Barry Soper: Christopher Luxon vilified for his wealth and apartment sale

THREE KEY FACTS
Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent.
OPINION
The late Sir Michael Cullen let the veil slip when he glared across Parliament’s debating chamber in December 2007 and labelled the then Opposition leader Sir John Key “a rich prick”, adding “scumbag”, as presumably he thought rich people were.
As such Key should never have been the Prime Minister. Well that appears to be the feeling in this country where wealth seems something to denigrate rather than being seen as something to aspire to and celebrate, and that’s sad.
If the naysayers had their way, those holding the country’s top political office should be like Norman Kirk who left school at 12 and started painting roofs before becoming a stationary engine driver. Or Mike Moore who left school at 14 and worked as a labourer and then a printer.
The only label that was ever attached to them in terms of their achievement was successful, and that they most certainly were.
But it would appear their saving grace was that they didn’t make a great deal of money along the way.
The incumbent Prime Minister has been vilified for his wealth and more so because it’s allowed him to own seven properties. Surely if he didn’t, after earning several million bucks a year in previous chief executive roles, there would be a reason to question his financial acumen.
The fact he took a salary drop the equivalent of what many people could hope to earn in a lifetime is surely a reason for praise. What it does show is that he sees the country as more important than the cash.
But that doesn’t stop some in the media from painting him as a money-grubber. State television breathlessly told us he made $200,000 after four years by buying and recently selling his apartment opposite Parliament.
It’s been suggested skulduggery is at play with his Government paring back the brightline test to two years, where National originally set it at, rather than Labour’s extension to five. Under the latter’s rules he would have paid a hefty tax bill for the capital gain on the apartment.
Where that argument fails is that if the five-year rule was still in place, he’s got enough wealth to hold on to the apartment and rent it out for a year before selling it and avoiding the brightline test.
He sold the apartment because he belatedly moved up the road to the drafty Premier House after new carpet was laid. It replaced the carpet which had been there since the early 90s when Jim Bolger was Prime Minister and new curtains were hung with a new paint job applied.
Luxon’s fuse is becoming a little short with the all-right-for-some whingers, with him reminding those who would care to listen that both his parents left school at 16 but they did quite well. He went to university in his hometown of Christchurch, paying his own way through his studies by working part-time at McDonald’s and as a porter at the Park Royal Hotel.
It’s ironic the Cullen rich prick, John Key, also had his beginnings in Christchurch, in a state house being brought up by his Austrian-Jewish refugee, solo mother, who escaped the Holocaust. She raised them after his father died when he was 8.
He, like Luxon, made much of his fortune overseas, but came back to New Zealand because he felt he owed his country something.
It’s also ironic that the four Prime Ministers mentioned here all came from Christchurch with the earlier officeholders avoiding the “rich prick” mantra of the latter two.
And that says something about the egalitarian society we once prided ourselves on. That’s based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
We should be equal, enjoying equal rights but, unfortunately, that’s no longer the case in many spheres. Woe betide anyone though who has the wit and uses that opportunity to personally make a financial success of it.
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