I’m aware of the criticism we receive for donating to National and ACT. I’m also aware of the false narrative that we lobby the government and expect something in return.
So let me be clear: we have never lobbied the government. Less than 1% of ZURU’s revenue is in New Zealand.
We donate because we care about this country’s future and believe National and ACT have the right talent and strategy to move it forward.
We grew up with that Kiwi number 8 wire mentality. Work hard figure things out and believe you can build something from nothing.
These photos show our second small factory on my parents’ dairy farm in Tokoroa, my brother winning the NZ science fair and our first factory in China. We used fibreglass matting from the Kinleith paper mill as flooring because we had no money. We sprayed weeds and milked cows on weekends to help pay the rent.
Then we moved to China and lived on US$1 a day for many years. No exaggeration. My brother spent close to a decade living in a tiny room inside our first factory. For a decade we worked almost every day from morning until late at night sacrificing pretty much every comfort to keep building.
Today, we compete globally with some of the biggest companies in the world. We employ thousands of people globally including hundreds of Kiwis, and aim to employ thousands more in New Zealand over the next five years. We will surpass NZ$10 billion in revenue next year and are investing heavily back into New Zealand.
That’s the future we want more Kiwis to have the opportunity to build. A New Zealand that rewards hard work and sacrifice backs people willing to take a chance and encourages them to compete globally and bring that success home. A country ambitious about becoming better and more prosperous.
New Zealand gave us a lot. We care deeply about its future. We expect nothing personally in return from any party. We simply want the next generation to have the opportunities we had and the chance to take them even further.
We want NZ to WIN ! build a country of makers not takers
An incredible success story.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
6 comments:
I love his last line, build makers not takers! Sadly it’s impossible for the makers to start anything these days due to the over regulation of everything from farts to building use to private property use to access to basic materials.
Thanks nick et al for not giving up on this little country riddled with just enough socialists and communists and part native racists that make the place so damn difficult to stay in.
And for all that sacrifice, grit and determination, Chloe Swarbrick wants to take Nick and others like him into a dungeon and flog them into her moral definition of useful citizens.
The joke is that it is the same dungeon she will put the country into if enough Kiwis of the same neuro-diverse mentality as her help put her in charge.
Nick Mowbray’s point is actually rather simple. Wealth did not fall from the sky. It was created through risk, work, investment, enterprise and the willingness to keep going when there was no guarantee of success.
Chloe’s answer is to tax the people who have accumulated it, tax large companies more heavily and use the proceeds to expand the things government provides.
The Greens call it ‘fairness’ - which only makes sense in a lowest common denominator way.
They say the problem isn’t the size of the economy but the rules. They propose a 2.5 per cent annual tax on net assets above $10 million, higher tax on the biggest companies, a new higher income-tax rate and a range of new public services. Their own figures say the package would raise more than $5 billion a year.
But lurking behind all this is a rather large assumption: that the people sitting in Wellington’s offices with the government’s chequebook will allocate and spend that money more effectively than the people who created it in the first place.
That is where I start looking for the snake oil.
Because government already has an impressive record of turning other people’s money into expensive lessons.
Take MBIE. Its biometric project for Immigration New Zealand was started in 2018, abandoned in 2026, delivered none of the planned capability and eventually cost taxpayers $50.7 million. MBIE’s own review found serious weaknesses in governance, assurance and decision-making.
Then look at Wellington Water. A report found pipework had been costing as much as three times what it should have, while the organisation had been warned for years about its financial controls and oversight.
And this isn’t confined to a few bungled invoices. The Royal Commission into Covid found that around half of the $70.4 billion allocated across more than 821 initiatives was not directly related to the pandemic. Some of it went to infrastructure, nature conservation and school lunches.
This is the funny bit.
The private entrepreneur is told that his accumulated wealth represents a social problem requiring more government intervention.
The government, meanwhile, can spend tens of millions on a failed IT project, discover that Wellington’s pipes are costing three times what they should, and find that roughly half of an enormous emergency spending envelope wasn’t directly related to the emergency.
And the proposed answer is apparently to give government more money. And for the carnival barker with a megaphone to run the Finance Ministry. And probably Mendez March as revenue minister.
Nick built a factory. Chloe wants the keys, the takings and a bigger budget for the people running the office next door.
Nick wants a country of makers rather than takers.
That requires capital. It requires people willing to risk their own money. It requires businesses that grow, employ people, export and reinvest.
Yet the more government treats accumulated private wealth as a pot to be raided, the more it risks making the creation and retention of that capital less attractive.
And once the state has made itself responsible for paying for an ever-growing list of promises, it needs an ever-growing supply of other people’s money to keep the machine running.
That is Chloe’s dungeon, with Marxist tapestries hanging on the walls.
Not some sinister room in a cartoon. A country where the people who make the wealth are increasingly regarded as the people who should finance the bureaucracy that distributes it.
The Mowbrays spent years building a highway out of that dungeon.
Chloe’s economic prescription risks putting the country not just in a dungeon — but in a hellhole.
The left believe there is a mythical tribe, somewhere in NZ called ‘The Rich’, and once they find them they can tax them and all our problems will be solved. Happy hunting.
Anon 958, there are indeed very rich tribes in NZ, largely created by the taxpayer. But do you have a snowflake’s chance in hell of taxing them fairly? Pull the other one!
So glad you are voting ACT Nick. I am too - without the money- but huge admiration.
Well said, Anon@9.45. And if you watched the Hosking interview with Hipkins (it's on YouTube) the other day, the latter had the audacity to say, when public funds are used there needed to be accountability. 'ACCOUNTABILITY' - he (and his Party) have absolutely no appreciation of what that word even means. Just look at the debt they incurred with gay abandon, and where was he on the Covid inquiry? And you don't even need to mention what happened to crime and education under his watch. A man with 'zero credibility and integrity' - yet fools still vote for him. Go figure?
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