1980: Jones on Progeny

May 7, 2025

By AHNZ

The famous New Zealander, Bob Jones (1939- 2/May/2025) has just died. Businessman, writer, commentator, teacher, humorist, art collector. Only weeks ago he was writing articles and giving long radio interviews. He said he purchased books in triplicate for his 3 libraries in his houses around the world that he would flit between.

He had a long memory having observed the same political cycles and tricks over and over again. So, a clear and insightful view piercing the latest government shenanigans has been lost. Such a shame! I was counting on a few years yet but 85 is a good effort.

I remember preparing for a Young Nats meeting with Don Brash. The meetings were in the Auckland CBD office he shared then with Pansy Wong. I quickly read Jones’ book Prosperity Denied: How the Reserve Bank Harms New Zealand (1996.) By that I was fully armed and ready to take down this ex-Reserve Bank Governor but never got the chance for my showdown. There was too much else to talk about!

Jones also had interesting views on parenting, as Deborah Coddington reiterated on Newstalk ZB last week: “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.”

Along with his own many children, Bob actually considered that the unions such as these which he had arranged made him the one responsible both for the marriage and the offspring too. “Well, think of couples one has introduced, who otherwise would probably never have met, and who then went on to produce children. It follows that without the initial introductions, those particular genetically unique offspring would never have existed, thus in a sense as parental introducer, one is the true parent, responsible for instigating their existence.” Ref. NZ Herald (2014)

Jones evidently appointed himself this Parental Introducer on many occasions but by his own account Westport was his greatest social experiment.

It came about like this. His best mate, Tony Dominik, was news editor of the NZ Truth and had the chore of writing the horoscope for that (then) very popular tabloid newspaper. Jones offered to pitch in so there would be more time for their chess game and this was accepted.

Some time in the course of about 1980 Jones came out with his big match-making zodiac advice for women who wanted to find “the love of their lives.” They must go to Westport carrying a red handbag forthwith! Jones and his cohorts wanted to see if women were doing it. After all, Truth was then the country’s largest circulation newspaper according to Jones. And this horoscope was the fixation of thousands of decision-making readers. Booking a flight to visit proved impossible. They were all booked out! This was taken as evidence that women of the red handbag tribe had indeed descended upon  Buller’s burghers beseeching betrothals.

“…pertinent to my parentage proposition, I told Virgos or whatever, if they went to Westport and bowled up and down the main street carrying a red handbag, they would meet the love of their lives. Two days later, some of us, speculating about this, drew straws to see who should fly down to see if any women were marching about with red handbags.”

“Common sense says that of those hordes of red hand-bagged women, desperately ogling every bloke, some marriages or liaisons must have eventuated, and in turn, numerous offspring. So to anyone born after about 1980 to a Westport father, and a mother from elsewhere, I’m almost certainly responsible for your existence.” – Jones, NZ Herald (2014)

“One week I told all women born in August that if they went to Westport the following week and walked about carrying a red handbag, they’d meet the love of their life. A few days after it appeared, out of curiosity Tony phoned NAC, Air New Zealand’s predecessor, and tried to book a flight to Westport, as he planned to nip down there to see if women bearing red handbags were bowling about. “We can’t book you”, the receptionist cried. “We’re being inundated. There must be a huge conference there so we’re putting on extra flights”. Logic says some of those women must have scored a spouse resulting in due course, offspring who thus owe their existence to me. That troubles me as it’s reasonable to assume the union of deranged women and slavering Westportians aint likely to have produced Nobel Prize winners but instead, offspring at the axe-murderer end of the human spectrum, a classic example of unintended consequences from otherwise well-meaning gestures.” – Jones, No Punches Pulled (2019)

“In 1978 Independent Newspapers acquired the paper and in 1982 they moved it to Auckland. Here the paper went into a sharp decline. Tabloid journalism was now the norm and the paper lost the vitality that being at the centre of politics had given it.” – Papers Past

“…his first visit to Westport since the 1970s, just for a look around the town. He was dropped at one end of Palmerston Street and walked through town, before returning to his waiting jet at the airport.” – Grey Star (2020)

And least we think Bob Jones didn’t take this social experiment upon Westport seriously he did, in fact, visit himself 40 years after to see for himself what had happened. Truely, it is an informal low-budget equivalent of the famous Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study.

Jones visited Westport on 24, Feb 2020. He flew in on his private jet, stayed 90 mins for a walk up the main street, then flew right out again.

I’ve puzzled about this walk. Jet in to Westport for such a brief stop. What was this rich man behavior? Could it be what the Maoris call takahi- ‘walking the land’? As in, a big boss property guy with local interests marking some territory by physically showing up? A signal? Here might be a clue to how the hidden world of rich people operate! I’d just seen Anthony Hopkins talk about this sort of thing in Westworld. If you over-think it then Jones was giving a sort of proof-of-life that his Westport fortune was not unguarded treasure. A symbolic act of corporate hegemony? Like Captain Cook burying his bottle of coins and planting his flag. Or, like Hone Heke cutting one down! I kept this (image, left) news clipping from the Grey Star and puzzled about it for 5 years.

But, no. Turns out to be nothing quite so secretive or strange at all. I believe I’ve figured it out at last by the power of reading Bob’s articles.

It had evidently been 40 years since the Westport Experiment. Bob had come to see the spawn of the “deranged women” and “slavering Westportians” who “owed their existence” to none other than himself.

Remember, from the Jones on Progeny school of thought, Bob and his horoscope was the chief cause for those men and women coming together. More so, he says, than any will or decision on the part of the couples themselves. People getting together is not their own doing or down to fate but to someone like Bob providing the appropriate nudge. As such he, or whatever this primary mover was, is the chief parent of any child born and all their brothers and sisters too.

This, then, is why Bob came 40 years after casting his love spell. What remains to be discovered is direct evidence that any such pairings eventuated. And, how many children of the Millennial Generation ever were spawn of the Truth and red handbags?

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Image ref. Muldoon and Jones from Jones on Property (1977,) AHNZ enhanced (2025)

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