Deborah Coddington: Former ACT MP and friend of Sir Bob Jones on his legacy, passing

A passionate author and a man with a sharp wit and unapologetically colourful personality who shaped New Zealand politics. 

Sir Bob Jones is being remembered by friends, former MPs, and current political leaders. 

The property investor, ex politician, and boxing aficionado died at his Wellington home today at 85, surrounded by family. 

Sir Bob grew up in a state house and made his riches in the world of property.  

Former Act MP and friend of his, Deborah Coddington told Heather du Plessis-Allan his actions were different from his words, which you shouldn't take too seriously. 

She says he was very generous with his money, offering a scholarship for refugees to go to university. 

Coddington says he was a realist, who always found the funny side of life. 

She describes him as very well read, clued-in about world affairs and politics, and a good writer. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afternoon, sad us this afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
So.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bob Jones, one of the characters of New Zealand business
and politics, has died at the age of eighty five.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
He died peacefully at his Wellington home, surrounded by family
after a brief illness, and one of his longtime friends
is former act MP Deborah Coddington. Who's with us now?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey, Deborah, Yeah, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'm very well? Thank you? Now, Bob, Bob actually introduced
you to your husband, didn't he He did.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
He match made us, Yes, that's right he did. Yep.
And then when it was all going well and we
decided to get married, he wanted to be the bridesmaid.
Well that was never going to happen.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
If you had let him. Do you think he would have.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm not sure. Actually he was. He could be quite reverent.
Well that's the wrong word, of course, because he always
said God was prancing around in any and now he'll
be able to find out if he ever gets up
to heaven, which I very much doubt. But he people
who watched him at our very small wedding ceremony said

(00:58):
he was. He had a beautific smile on his face,
so he was well pleased with the result.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Did you know that he was unwell in the last
few weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yes, I was told in the letter stages that he
was gravely unwell, and I was quite shocked, because, you know,
we always thought got Bob was going to live forever.
He was. He was always saying he was near death.
He said, how are you, Bob. I'm I'm ifing dying, mate,
I'm dying. You know, I'm really ill, and I'm going
to give up drinking. I'm just drinking beer and sherry

(01:28):
at the moment, you know, as if that wasn't alcohol.
But he always looked you know, he's very good looking
in his younger days. I think I met him when
I was about eighteen or nineteen, but he was very
good looking in those days. But then he you know,
he in gressingly head those bags under his eyes. Incidentally,
he would actually hate us saying it's very sad. He'd say, oh,

(01:50):
get over yourself here, you know, it's not sad. People die.
People die every day.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
He was a realist, wasn't he. And he always he
always tried to find the funny, the funny side of it,
to the point that he would actually sometimes do it himself.
Or play the pranks and stuff you once wrote about him,
Jones entertains anyone who isn't boring or pretentious. What did
you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
He once said to me that he found men more
boring than women, because I think men A lot of
men took him too seriously. You could not take what
he said too seriously. You know, he was always thrying
insults at you, wasn't he. He would say things like oh,

(02:31):
he would just he would insult me all the time,
and you just had to laugh it off because sometimes
they would sound quite cruel. I mean I was thinking.
I kept thinking of all the things he did, you know.
I mean people called him a racist. Well, you know,
his first his eldest two children a Marii and his
youngest three children are Laotian, and I didn't see him

(02:54):
discriminate against any of those. He could be quite sexist,
he would say it, would say terrible sexist things to me, like,
you know, when you're getting out of his carrier say, oh,
come on, you know women can't get out of cars.
Look to you, you just take ages to get.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Out of the women can't drive as well.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Women can't drive. No, women can't drive. But that was
just Bob. That was the way he was.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
But I mean, you know, obviously as time has gone on,
people have increasingly found him offensive because we've obviously got
more and more thin skinned. How do you think he's
going to be remembered. Will he be remembered in the
way that the young people now see him, which is
this terrible racist and all these other things. Or will
he be remembered as the big, outspoken, very clever character

(03:39):
that he was.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I think it's a pity that those people didn't know
the Bob that you and I knew, the very well
read Bob, the Bob who was enormously intelligent, and you
are a lot about world affairs, world politics, all of
that sort of thing. He was a very good writer,
a lot of them, those early books, Letters from Bob Jones,

(04:03):
that little novella he wrote, The Permit, which was very
insightful about how the government can go too far. That
court case he took all the way to the Privy
Council that he won when he was and lawfully detained
by the police when he was taking his children to
the airport, And he said he took that case because

(04:24):
he could afford to. When a lot of people who
would be detained by the police on the side of
the road and left there would not be able to
afford to do that. Bob was very generous with his money.
He did that scholarship for refugees to study at university,
which a lot of them have graduated. There are a
lot of those things that people didn't see and didn't

(04:46):
know about him. Now, if you could ignore a lot
of the yes, offensive stuff that he said and look
past that to see what was underneath. The State House
boy from nine I who who ended up, he's leaving
a legacy of you know, several billions. Think of all
the GST that he's put into the New Zealand economy.

(05:09):
He didn't become a taxi exile. He didn't go off
shore like a lot of other billionaires who I won't
name did, and then from from London or wherever they settled,
carped on about what a useless education system we have,
a useless health education system we have. Well, a lot
of Bob's GST has gone into helping our state system

(05:30):
here and a lot of people have ignored that and
just thrown darts at him. And you know, okay, they
didn't get a chance to know him, but they could
have read his books and and cut him a bit
of slack.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, so right, Debrah, thank you so much. Really appreciate
your time and be so Debrah Coddington, former act MP
and friend of Sir Bob Jones. For more from Heather
Duplassy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks that'd be
from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio