Upfront
Lloyd Morrison
by Jane Clifton
Jane Clifton talks to Lloyfd Morrison about whether the dangers of leading public debate mean he should flag it.
No sooner has he launched the change-the-flag debate, elbowing headline, talkback and smoko-room time out of the Winston’s dinner debate, and the Don Brash speech debate, than Lloyd Morrison wants to hand it over.
The Wellington businessman is on the lookout for a game individual – preferably with a high public profile – to make a serious ongoing project of fostering more debate. There’s already a website and funding, and the speaking invitations are rolling in.
Morrison doesn’t shrink from the suggestion that a latter-day Peter Shirtcliffe is what’s needed. On the contrary, he admires what Shirtcliffe did in marshalling the forces opposing MMP, and he wants someone with as much guts and rigour to be the flag flagship. “I think we should be very happy that we have MMP, and we should be even happier because of what Peter did to ensure it was debated thoroughly.”
But having propelled, from a standing start and an extremely limited public profile, the long-simmering debate about the flag to the front pages all by himself, is he mad? Why not continue to run it himself, and build on his budding reputation as a patriot? He has already garnered pleasing labels like “the capitalist with the social conscience”. After his passionate recent advocacy against the Air New Zealand-Qantas merger proposal, and the merger of the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges, the Flag Man label would sit nicely.
Morrison is visibly untempted, saying there’s too big a danger of the debate being tainted if someone like him – meaning a very rich businessman – stays at its helm. “It doesn’t take very long before people who have difficulty grappling with the issue will start to shoot the messenger. I found that very much with the Qantas-Air New Zealand issue, where people said, ‘The guy raising these issues has got an agenda’ – as if that was a sufficient response to the issues being raised.”
To those who might insist there must be an overarching personal or professional agenda here – for that’s three distinctly nationalistic salvoes in a row – Morrison smiles a weak-tea sort of smile.
“That’s what we are as New Zealanders – we’re very cynical. We don’t like anything that involves profile, so naturally we tend to attack whoever’s involved. That’s why, to be effective in this case, it’s necessary to ensure that [my] profile is only sufficient till the debate is running in its own right. All I’m doing is being a catalyst, because I’m in the fortunate position of being able to be somewhat catalytic. I don’t regard it as a personal crusade. It’s more a matter of being able to stimulate debate.”
Morrison certainly doesn’t fit the template of flamboyant, opinion-ready business person to which New Zealanders have become accustomed. He is earnest and undemonstrative in his public manner, and till his transtasman intercessions last year, it’s fair to say no one outside business and the in-the-know arts crowd had ever heard of him. He says he waded into the airline and stock exchange issues because he believed he had experience and knowledge to offer, not because he had decided to forge a public profile. He doesn’t particularly want one, except in so much as it serves the fostering of debate. His energies, along with upwards of $20,000, are now going toward finding an upstanding New Zealander to take the debate on.
Inevitably, Morrison’s flaggery has set some eyes rolling over what could look like just another rich man with an expensive public hobby – like Alan Gibbs with his sea-going car, Michael Fay with the America’s Cup, or Robert Jones with his satirical novels. Morrison says he knows the riff, but can only repeat that he’s genuine, despite also being rich. He says he hopes New Zealanders will one day overcome their innate suspicion of the wealthy.
“If people look at it closely, they’ll recognise that skills are very portable these days, and as a business person you are making a little bit of a sacrifice to stay in New Zealand. It’s incorrect to think that it’s all lifestyle [why we stay], because people who have travelled widely know that the idea that New Zealand has a lifestyle that can’t be replicated is incorrect. That might have been the case 30 years ago, but it’s not today. Wealthy people these days can transfer their earning power [overseas], earn more and create a better lifestyle, potentially, than in New Zealand. I think it’s incorrect to think New Zealanders who have made money and stay here have a different view about the country or [weaker] allegiances than any other New Zealander. I think we’re maturing about these issues more. Internationalisation exposes us to different sources of information and inspiration. We can’t help but have a broader-based understanding of opportunities.”
Wellington-based Morrison is an extremely successful merchant banker and patron of the arts, executive director of Morrison and Co Infrastructure Management, whose Infratil vehicle is active in big-ticket projects such as airports, and is promoting a second airport for Auckland. But that’s another story.
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