your parents talk around the kitchen table and sometimes it’s hard to make heads or tails of it,” she says.

ASB chief executive Vittoria Shortt. Photo / Supplied

“But the thing that I learned pretty quickly is how destabilising it is, how much emotional pressure and stress comes from money decisions and the things that went from there that happened in our family.

“And so, early on, it was less about what was going on in the economy, or the environment, or the business. And it was a lot more around the emotional impact.”

Click here to listen to more episodes

Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.

The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.

Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.