An old schoolboy friend came to visit recently. Malcolm used to live over the road from our place and we went to primary school together. The family left Masterton when his father was transferred to Auckland. Malcolm at the time was in the third form at Wairarapa College. I had only seen him once since then, and that was about 40 years ago when I was being shown through Auckland’s Southdown freezing works. Malcolm left the chain and approached me wearing white overalls, matching gumboots and one of these silly hats workers in some food industries are obliged to wear. I didn’t recognise him at first, but we shook hands and were only able to exchange a few words before my hosts hurried me on to the next section of that vast meat-processing plant.
So I was delighted when a few months ago he turned up on our doorstep with his charming wife and over dinner we were able to catch up over the direction our paths had taken in the intervening sixty years. One interesting aspect of Malcolm’s life was that he is a firm friend of Sir Owen Glenn. I was a little surprised given the disparity of incomes; the freezing worker and the multi-millionaire seemed like an unlikely mix.
It turns out Malcolm and Owen played hockey together at Mount Roskill Grammar and following that with the college’s old boys’ team. Owen then did the big OE to Europe and went on to make his fame and fortune establishing a freight-forwarding business. But he never forgot his old friend. Thanks to Owen’s generosity Malcolm has seen most of the world courtesy of Owen’s luxury super-yacht. Whenever Owen planned a voyage of some significance he would send Malcolm air tickets to wherever the vessel was anchored and Malcolm would join him on the various jaunts. South America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean; wherever Owen’s whim would take them.
Malcolm sent me a copy of Sir Owen’s book Making a Difference. He needn’t have; I had bought a copy the day after Malcolm left; I was so interested about what he had told me about Glenn. Autobiography’s, unlike unauthorised biographies, are always going to show the author in a good light and certainly in this book, of which I now have two copies, Sir Owen looks like the thoroughly nice person that Malcolm described him as. There are lots of photos in the book and Malcolm appears in many of them.
Glenn of course had shown huge generosity to this country which incidentally was not the country of his birth. He was born in Calcutta and his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was 12.
His altruism knows no bounds particularly when you consider that he gave an ungrateful Winston Peters $100,000 to pay legal expenses and picked up a part-ownership of the struggling Warriors Rugby League team.
And then there was the S7.5 million dollars to build the Business School premises on the campus of the Auckland University and a half a million dollar a year matching scholarship to go with it.
He has given generously to the Christchurch earthquake recovery programme, the National Aquatic Centre and a host of sporting bodies.
He set up the Glenn Family Foundation with an initial donation of $8 million to build stronger communities in South Auckland where he used to live and more importantly he has pledged $80 million to an organisation of his own making, intent on improving the lot of children and families and reversing New Zealand’s horrific child abuse and domestic violence statistics.
All this came tumbling down last week when a disputed revelation mischievously came to light disclosing that Sir Owen was charged with physically abusing a young woman, apparently a member of his family, in Hawaii in 2002. Culpable or not, Glenn took his lawyer’s advice and entered a plea of no contest and when a probationary period expired the charge was dismissed.
Violence by men against women is inexcusable, but the tone of his autobiography strongly suggests this is a man with a hard business heart, but a soft personal one.
Whether or not he was guilty as charged may never be known. However the subsequent petulant behaviour of some of those he originally selected to aid him in his desire to survey the symptoms and chart a course to reduce the incidence of New Zealand’s appalling family violence statistics, means the programme is now in jeopardy.
Sir Owen’s generosity to this country was surprising when by my reckoning he only lived here for about seven years as a teenager.
He currently resides in Australia; if only Russell Crowe was as philanthropic.
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