June 12, 2024 • 37 mins
Labour's finance spokesperson and former tax lawyer, Barbara Edmonds, shares her best and worst money stories with Liam Dann.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Liam Dan, New Zealand Herald Business Editor at
Large and welcome to this episode of Money Talks. This
is a podcast about money, but we're not going to
tell you how to get rich, and we're not going
to try and pick the next interest rate move. In
this series, I'll be talking to interesting New Zealanders about
how money has shaped their lives and what they've learned
(00:27):
over the years. For today's podcast, I'm joined by Labour
MP for the Mana electorate and the party's finance spokesperson,
Barbara Edmunds Cura. Barbara, Welcome to Money.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Talks, Tyler for Lover of Them, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, hello for lover Look. You are new to the
finance portfolio. You started in February. How are you enjoying
it so far?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Enjoy is a proscriptive word.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think it's like any new job, you know, it
kind of takes you about six months to settle in.
That's kind of the barometer I've used in my previous careers.
It's taking a bit to settle in. There are bits
that I enjoy, there are some bits that I'm like,
you know, less so, but it's where you know, just
post my first budget and opposition, so lots of things
(01:14):
I've learned for next time.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Sure, well, let's let's jump back and you know, talk
a little bit about growing up and money of course,
So you know, can I ask what were your first
memories of money? Do you remember first time you might
have held money in your hand or your first time
you were aware of it around?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, we grew up with not much money because my
parents and migrant parents who came to New Zealand in
the seventies, and Mum got cancer, so she died when
I was four. So my dad gave up his job
as an Edmund Clark in the Navy in Devenport and
just went on the benefit to basically until I got
(01:52):
to college. So I don't actually have much memory of money,
if I could put it that way, obviously, because we
didn't have much, and you know, there were sometimes in
the cupboards were beer. Probably Actually one time I do
remember quite fondly. It was actually on the day we
buried mum, which is also on my fifth birthday, the
(02:12):
eighteenth of January, and we went to the dairy, so
the View Road Dairy in Glenfield, and the shopkeeper Murray
there he let me go around the around the counter
to pick whatever I wanted. Oh yeah, so money wasn't
an object for that, you know, and that's a pretty
big thing for a five year I was like, oh,
I get to go behind the shop, you know, the
(02:33):
shop counter. I get to pick whatever I want, so,
you know, I mean I picked a lead which was
an old one and a kick cat. But I mean,
I think that's probably one of my earliest memories around. Wow,
money wasn't wasn't a thing. I could pick whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's interesting. I mean, it's interesting how many people I
talked to in New Zealand, you know, pocket money or whatever.
That that corner dairy.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Corner dairy story is so real.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah yeah, but you know so obviously you know, not
much money, But did you feel the absence of money
like when you you know, as a kid relative to
other kids. I guess north Shore is you know, quite affluent.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah. Well, we were brought up in Glenfield, which was
actually one of the areas where the government at the
time had done a lot of property development, so that
it was one of the housing boom kind of areas.
Universal homes built our family home through the capitalization of
family skiing benefits. That's how my parents got their home.
I do remember like walking to school and bare feet,
but I thought every kid did that, you know, I
(03:30):
really did. I think the first time I realized, and then,
you know, obviously sometimes you're hungry. Sometimes didn't really didn't
really think about it. I think the first time I
actually did kind of realize there was a difference was
I was really close to our next door neighbor and
the daughter, the young daughter who used to baby search,
must have been about ten or nine, because I was
(03:52):
still in primary school. She had a ballet recital. It
was in town at the old main Mint Theater, and
she picked the mother and the daughter picked me up
from netball and I was soaked because of netball. But
I had no shoes either, because my netble shoes were
totally soaked. I remember going to the ballet with no
(04:12):
shoes and kind of feeling that a bit different, right,
So I not just that, And that's probably the first
time I kind of realized that we didn't quite have
everything that others had.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, I mean sometimes people feel that, you know, maybe
you know, going back a few decades, the inequalities weren't
so stark that you could sort of live a life
in New Zealand without so much money, and you know,
you didn't feel necessarily so different from the other people
around you.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Is that. Yeah, we also didn't have social media and
this access to information that's constantly telling you what you
have and what you don't have. Yeah, you know, you
don't have the social media influencers who are sharing parts
of their life, which is my perspective not totally real,
or being sponsored by someone to produce a product, you know,
to advertise the product. So I think that sort of
(04:59):
a win where we didn't have that basically, that technology
and actually back in the day where you know, your
community was the little primary school plus the hospital, plus
the place where your parents went to work, whereas now
our children are exposed to way more through technology.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, did you have a big extended family, you know, sibling.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So I'm the youngest of four because because mom passed away,
my dad is the eldest of nineteen grandpa's nineteen children.
My grandpa had two children. My mother is the youngest
of her family of ten. She was also only the
second one to pass away, so she was the baby
so at the last count, and this was the early
(05:44):
two thousands and my aunties and uncles were still having children.
I have eighty four first cousins.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's a very born family.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
It sounds sounds great. And look, you mentioned your mum
passing away when you're quite young. It that you and
uctually inherited her name? Is that?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah? So I was born Rachel Futti. That's the name
that was given to me by my parents. And I
was born so on her actual day that she was
buried like someone sort of tradition, we have a big
feed afterwards. The Mattai of her family. So her brother
who was the folke bully, the head of our family,
mother's side of the family. He basically announced then at
(06:25):
the wake, if you would say that my family was
now to refer to me as Barbara or Balipa, which
and that was my mom's name, so no more. He
sort of overstepped my dad in some respects but said
that basically, now she's passed away, I was to carry
her name.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Wow. Is that like a bit of a shock for you?
Like ll you just take it in your stride, take
it up.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I guess it didn't quite understand.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
When you go, so you don't.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Understand your mom dying, but then second of all, you
don't understand some of these big decisions that are made
for you. So some of my family still call me
Rachel and I respond, right, yeah, really easily like me
my som more name, which is Fuzzy, and I respond
to that. But yeah, it's just just happened.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah. I mean, obviously you've been in the you know,
the real hard nosed world of tax law, and I'll
get to that, but I'm just interested to know what
the approach to money in the summer and community was
like at that time. Is it sort of you know,
even now, do you see a different attitude to economics
and money in that community.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's around basically burdens being shared, So you know, it's
a very much a communal model in the way that
families will work hard. They will work you know, sometimes
two three jobs because Pacific people generally are paid much lower.
But when you need it the most, the family comes
together and donates. And so really simple example for you,
(07:49):
my parents, my father's siblings, they had been saving for
decades for the time when my grandmother would pass away.
She passed away a couple of years ago. They had
saved with I think around a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars when her funeral actually happened. It costs a family
one hundred and ten thousand dollars for her funeral. Because
we do cultural gift exchanges. The exchange of gifts, the
(08:11):
gifts that were given to our family to honor our
grandmother was about one hundred k. So there is there
is money that's being exchanged, but it's very much around.
You know, we were as a family, we were giving
money back, but at the same time other family, extended family, friends,
people of the church that she belonged to, we're also
giving money to try and help us. I mean, we
(08:33):
were just in a we were fortunate. We're in a
position where our parents were quite smart. They thought save
the money, fundraise over decades. But it's not like that
for every Salmon family. And so that's why when people
say for Psalm warns, we say far lovely, lovely sort
of problems or events that our frinerals are quite a
big burden because we have some cultural exchanges that happened
(08:56):
that cost a lot, not just in fine mats, but
money and food and the things.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And there's a sort of a cultural feeling that it
sort of goes around that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You h it does. It does go around. Like we reciprocate. So,
you know, family members that would come to Grammars, we
write them in a book, We write down how much
they gave, and then generally what happens is that when say,
someone from that family passes away, we would go and
reciprocate and take what we call a c which is
a gift, and they would respond with a saw, which
is a response back to us. And so depending on
(09:26):
how close your family exchanges or you are to the
person that's died, sometimes we do the saw straight away.
The exchange of gifts, which is generally a matte or
a tapa cloth, a fine matt or a tapa cloth,
it is some form of Sometimes in its money, we
will do an exchange for that a saw, which is
basically money back, but we will recall who they are
(09:48):
so that when that person passes away, we then go
reciprocate at their funeral.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Do you have an interest in
money and things like that? I mean, you know, at school,
was that sort of something that.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I think, like most Kiwi kids want to be a shopkeeper.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, yeah, I had and you had part time time job.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's funny enough. I've just done a speech on Orkanson
North Shore at the North Harbor Hockey Stadium and we
had to I had Sheddon Halbert with me, and we
stopped off at this industrial site down the road. I said, Shannon,
this is where my first real job was. It was
a catering company. And so my sister used to run
the office in a catering company, and so we got hired,
as you know, young twelve thirteen year olds to come
(10:36):
and help waiter and stuff like that. So I mean,
I've had lots of sort of mini job or you know,
part of job sort of growing up, but.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
That would have been the first time you sort of
had a few dollars in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, And I remember that this particular catering company said, look,
if you come and do two nights of this training
course with us, we will increase your wages to fourteen
dollars an hour, you know. So I remember that. But
my other job that I did was actually didn't feel
like a job. I used to coach netball. Used to
be one of the netball helpers coach netball for primary
school kids at Nepple North Harbor, which they still have
(11:07):
now during the holiday program. So it's not that money mattered.
It's just a kind of I think because I always
had an opportunity to earn money through not having to
apply for something. It was just sort of always there,
despite our wider family, you know, being probably having less money.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean was a big thing for you.
Sports was Yeah, this was a big Thingah.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, big time. I was just saying the speech like
I represented North Harbor and basketball, volleyball, netball, javelin and rugby.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
You know, but that I was busy. We're busy young kids,
and I mean, and that was one of the things
that our dad allowed us to do, was you know,
basically keeping us busy, kinkurking us active so that we
won get into trouble.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Did you? But you never because there's another step to
sort of take one of those up to the next level.
It's sort of the commitment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Did you not really think I liked I like doing
a broad range of sports. And also mean life changes
right now and I've been to university and then got pregnant.
There was a different part of my life.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you were obviously you must have been quite good
at school. I got here that you were a head
girl at Carmel College. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah? I was the co ed girl there, yep?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Is that? Like? I was a head boy at Kesh
High a long time ago. I was probably the worst
head boy at Kesh highlight that they had a terrible
system that year where they let students have some involvement
in the vote and all that's the things. So I
don't think I earned it, But did you? Did?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
We kind of had the teacher and the kids that
vote for it, so the teachers had two votes to
one for the kids. I don't know. Leadership is kind
of a thing that's run in my family. So my
sister was head girl, my brother was co heed boy
of our brother school. My oldest sister she was on
the school council. We kind of were always pretty good kids.
(12:54):
And our dad, because he didn't have much money, we
didn't have much money. He had gone to an agreement
with the school that he would pay off our school
fees and it took him about ten years afterwards to
fully pay that debt. But my dad always when him
and mum came to New Zealand, they wanted us to
have a good education. He knew that he had to
get involved with the school and he felt like it
(13:15):
was his way to give back to the school for
allowing him to pay the fees off. So Dad was
on the PTA, you know for the school fears. He'd
drive the school van and go pick up all the
veggies in the different markets, you know, farmers' markets and
stuff like that, you know, and he was on the
board of trustees. He was also the parent that when
the schools had trouble with Pacific kids, he would help
bridge that that relationship. Sure, you know, so in some
(13:40):
ways we always had a dad that was active in
the school. I think in some ways we kind of
just mirrored that service. And because we went to Catholic schools,
it's a big part around serving and social justice.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
It sounds like he was a good role model in
the sense of, you know, making it clear that leadership
was a thing you could you could do.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, he had to do, and it's one of the things.
I mean, like before I became MPs, heavily involved in
my own kids' schools. But part of the you know,
the strategy with one particular school that we moved out
of stretch statutory management was basically the number one thing
was we had to re engage with our school community.
We had to bring our parents back into school in
order to grow it and to basically feel connected. And
(14:23):
so I don't know, just kind of I think it's
just ingrained in.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Me that service. Yeah, did you have a sense at school,
at a high school of what you wanted to do
with your life at that point?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Was? Oh, yeah, I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer,
like any good sum One kid with strict parents. And
so when I actually finished school, I had a scholarship
and I went to aut and did my first year
of physiotherapy. Found it so boring, failed some papers, passed,
some papers, wasn't for me. And then I went and
(14:54):
that's what led me to insurance.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I went and worked.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
For insurance for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, so you worked, and you know, you just you
didn't go back to university straight away.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
No, No, So I basically had to get here at
the time as well. I wanted to help my dad
with the bills, so I had to cover like a loan,
some utilities. Sky there was one one thing that I
made sure that our dad had was, you know, be
able to have sky watch the sports, watch the sports.
Yet he deserved that after all those years are looking
after us, and so I actually went to I didn't
know what I wanted to do, so went to did
(15:25):
an insurance job. Started off as a cashier at the
Takipoona office of State Insurance and then progressed through there
to become a claims advisor and negotiating claim settlements. So yeah,
that was just under two Yeah, there was two years.
And that led me to basically a love of contract
law right then. You know mine.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You were examining the contracts for the insurance.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Basically figuring out what people were entitled to, what we
could negotiate if they went happy with that, working with suppliers,
basically hooking people up with one of our seises if
we needed to, or a loss adjuster. So yeah, kind
of I really liked element of it. And then when
the job moved down to Wellington, decided I didn't want
to move to Wellington at the time, ironically, so yeah, decided,
(16:08):
well what I want to be a doctor or lawyer?
Doctor wasn't going to work out. So I went to
UNI become a.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Lawyer law degree and so did you specialize you know,
contract law tech. Did you specialize in tax law? Is it?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I actually hated taxation at university because our lecturer who
was still around, and actually he presented at Finance Expenditure
Select Committee earlier this year actually, and I said, his
Socratic method just put me off taxation. However, it was
kind of you know, you learn it, you absorb it.
(16:42):
But actually I was also doing ancient history and Roman
history was one of the papers I did, and so
learnt a bit more around tax and basically the trade
offs of the overtax or your under tax and what
they can do to an empire with the Western Roman Empire.
So yeah. And then just by a serendipity meta friend
who is now a very good friend, and she who
(17:02):
worked at IOD National Office, and she encouraged me to
apply for their graduate roles and I did.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah. Yeah, And you were with ID for quite a
long time, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Just under ten years, both in a policy role, then
as a solicitor role, and then as an acting manager
for about six months before I went into the bee hive.
And then when I went into the beehive, looked after
two revenue ministers for the National Party. So Judith Judith
Collins and Michael Woodhouse and then yeah, then labor came in.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, well, I mean a couple of things has gonna
ask about. First of all, it's quite I guess you
know you're working for the public sector. But once you understand,
you know, tax law for the ID, there must be
opportunity to go and earn a lot more money, you
know in the private sector. You weren't tempted to go
(17:51):
and oh yeah I.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Was, yeah, yeah, And Finnally, the thing was in twenty
seventeen when labor came in, I was basically tossing up
the idea of going to a large firm as soon
as I'd finished in the behalf because I was I
was an independent is in that public sector of private secretary.
So I was thinking go to a firm, go work
for another big organization or at the time the minister
(18:16):
who was Stuart Nash and needed political stuff. I think
the typical me basically being solutions focused and hating frustration
and disorganization. Yeah, that's why I think in some ways
I went to the political role. Stuart Y. Yeah, it's
not in the plan to become an MP from there
at all.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. It's also I mean, I don't know about ID,
but you know, in those in the private sector that's
often quite a conservative end of the law, or I guess,
you know, text laws or tax specialists generally can be
you know, so on the right of the political spectrum
and all that sort of stuff. Is that is that
or is that unfair?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I think it's a yeah. No. I mean it's the
same with business, right you could say that business or
National Party voters. But actually that's come to me as
time progresses, you actually come to see that that's a
fallacy in itself as well. I think it's the same
with the tax community. You know, I went to a
tax conference not long after I was actually appointed the
finance spokesperson. Went to just listen, and you know, it
(19:17):
was really nice to catch up with some old friends
right from right across the private sector, and you could
I could see a generational change, a generational view difference
between the younger tax practitioners and some of the olders
old tax practitioners. So I could see that quite clearly
in the room. So I think, you know, I think
(19:38):
there are of all stripes really, but one thing that
tax practitioners absolutely want as a cohesive tax system. So
you know, there's been some bits that Labor has done
that they won't like, and there's some bits that National
have done which they won't like. But generally, most most
tax practitioners do accept the broad based low rate and
(20:00):
they do want a cohesive system.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, it's usually about I mean, I guess to be fair,
it's usually the idea that they want tax to be transparent, efficient,
certain and certain. Yeah. Yeah, all those things which can
be done in a range of different ways.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Right, It totally can. And again it depends on the
government of the day. And I think probably the reason
why I could transition quite easily from two National Party
ministers being their revenue advisor to then coming into a
Labor party is that for the majority of the tax
work program for a government is actually generally the same.
It's just the bigger ticket items where there is a
(20:34):
point of difference, but majority of it is remedials and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Sure, we've talked a bit about, you know, some pretty
stellar career progression. Probably a good time to mention that
you've got eight children. Is that great?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think that, Yeah, you've.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Been on seven days. Actually it was good.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, eight babies that kept me rounded. Our baby, Harmony
is eleven, and my oldest daughter, Kesha does just turn twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Wow. So I guess the question is how do you
manage that and a career A very supportive husband.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
A very good husband, yeah, who basically gave up his
career to look after our kids. I meant it was
his dream to walk the kids to school, and it
was my dream to become a lawyer or a doctor.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah. Were they children any twins? Triplets? Here?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
No, no one after the other. If you put my
pregnancies back to back, I was in the state of
fecundittee for six years. Yeah, so I actually, you know,
I actually saw a lot in the health system during
that that that's small, that period of nine years where
I was pregnant and you could I could see the
guideline changes from you know, for things and just being
a patient every year.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah. And I mean, I guess people must have made
these sort of jokes. But if you can manage it,
I've got three kids. If you can manage a kids,
probably you can manage New Zealand's economy.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, three economies of scales from three kids. Number one
is just mind blowing. It was the hardest number two,
you're just like, oh my gosh, what do we do
with two? You kind of have an idea I found
from number three. You're always tired, You're always changing someone's bump,
someone's always crying, someone's always hungry. You just give up
and you just realize that actually you just relax as
(22:08):
a parent and just go with the flow.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It must be a point at which the older ones
can help out a bit, is that?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, Well, actually they kind of do. Like my oldest girl,
she you know, I look back and I think, fah,
she was pretty mature for a three year old and
what she could do and things like that. I mean,
and it's great. You kind of teach them home skills
quite early. So we have this. We have this kind
of thing with our older girls. They roster her on
for food budget. So each week it's one one of
(22:37):
our daughters. Our son doesn't do it because he just
can't be bothered, but he also trains a lot for rugby.
So one daughter will have the budget for the week
for food. She will go online, she will do the
meal planned for the food for the week. She'll make
sure we have everything else with the shopping list. She
will go online. She will do the online shopping. Dad
will go pick it up from pack and save later
(22:59):
in the week. Whatever they get to keep, whatever is
left over in the food budget, well it's pretty good.
So up to one hundred dollars. It cannot be more
than that because when we realize that, that's where it
cuts off the efficiencies, and because they basically cut back
on someone else's budget going forward. But it teaches them
one how to basically plan for a large fan for
a family. Two, If they make meals that the other
(23:21):
kids don't like, then the kids protest and then they
end up having to go into their own pocket to
buy takeaways or something to top it up. And then three,
all of a sudden, I'm coming home with a bag
of shopping and it's like, well, mam, where did you
get that money from? You know, they become basically they
understand budgets. Yeah, I'm the only income owner in the house.
So I do go back to them, I say, all
(23:43):
this money is money that mum's in.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah. Yeah, So you're instilling that kind of sense of
value of money early on. I mean, I guess going back,
did you you know you must have got a good
sense of that yourself growing up. You've obviously been good
with money. Is it you think it's a sort of
an innate thing or is it.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Always be better with money? That's for sure. You know,
there's always still the temptation a new coat would be nice.
But I think it's just when you don't. You know
economics that it's very purest form is about the allocation
of resources, right, So when you're growing up in a
household where there is not much resource, you basically become
a bit more smarter with how things are done. So
(24:22):
I think that is a lesson learned very easily growing up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
We've got a few quick fire questions and one of
them is and you may have touched on it, but
maybe not, who knows. But you know, what's the poorest
you've ever been?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Eight dollars in the hand with a family of four,
and that's why every dollar counts. And I know exactly
what it's like to basically have a car going for
a Warner fitness and just praying that it doesn't need
anything fixed because you don't have much money there to
fix it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So this is in the early days of you having
four kids, having for.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Ye two kids. So while I was studying, yeah, I
was studying, my husband was working in a timber machinery factory,
and yeah, so when knew, really, when you back then,
every dollar count. It's also why I'm very strongly labor
because Helen Clark and Michael Cullen came in and did
a boost for working for family. We went from eight
(25:19):
dollars in the hand to just over.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
One hundred dollars in the It literally changed your life.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It changed our life.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually I was going to ask you know
about you know, was there a point at which you
decided you could see that you wanted to be a
politician yourself. I see that you worked for Michael Woodhouse
and Judith Collins you mentioned, and then Stuart Nash, So
there must.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have been anything. They put me off. They put me off.
But again, I'm a mom of eight, so I had
my day job right and the beehive, but actually my
nighttime job because I was a lawyer, you know, I
was the lawyer for the school, lawyer for the rugby club.
I was on the school boards, I was running sports
clubs because that's just the things that you do as
(26:00):
a parent. For me, actually, it was the death of
two board members at the local school I was on
the board. I was with that May they'd both been
working for decades to try and change things in our community.
And Pottydoer and that basically at both their deaths, almost
similar speeches, you know, saying these men were not perfect men,
but they tried their hardest. And for me, that was
(26:21):
my epiphany moment and the death of the second one
at the MIDI and Pottydoer, where I just decided becoming
a politician was a way to get change on steroids
and I.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Was in right. So that was a very specific Yeah,
it was a very specific. Yeah, it's interesting. Another quick question,
what's the most indulgent purchase you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Probably some perfume? Yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds I
mean it's it was only a few hundred dollars, but
I'm normally, you know, like for some woman, they'll know
what like c K one was some flowers, you know,
the red door that I kind of grew up with
in the nineties, but actually quite recently I supought myself
by buying a really nice bottle of perfume.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's nice. Yeah. Is there anything you still dream of,
you know, buying for yourself one day or you know,
you know, like fancy sports car or something for your family.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We have a family of ten and one hundred and
ten meters square house too.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Sorry, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It's for pure simplicity reasons. One, we love our neighborhood.
We bought the house when we actually only had three
children pregnant with number four, so we weren't expecting to
have that many. Sorry. No, we had four children at
the time, four pregnant number five. And then basically it's
quite nice to have a low mortgage and to be
(27:41):
able to use that equity.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yes, yeah, yeah. The during the election campaign, Christopher Luxen
got asked about spending on groceries, and I still think
he probably misunderstood the question, but anyway, he said he
spent sixty dollars a week on grocery. Yep, we're interested.
I'm been interested to know. With eight kids, what is
your Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
For a family of ten, it's four hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, a week, So it's a full shopping trolley, I guess, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
It is a full shopping trolley.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Can you can you keep the cupboards full or week?
Or do you have to go? No, I've got teenage
boys and it's hard to keep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, I know, I've got two teenage boys as well. No,
it's basically again the planning that the girls have to
go through is where we stock up on things. They're cheaper,
so in some respect, No, it was four fifty a
few years ago, but obviously inflation, but yeah for eighty
a week.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's still cheap.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Forty eight dollars, eight dollars per person over all week
or yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
There's some serious metal planning going on.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah. Yeah, it's this bag bowl.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
There's a well as we as record this, there's a
there's a big fifty million dollar lotto draw coming up.
Do you ever buy a lot of tickets? And do
you imagine winning lotto?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Funnily enough, I wasn't there to buy it last year
because I was the Minister of DA all right, yeah
so I was the lottery law is it? Yeah's official law.
But I basically I remember a lot of telling me
it was a bad loock of the minister that is the.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Head of two hundred dollars, which is going to be bad.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, so I do know like my I think we
do have a lot of account but it's more something
my husband would do rather than me.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, I just don't have time.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Ye, fifty million dollars or the beast to whoever. In
some ways I hope that it's not just one person
and then it drops down to the second division and
it gets spread a bit more.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, well that's something I actually do ask as well.
So I is how much you know people who do
imagine winning a lot of how much do you imagine winning?
Because fifty million could turn your life upside down and
you might not want that, right, so you might Yeah,
I mean everybody wants the mortgage.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Gave me fifty million dollars. I'm all for it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It's nice to pay the mortgage all but yeah, a
couple of big, biggest sort of questions to finish. Actually,
so maybe this goes to economics too, really, but you know,
when you look around it at social inequality and the
things I guess that you know, when I think of
what labor stands for, For example, what do you I
think the big drivers of inequality in New Zealand are
(30:02):
at the moment housing. Housing.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, it takes up most of the proportion of a
person's income. I think about when mum died, if Mum
and Dad weren't able to capitalize their family scheme benefits
through a policy of Walton Ash back in the day,
and the government hadn't provided this basically huge property development
block where you could buy cheap homes. If they didn't
have that and Dad didn't have a house, I think
(30:27):
we would have been a worse poverty when mum died.
But the fact is that we had a certainty of
a home over our heads. So I can't imagine what
it's like to basically if you know what it's like
to be with rent and eight dollars in the hand,
but I can't imagine what it'd be like when you
have a huge life shock like that where you go
to basically one very low income and mum and dad.
(30:48):
Dad was an admin clark, Mum was an age care worker,
so they weren't earning that much anyway. But yeah, housing
is the biggest is the biggest at the moment basically
determinant of social factors.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Sure, I mean, I guess well, I'm not going to
get too much specifics about what you think we could
do about that, but I mean, are the broadly when
you think about the economics, the way you look at economics,
what are the pathways for dealing with that. I mean
from you know, a career point of view, you know,
do you come at it like I guess labor is
(31:21):
traditionally center left, but you know, how strong are you
on all that side of things? Well?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I haven't really thought about what economic theory that it
would kind of I would line up with, or what
economists that would you know, pick the kind of my
thinking in particularly when it comes to housing. But I
do know that in order to build more housing, you've
got to.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Have the infrastructure, yeah you know.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
And if you don't have the infrastructure, which is something
that basically governments and councils have basically deferred for so long,
you get to a point where basically you've reached the
capacity of the limits of your city and you aren't
able to build more. So I know that it's not
really answering the question around what sort of economic theory,
but it's something that basically I believe that when the
(32:02):
market does fail, the government does have to intervene.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so the affordable water reforms, the three waters water
done well needs to be done. Whatever label you want
to put on it, whatever entity or however you want
to frame it we can't build more without that water
infrastructure being fixed.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Sure, yeah, I mean, and I'm not going to ask
you about tax changes that might fix housing because I
know labor's busy working on new text policy.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I guess I could say more generally, though, we need
to remove this incentive that the tax system provides for
keys to invest in property. You know, it is definitely
the tax system does incentivize that. So it's something that
you know, we get higher wages when we produce more things.
(32:51):
So being able to look at that through that lens
as opposed to basically, you know, a cellar in Wagerner
who's a cleaner gets every dollar of what they've earned,
but a person that basically through capital doesn't get the
capital tax. So there has to be a balance there.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Sure, I mean, are you someone who believes that tax
can be a lever for you know, behavioral change and
that kind of thing. I mean, obviously, if you know
you're talking to David Seymour or something, it's get out
of the way, lowest tax, lowest tax, and let people.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I think that fundamentally though, it comes down to that
question of and I think we are very much at
that crossroads. Does New Zealand want to be a Singapore
or do we want to be a Nordic country? You know,
and clearly because I'm center left and labor, you know,
we would want to be the Nordic country, right. But
at the same time we have to have that conversation
with qi's and if qwis don't sign up to it,
(33:41):
we're just not in government.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So for me around the taxation part, it's not meant
to incentivize behavior. You want to have a tax neutral system.
But the way the New Zealand tax system is, I'm
quite clear it does incentivize but particular behaviors.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sure, yeah, we just finally we always sort of ask
people if you would become prime minister for a day,
what you do now? I think I'm not sure if
it was it might have been Stuart Nash who said
that you thought you could be prime minister, so you
may well be wol do you have ambitions for that
(34:21):
sort of role?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
No, I've got eight children. I know if people could say,
you know, that's a really good well, you know that
makes you more qualified to be a prime minister. But
for me, I think the pressure I've seen behind the
scenes for a long time. I think the pressure that
it puts on a family, not just a partner, but
also on the children. I'm quite clear for me, that's
(34:42):
the boundary, you know. And if I could do it
in a way that my children could be safe, they
could have their privacy because they are very private people
and should they should be private people. They're all basically
almost in their teens. Why did they want I'm sharing
pictures of them on Facebook. I don't share pictures of
my children on you know, social media. That's my boundary.
So so going back to your question and what I
(35:05):
do of as Prime Minister for the day never going
to happen.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
But if we could hypothetically give you, give you control
of New Zealand to change implement some big is this
something you would like to see change most, you know,
if you know, just in terms of the thing you
think might make the most difference, if New Zealanders could
sort of change its attitude to something, you know. I'm
trying to ask this question without being too policy Yeah, yeah,
(35:31):
policy specific.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It's hard. It's a hard question, right, I mean, there
are so many things you could pick. Housing, you could
pick saving dolphins, because I know Cinda used to get
lots of letters from kids about saving the Hector's dolphin.
For me, I think it sounds so fluffy, but I
feel like we're in a situation at the moment in
our country where the loudest voice gets the loudest time,
(35:59):
the most airtime. You know. For me, I'd be like,
get off your phone's people, and go and talk to
each other. Like, go say hello to your neighbor, you know,
go share a meal with your friends. I think for me,
if it sounds so fluffy, but if I was Prime
Minister of the day, given everything that's happening at the moment,
I'd say to people, put down your phone and engage
with your families and your friends.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's a bit of communication, yeah, talking to the community, because.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
It's totally different. What people would say to you online
is not what they'd say to your face. Right, And like,
I've just come back from a speech in North Barboro
and I had a person who was quite strong around
his views on a particular thing, and it's just like,
let's go talk about this afterwards. Yeah, And they don't
come and see you afterwards. It's very much for them,
it's just an opportunity for just to yell at what
their views were. But we're better than that. Kiwis are
(36:46):
better than that.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Most debates can happen face, much better.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Than much easier, you know, because things are nuanced as
opposed to being online. So yeah, fluffy as it is,
you know, it'd be like, Okay, here's a day where
everyone puts away their phones and just enjoys being with
your family and friends and let's just remember what makes
New Zealand special.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
That's great. Well, look, I'm I'm gonna leave it there,
but thank you very much, Barbara, Barbara Edmonds, thanks for
being on Money Talks.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Thank you jud Thanks for listening to this episode of
Money Talks. If you want to get in touch, drop
me a line at Liam dot Dan at zme dot
co dot nz and you can read more from me
at inzidherld dot co dot MZED. Thanks to my producer
Ethan Sills and sound engineer Liann McDonald. Follow Money Talks
(37:33):
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, with new
episodes available every Thursday.
Hi, I'm Liam Dan, New Zealand Herald Business Editor at
Large and welcome to this episode of Money Talks. This
is a podcast about money, but we're not going to
tell you how to get rich, and we're not going
to try and pick the next interest rate move. In
this series, I'll be talking to interesting New Zealanders about
how money has shaped their lives and what they've learned
(00:27):
over the years. For today's podcast, I'm joined by Labour
MP for the Mana electorate and the party's finance spokesperson,
Barbara Edmunds Cura. Barbara, Welcome to Money.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Talks, Tyler for Lover of Them, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, hello for lover Look. You are new to the
finance portfolio. You started in February. How are you enjoying
it so far?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Enjoy is a proscriptive word.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think it's like any new job, you know, it
kind of takes you about six months to settle in.
That's kind of the barometer I've used in my previous careers.
It's taking a bit to settle in. There are bits
that I enjoy, there are some bits that I'm like,
you know, less so, but it's where you know, just
post my first budget and opposition, so lots of things
(01:14):
I've learned for next time.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Sure, well, let's let's jump back and you know, talk
a little bit about growing up and money of course,
So you know, can I ask what were your first
memories of money? Do you remember first time you might
have held money in your hand or your first time
you were aware of it around?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, we grew up with not much money because my
parents and migrant parents who came to New Zealand in
the seventies, and Mum got cancer, so she died when
I was four. So my dad gave up his job
as an Edmund Clark in the Navy in Devenport and
just went on the benefit to basically until I got
(01:52):
to college. So I don't actually have much memory of money,
if I could put it that way, obviously, because we
didn't have much, and you know, there were sometimes in
the cupboards were beer. Probably Actually one time I do
remember quite fondly. It was actually on the day we
buried mum, which is also on my fifth birthday, the
(02:12):
eighteenth of January, and we went to the dairy, so
the View Road Dairy in Glenfield, and the shopkeeper Murray
there he let me go around the around the counter
to pick whatever I wanted. Oh yeah, so money wasn't
an object for that, you know, and that's a pretty
big thing for a five year I was like, oh,
I get to go behind the shop, you know, the
(02:33):
shop counter. I get to pick whatever I want, so,
you know, I mean I picked a lead which was
an old one and a kick cat. But I mean,
I think that's probably one of my earliest memories around. Wow,
money wasn't wasn't a thing. I could pick whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's interesting. I mean, it's interesting how many people I
talked to in New Zealand, you know, pocket money or whatever.
That that corner dairy.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Corner dairy story is so real.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah yeah, but you know so obviously you know, not
much money, But did you feel the absence of money
like when you you know, as a kid relative to
other kids. I guess north Shore is you know, quite affluent.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah. Well, we were brought up in Glenfield, which was
actually one of the areas where the government at the
time had done a lot of property development, so that
it was one of the housing boom kind of areas.
Universal homes built our family home through the capitalization of
family skiing benefits. That's how my parents got their home.
I do remember like walking to school and bare feet,
but I thought every kid did that, you know, I
(03:30):
really did. I think the first time I realized, and then,
you know, obviously sometimes you're hungry. Sometimes didn't really didn't
really think about it. I think the first time I
actually did kind of realize there was a difference was
I was really close to our next door neighbor and
the daughter, the young daughter who used to baby search,
must have been about ten or nine, because I was
(03:52):
still in primary school. She had a ballet recital. It
was in town at the old main Mint Theater, and
she picked the mother and the daughter picked me up
from netball and I was soaked because of netball. But
I had no shoes either, because my netble shoes were
totally soaked. I remember going to the ballet with no
(04:12):
shoes and kind of feeling that a bit different, right,
So I not just that, And that's probably the first
time I kind of realized that we didn't quite have
everything that others had.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, I mean sometimes people feel that, you know, maybe
you know, going back a few decades, the inequalities weren't
so stark that you could sort of live a life
in New Zealand without so much money, and you know,
you didn't feel necessarily so different from the other people
around you.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Is that. Yeah, we also didn't have social media and
this access to information that's constantly telling you what you
have and what you don't have. Yeah, you know, you
don't have the social media influencers who are sharing parts
of their life, which is my perspective not totally real,
or being sponsored by someone to produce a product, you know,
to advertise the product. So I think that sort of
(04:59):
a win where we didn't have that basically, that technology
and actually back in the day where you know, your
community was the little primary school plus the hospital, plus
the place where your parents went to work, whereas now
our children are exposed to way more through technology.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, did you have a big extended family, you know, sibling.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So I'm the youngest of four because because mom passed away,
my dad is the eldest of nineteen grandpa's nineteen children.
My grandpa had two children. My mother is the youngest
of her family of ten. She was also only the
second one to pass away, so she was the baby
so at the last count, and this was the early
(05:44):
two thousands and my aunties and uncles were still having children.
I have eighty four first cousins.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's a very born family.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
It sounds sounds great. And look, you mentioned your mum
passing away when you're quite young. It that you and
uctually inherited her name? Is that?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah? So I was born Rachel Futti. That's the name
that was given to me by my parents. And I
was born so on her actual day that she was
buried like someone sort of tradition, we have a big
feed afterwards. The Mattai of her family. So her brother
who was the folke bully, the head of our family,
mother's side of the family. He basically announced then at
(06:25):
the wake, if you would say that my family was
now to refer to me as Barbara or Balipa, which
and that was my mom's name, so no more. He
sort of overstepped my dad in some respects but said
that basically, now she's passed away, I was to carry
her name.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Wow. Is that like a bit of a shock for you?
Like ll you just take it in your stride, take
it up.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I guess it didn't quite understand.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
When you go, so you don't.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Understand your mom dying, but then second of all, you
don't understand some of these big decisions that are made
for you. So some of my family still call me
Rachel and I respond, right, yeah, really easily like me
my som more name, which is Fuzzy, and I respond
to that. But yeah, it's just just happened.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah. I mean, obviously you've been in the you know,
the real hard nosed world of tax law, and I'll
get to that, but I'm just interested to know what
the approach to money in the summer and community was
like at that time. Is it sort of you know,
even now, do you see a different attitude to economics
and money in that community.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's around basically burdens being shared, So you know, it's
a very much a communal model in the way that
families will work hard. They will work you know, sometimes
two three jobs because Pacific people generally are paid much lower.
But when you need it the most, the family comes
together and donates. And so really simple example for you,
(07:49):
my parents, my father's siblings, they had been saving for
decades for the time when my grandmother would pass away.
She passed away a couple of years ago. They had
saved with I think around a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars when her funeral actually happened. It costs a family
one hundred and ten thousand dollars for her funeral. Because
we do cultural gift exchanges. The exchange of gifts, the
(08:11):
gifts that were given to our family to honor our
grandmother was about one hundred k. So there is there
is money that's being exchanged, but it's very much around.
You know, we were as a family, we were giving
money back, but at the same time other family, extended family, friends,
people of the church that she belonged to, we're also
giving money to try and help us. I mean, we
(08:33):
were just in a we were fortunate. We're in a
position where our parents were quite smart. They thought save
the money, fundraise over decades. But it's not like that
for every Salmon family. And so that's why when people
say for Psalm warns, we say far lovely, lovely sort
of problems or events that our frinerals are quite a
big burden because we have some cultural exchanges that happened
(08:56):
that cost a lot, not just in fine mats, but
money and food and the things.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And there's a sort of a cultural feeling that it
sort of goes around that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You h it does. It does go around. Like we reciprocate. So,
you know, family members that would come to Grammars, we
write them in a book, We write down how much
they gave, and then generally what happens is that when say,
someone from that family passes away, we would go and
reciprocate and take what we call a c which is
a gift, and they would respond with a saw, which
is a response back to us. And so depending on
(09:26):
how close your family exchanges or you are to the
person that's died, sometimes we do the saw straight away.
The exchange of gifts, which is generally a matte or
a tapa cloth, a fine matt or a tapa cloth,
it is some form of Sometimes in its money, we
will do an exchange for that a saw, which is
basically money back, but we will recall who they are
(09:48):
so that when that person passes away, we then go
reciprocate at their funeral.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Do you have an interest in
money and things like that? I mean, you know, at school,
was that sort of something that.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I think, like most Kiwi kids want to be a shopkeeper.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, yeah, I had and you had part time time job.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's funny enough. I've just done a speech on Orkanson
North Shore at the North Harbor Hockey Stadium and we
had to I had Sheddon Halbert with me, and we
stopped off at this industrial site down the road. I said, Shannon,
this is where my first real job was. It was
a catering company. And so my sister used to run
the office in a catering company, and so we got hired,
as you know, young twelve thirteen year olds to come
(10:36):
and help waiter and stuff like that. So I mean,
I've had lots of sort of mini job or you know,
part of job sort of growing up, but.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
That would have been the first time you sort of
had a few dollars in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, And I remember that this particular catering company said, look,
if you come and do two nights of this training
course with us, we will increase your wages to fourteen
dollars an hour, you know. So I remember that. But
my other job that I did was actually didn't feel
like a job. I used to coach netball. Used to
be one of the netball helpers coach netball for primary
school kids at Nepple North Harbor, which they still have
(11:07):
now during the holiday program. So it's not that money mattered.
It's just a kind of I think because I always
had an opportunity to earn money through not having to
apply for something. It was just sort of always there,
despite our wider family, you know, being probably having less money.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean was a big thing for you.
Sports was Yeah, this was a big Thingah.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, big time. I was just saying the speech like
I represented North Harbor and basketball, volleyball, netball, javelin and rugby.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
You know, but that I was busy. We're busy young kids,
and I mean, and that was one of the things
that our dad allowed us to do, was you know,
basically keeping us busy, kinkurking us active so that we
won get into trouble.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Did you? But you never because there's another step to
sort of take one of those up to the next level.
It's sort of the commitment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Did you not really think I liked I like doing
a broad range of sports. And also mean life changes
right now and I've been to university and then got pregnant.
There was a different part of my life.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you were obviously you must have been quite good
at school. I got here that you were a head
girl at Carmel College. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah? I was the co ed girl there, yep?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Is that? Like? I was a head boy at Kesh
High a long time ago. I was probably the worst
head boy at Kesh highlight that they had a terrible
system that year where they let students have some involvement
in the vote and all that's the things. So I
don't think I earned it, But did you? Did?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
We kind of had the teacher and the kids that
vote for it, so the teachers had two votes to
one for the kids. I don't know. Leadership is kind
of a thing that's run in my family. So my
sister was head girl, my brother was co heed boy
of our brother school. My oldest sister she was on
the school council. We kind of were always pretty good kids.
(12:54):
And our dad, because he didn't have much money, we
didn't have much money. He had gone to an agreement
with the school that he would pay off our school
fees and it took him about ten years afterwards to
fully pay that debt. But my dad always when him
and mum came to New Zealand, they wanted us to
have a good education. He knew that he had to
get involved with the school and he felt like it
(13:15):
was his way to give back to the school for
allowing him to pay the fees off. So Dad was
on the PTA, you know for the school fears. He'd
drive the school van and go pick up all the
veggies in the different markets, you know, farmers' markets and
stuff like that, you know, and he was on the
board of trustees. He was also the parent that when
the schools had trouble with Pacific kids, he would help
bridge that that relationship. Sure, you know, so in some
(13:40):
ways we always had a dad that was active in
the school. I think in some ways we kind of
just mirrored that service. And because we went to Catholic schools,
it's a big part around serving and social justice.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
It sounds like he was a good role model in
the sense of, you know, making it clear that leadership
was a thing you could you could do.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, he had to do, and it's one of the things.
I mean, like before I became MPs, heavily involved in
my own kids' schools. But part of the you know,
the strategy with one particular school that we moved out
of stretch statutory management was basically the number one thing
was we had to re engage with our school community.
We had to bring our parents back into school in
order to grow it and to basically feel connected. And
(14:23):
so I don't know, just kind of I think it's
just ingrained in.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Me that service. Yeah, did you have a sense at school,
at a high school of what you wanted to do
with your life at that point?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Was? Oh, yeah, I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer,
like any good sum One kid with strict parents. And
so when I actually finished school, I had a scholarship
and I went to aut and did my first year
of physiotherapy. Found it so boring, failed some papers, passed,
some papers, wasn't for me. And then I went and
(14:54):
that's what led me to insurance.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I went and worked.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
For insurance for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, so you worked, and you know, you just you
didn't go back to university straight away.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
No, No, So I basically had to get here at
the time as well. I wanted to help my dad
with the bills, so I had to cover like a loan,
some utilities. Sky there was one one thing that I
made sure that our dad had was, you know, be
able to have sky watch the sports, watch the sports.
Yet he deserved that after all those years are looking
after us, and so I actually went to I didn't
know what I wanted to do, so went to did
(15:25):
an insurance job. Started off as a cashier at the
Takipoona office of State Insurance and then progressed through there
to become a claims advisor and negotiating claim settlements. So yeah,
that was just under two Yeah, there was two years.
And that led me to basically a love of contract
law right then. You know mine.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You were examining the contracts for the insurance.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Basically figuring out what people were entitled to, what we
could negotiate if they went happy with that, working with suppliers,
basically hooking people up with one of our seises if
we needed to, or a loss adjuster. So yeah, kind
of I really liked element of it. And then when
the job moved down to Wellington, decided I didn't want
to move to Wellington at the time, ironically, so yeah, decided,
(16:08):
well what I want to be a doctor or lawyer?
Doctor wasn't going to work out. So I went to
UNI become a.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Lawyer law degree and so did you specialize you know,
contract law tech. Did you specialize in tax law? Is it?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I actually hated taxation at university because our lecturer who
was still around, and actually he presented at Finance Expenditure
Select Committee earlier this year actually, and I said, his
Socratic method just put me off taxation. However, it was
kind of you know, you learn it, you absorb it.
(16:42):
But actually I was also doing ancient history and Roman
history was one of the papers I did, and so
learnt a bit more around tax and basically the trade
offs of the overtax or your under tax and what
they can do to an empire with the Western Roman Empire.
So yeah. And then just by a serendipity meta friend
who is now a very good friend, and she who
(17:02):
worked at IOD National Office, and she encouraged me to
apply for their graduate roles and I did.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah. Yeah, And you were with ID for quite a
long time, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Just under ten years, both in a policy role, then
as a solicitor role, and then as an acting manager
for about six months before I went into the bee hive.
And then when I went into the beehive, looked after
two revenue ministers for the National Party. So Judith Judith
Collins and Michael Woodhouse and then yeah, then labor came in.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, well, I mean a couple of things has gonna
ask about. First of all, it's quite I guess you
know you're working for the public sector. But once you understand,
you know, tax law for the ID, there must be
opportunity to go and earn a lot more money, you
know in the private sector. You weren't tempted to go
(17:51):
and oh yeah I.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Was, yeah, yeah, And Finnally, the thing was in twenty
seventeen when labor came in, I was basically tossing up
the idea of going to a large firm as soon
as I'd finished in the behalf because I was I
was an independent is in that public sector of private secretary.
So I was thinking go to a firm, go work
for another big organization or at the time the minister
(18:16):
who was Stuart Nash and needed political stuff. I think
the typical me basically being solutions focused and hating frustration
and disorganization. Yeah, that's why I think in some ways
I went to the political role. Stuart Y. Yeah, it's
not in the plan to become an MP from there
at all.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. It's also I mean, I don't know about ID,
but you know, in those in the private sector that's
often quite a conservative end of the law, or I guess,
you know, text laws or tax specialists generally can be
you know, so on the right of the political spectrum
and all that sort of stuff. Is that is that
or is that unfair?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I think it's a yeah. No. I mean it's the
same with business, right you could say that business or
National Party voters. But actually that's come to me as
time progresses, you actually come to see that that's a
fallacy in itself as well. I think it's the same
with the tax community. You know, I went to a
tax conference not long after I was actually appointed the
finance spokesperson. Went to just listen, and you know, it
(19:17):
was really nice to catch up with some old friends
right from right across the private sector, and you could
I could see a generational change, a generational view difference
between the younger tax practitioners and some of the olders
old tax practitioners. So I could see that quite clearly
in the room. So I think, you know, I think
(19:38):
there are of all stripes really, but one thing that
tax practitioners absolutely want as a cohesive tax system. So
you know, there's been some bits that Labor has done
that they won't like, and there's some bits that National
have done which they won't like. But generally, most most
tax practitioners do accept the broad based low rate and
(20:00):
they do want a cohesive system.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, it's usually about I mean, I guess to be fair,
it's usually the idea that they want tax to be transparent, efficient,
certain and certain. Yeah. Yeah, all those things which can
be done in a range of different ways.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Right, It totally can. And again it depends on the
government of the day. And I think probably the reason
why I could transition quite easily from two National Party
ministers being their revenue advisor to then coming into a
Labor party is that for the majority of the tax
work program for a government is actually generally the same.
It's just the bigger ticket items where there is a
(20:34):
point of difference, but majority of it is remedials and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Sure, we've talked a bit about, you know, some pretty
stellar career progression. Probably a good time to mention that
you've got eight children. Is that great?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think that, Yeah, you've.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Been on seven days. Actually it was good.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, eight babies that kept me rounded. Our baby, Harmony
is eleven, and my oldest daughter, Kesha does just turn twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Wow. So I guess the question is how do you
manage that and a career A very supportive husband.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
A very good husband, yeah, who basically gave up his
career to look after our kids. I meant it was
his dream to walk the kids to school, and it
was my dream to become a lawyer or a doctor.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah. Were they children any twins? Triplets? Here?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
No, no one after the other. If you put my
pregnancies back to back, I was in the state of
fecundittee for six years. Yeah, so I actually, you know,
I actually saw a lot in the health system during
that that that's small, that period of nine years where
I was pregnant and you could I could see the
guideline changes from you know, for things and just being
a patient every year.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah. And I mean, I guess people must have made
these sort of jokes. But if you can manage it,
I've got three kids. If you can manage a kids,
probably you can manage New Zealand's economy.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, three economies of scales from three kids. Number one
is just mind blowing. It was the hardest number two,
you're just like, oh my gosh, what do we do
with two? You kind of have an idea I found
from number three. You're always tired, You're always changing someone's bump,
someone's always crying, someone's always hungry. You just give up
and you just realize that actually you just relax as
(22:08):
a parent and just go with the flow.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It must be a point at which the older ones
can help out a bit, is that?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, Well, actually they kind of do. Like my oldest girl,
she you know, I look back and I think, fah,
she was pretty mature for a three year old and
what she could do and things like that. I mean,
and it's great. You kind of teach them home skills
quite early. So we have this. We have this kind
of thing with our older girls. They roster her on
for food budget. So each week it's one one of
(22:37):
our daughters. Our son doesn't do it because he just
can't be bothered, but he also trains a lot for rugby.
So one daughter will have the budget for the week
for food. She will go online, she will do the
meal planned for the food for the week. She'll make
sure we have everything else with the shopping list. She
will go online. She will do the online shopping. Dad
will go pick it up from pack and save later
(22:59):
in the week. Whatever they get to keep, whatever is
left over in the food budget, well it's pretty good.
So up to one hundred dollars. It cannot be more
than that because when we realize that, that's where it
cuts off the efficiencies, and because they basically cut back
on someone else's budget going forward. But it teaches them
one how to basically plan for a large fan for
a family. Two, If they make meals that the other
(23:21):
kids don't like, then the kids protest and then they
end up having to go into their own pocket to
buy takeaways or something to top it up. And then three,
all of a sudden, I'm coming home with a bag
of shopping and it's like, well, mam, where did you
get that money from? You know, they become basically they
understand budgets. Yeah, I'm the only income owner in the house.
So I do go back to them, I say, all
(23:43):
this money is money that mum's in.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah. Yeah, So you're instilling that kind of sense of
value of money early on. I mean, I guess going back,
did you you know you must have got a good
sense of that yourself growing up. You've obviously been good
with money. Is it you think it's a sort of
an innate thing or is it.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Always be better with money? That's for sure. You know,
there's always still the temptation a new coat would be nice.
But I think it's just when you don't. You know
economics that it's very purest form is about the allocation
of resources, right, So when you're growing up in a
household where there is not much resource, you basically become
a bit more smarter with how things are done. So
(24:22):
I think that is a lesson learned very easily growing up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
We've got a few quick fire questions and one of
them is and you may have touched on it, but
maybe not, who knows. But you know, what's the poorest
you've ever been?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Eight dollars in the hand with a family of four,
and that's why every dollar counts. And I know exactly
what it's like to basically have a car going for
a Warner fitness and just praying that it doesn't need
anything fixed because you don't have much money there to
fix it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So this is in the early days of you having
four kids, having for.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Ye two kids. So while I was studying, yeah, I
was studying, my husband was working in a timber machinery factory,
and yeah, so when knew, really, when you back then,
every dollar count. It's also why I'm very strongly labor
because Helen Clark and Michael Cullen came in and did
a boost for working for family. We went from eight
(25:19):
dollars in the hand to just over.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
One hundred dollars in the It literally changed your life.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It changed our life.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually I was going to ask you know
about you know, was there a point at which you
decided you could see that you wanted to be a
politician yourself. I see that you worked for Michael Woodhouse
and Judith Collins you mentioned, and then Stuart Nash, So
there must.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have been anything. They put me off. They put me off.
But again, I'm a mom of eight, so I had
my day job right and the beehive, but actually my
nighttime job because I was a lawyer, you know, I
was the lawyer for the school, lawyer for the rugby club.
I was on the school boards, I was running sports
clubs because that's just the things that you do as
(26:00):
a parent. For me, actually, it was the death of
two board members at the local school I was on
the board. I was with that May they'd both been
working for decades to try and change things in our community.
And Pottydoer and that basically at both their deaths, almost
similar speeches, you know, saying these men were not perfect men,
but they tried their hardest. And for me, that was
(26:21):
my epiphany moment and the death of the second one
at the MIDI and Pottydoer, where I just decided becoming
a politician was a way to get change on steroids
and I.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Was in right. So that was a very specific Yeah,
it was a very specific. Yeah, it's interesting. Another quick question,
what's the most indulgent purchase you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Probably some perfume? Yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds I
mean it's it was only a few hundred dollars, but
I'm normally, you know, like for some woman, they'll know
what like c K one was some flowers, you know,
the red door that I kind of grew up with
in the nineties, but actually quite recently I supought myself
by buying a really nice bottle of perfume.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's nice. Yeah. Is there anything you still dream of,
you know, buying for yourself one day or you know,
you know, like fancy sports car or something for your family.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We have a family of ten and one hundred and
ten meters square house too.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Sorry, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It's for pure simplicity reasons. One, we love our neighborhood.
We bought the house when we actually only had three
children pregnant with number four, so we weren't expecting to
have that many. Sorry. No, we had four children at
the time, four pregnant number five. And then basically it's
quite nice to have a low mortgage and to be
(27:41):
able to use that equity.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yes, yeah, yeah. The during the election campaign, Christopher Luxen
got asked about spending on groceries, and I still think
he probably misunderstood the question, but anyway, he said he
spent sixty dollars a week on grocery. Yep, we're interested.
I'm been interested to know. With eight kids, what is
your Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
For a family of ten, it's four hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, a week, So it's a full shopping trolley, I guess, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
It is a full shopping trolley.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Can you can you keep the cupboards full or week?
Or do you have to go? No, I've got teenage
boys and it's hard to keep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, I know, I've got two teenage boys as well. No,
it's basically again the planning that the girls have to
go through is where we stock up on things. They're cheaper,
so in some respect, No, it was four fifty a
few years ago, but obviously inflation, but yeah for eighty
a week.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's still cheap.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Forty eight dollars, eight dollars per person over all week
or yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
There's some serious metal planning going on.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah. Yeah, it's this bag bowl.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
There's a well as we as record this, there's a
there's a big fifty million dollar lotto draw coming up.
Do you ever buy a lot of tickets? And do
you imagine winning lotto?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Funnily enough, I wasn't there to buy it last year
because I was the Minister of DA all right, yeah
so I was the lottery law is it? Yeah's official law.
But I basically I remember a lot of telling me
it was a bad loock of the minister that is the.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Head of two hundred dollars, which is going to be bad.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, so I do know like my I think we
do have a lot of account but it's more something
my husband would do rather than me.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, I just don't have time.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Ye, fifty million dollars or the beast to whoever. In
some ways I hope that it's not just one person
and then it drops down to the second division and
it gets spread a bit more.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, well that's something I actually do ask as well.
So I is how much you know people who do
imagine winning a lot of how much do you imagine winning?
Because fifty million could turn your life upside down and
you might not want that, right, so you might Yeah,
I mean everybody wants the mortgage.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Gave me fifty million dollars. I'm all for it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It's nice to pay the mortgage all but yeah, a
couple of big, biggest sort of questions to finish. Actually,
so maybe this goes to economics too, really, but you know,
when you look around it at social inequality and the
things I guess that you know, when I think of
what labor stands for, For example, what do you I
think the big drivers of inequality in New Zealand are
(30:02):
at the moment housing. Housing.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, it takes up most of the proportion of a
person's income. I think about when mum died, if Mum
and Dad weren't able to capitalize their family scheme benefits
through a policy of Walton Ash back in the day,
and the government hadn't provided this basically huge property development
block where you could buy cheap homes. If they didn't
have that and Dad didn't have a house, I think
(30:27):
we would have been a worse poverty when mum died.
But the fact is that we had a certainty of
a home over our heads. So I can't imagine what
it's like to basically if you know what it's like
to be with rent and eight dollars in the hand,
but I can't imagine what it'd be like when you
have a huge life shock like that where you go
to basically one very low income and mum and dad.
(30:48):
Dad was an admin clark, Mum was an age care worker,
so they weren't earning that much anyway. But yeah, housing
is the biggest is the biggest at the moment basically
determinant of social factors.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Sure, I mean, I guess well, I'm not going to
get too much specifics about what you think we could
do about that, but I mean, are the broadly when
you think about the economics, the way you look at economics,
what are the pathways for dealing with that. I mean
from you know, a career point of view, you know,
do you come at it like I guess labor is
(31:21):
traditionally center left, but you know, how strong are you
on all that side of things? Well?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I haven't really thought about what economic theory that it
would kind of I would line up with, or what
economists that would you know, pick the kind of my
thinking in particularly when it comes to housing. But I
do know that in order to build more housing, you've
got to.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Have the infrastructure, yeah you know.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
And if you don't have the infrastructure, which is something
that basically governments and councils have basically deferred for so long,
you get to a point where basically you've reached the
capacity of the limits of your city and you aren't
able to build more. So I know that it's not
really answering the question around what sort of economic theory,
but it's something that basically I believe that when the
(32:02):
market does fail, the government does have to intervene.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so the affordable water reforms, the three waters water
done well needs to be done. Whatever label you want
to put on it, whatever entity or however you want
to frame it we can't build more without that water
infrastructure being fixed.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Sure, yeah, I mean, and I'm not going to ask
you about tax changes that might fix housing because I
know labor's busy working on new text policy.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I guess I could say more generally, though, we need
to remove this incentive that the tax system provides for
keys to invest in property. You know, it is definitely
the tax system does incentivize that. So it's something that
you know, we get higher wages when we produce more things.
(32:51):
So being able to look at that through that lens
as opposed to basically, you know, a cellar in Wagerner
who's a cleaner gets every dollar of what they've earned,
but a person that basically through capital doesn't get the
capital tax. So there has to be a balance there.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Sure, I mean, are you someone who believes that tax
can be a lever for you know, behavioral change and
that kind of thing. I mean, obviously, if you know
you're talking to David Seymour or something, it's get out
of the way, lowest tax, lowest tax, and let people.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I think that fundamentally though, it comes down to that
question of and I think we are very much at
that crossroads. Does New Zealand want to be a Singapore
or do we want to be a Nordic country? You know,
and clearly because I'm center left and labor, you know,
we would want to be the Nordic country, right. But
at the same time we have to have that conversation
with qi's and if qwis don't sign up to it,
(33:41):
we're just not in government.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So for me around the taxation part, it's not meant
to incentivize behavior. You want to have a tax neutral system.
But the way the New Zealand tax system is, I'm
quite clear it does incentivize but particular behaviors.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sure, yeah, we just finally we always sort of ask
people if you would become prime minister for a day,
what you do now? I think I'm not sure if
it was it might have been Stuart Nash who said
that you thought you could be prime minister, so you
may well be wol do you have ambitions for that
(34:21):
sort of role?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
No, I've got eight children. I know if people could say,
you know, that's a really good well, you know that
makes you more qualified to be a prime minister. But
for me, I think the pressure I've seen behind the
scenes for a long time. I think the pressure that
it puts on a family, not just a partner, but
also on the children. I'm quite clear for me, that's
(34:42):
the boundary, you know. And if I could do it
in a way that my children could be safe, they
could have their privacy because they are very private people
and should they should be private people. They're all basically
almost in their teens. Why did they want I'm sharing
pictures of them on Facebook. I don't share pictures of
my children on you know, social media. That's my boundary.
So so going back to your question and what I
(35:05):
do of as Prime Minister for the day never going
to happen.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
But if we could hypothetically give you, give you control
of New Zealand to change implement some big is this
something you would like to see change most, you know,
if you know, just in terms of the thing you
think might make the most difference, if New Zealanders could
sort of change its attitude to something, you know. I'm
trying to ask this question without being too policy Yeah, yeah,
(35:31):
policy specific.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It's hard. It's a hard question, right, I mean, there
are so many things you could pick. Housing, you could
pick saving dolphins, because I know Cinda used to get
lots of letters from kids about saving the Hector's dolphin.
For me, I think it sounds so fluffy, but I
feel like we're in a situation at the moment in
our country where the loudest voice gets the loudest time,
(35:59):
the most airtime. You know. For me, I'd be like,
get off your phone's people, and go and talk to
each other. Like, go say hello to your neighbor, you know,
go share a meal with your friends. I think for me,
if it sounds so fluffy, but if I was Prime
Minister of the day, given everything that's happening at the moment,
I'd say to people, put down your phone and engage
with your families and your friends.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's a bit of communication, yeah, talking to the community, because.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
It's totally different. What people would say to you online
is not what they'd say to your face. Right, And like,
I've just come back from a speech in North Barboro
and I had a person who was quite strong around
his views on a particular thing, and it's just like,
let's go talk about this afterwards. Yeah, And they don't
come and see you afterwards. It's very much for them,
it's just an opportunity for just to yell at what
their views were. But we're better than that. Kiwis are
(36:46):
better than that.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Most debates can happen face, much better.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Than much easier, you know, because things are nuanced as
opposed to being online. So yeah, fluffy as it is,
you know, it'd be like, Okay, here's a day where
everyone puts away their phones and just enjoys being with
your family and friends and let's just remember what makes
New Zealand special.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
That's great. Well, look, I'm I'm gonna leave it there,
but thank you very much, Barbara, Barbara Edmonds, thanks for
being on Money Talks.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Thank you jud Thanks for listening to this episode of
Money Talks. If you want to get in touch, drop
me a line at Liam dot Dan at zme dot
co dot nz and you can read more from me
at inzidherld dot co dot MZED. Thanks to my producer
Ethan Sills and sound engineer Liann McDonald. Follow Money Talks
(37:33):
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, with new
episodes available every Thursday.
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