By Ashley Church.

The incomparable Bob Jones is dead, at 85 – leaving behind a legacy that shaped this nation for over 50 years and made Bob the original ‘influencer’ long before social media was a thing.

His humour was legendary and included such stunts as backing high profile transvestite and Nightclub owner, Carmen Rupe, for Mayor of Wellington and publishing a book outlining the achievements of the third Labour government in the 1970s, comprising 100 blank pages.

He subsequently erected a pole, in Wellington, to measure that Govts credibility.

Every few weeks he would lower it – then started digging a hole – and finally he wrote to the Mayor of a city in Spain and asked them to put up a pole there as Labours credibility had dropped so much, it had burrowed through the earth!

In 1984 he established the free market ‘New Zealand Party’ with the primary goal of ending the disastrous interventionist Govt of Rob Muldoon. He wasn’t elected but achieved 12% of the vote – enough to allow Labour to win the election and implement the much needed ‘Rogernomics’ reforms which saved our nation from bankruptcy.

His other great gift to the nation was as an author. He wrote many books – most of them devastatingly funny – but easily the most important of these was ‘Jones on Property’ – a book which birthed an industry which exists to this day and which materially changed the lives of a generation of kiwis.

Sadly I never met Bob, but he was a big part of my early life all the same because his book sparked my passion for property in the mid 80s and afforded me the opportunity to commentate on it decades later (a connection I wrote about in this article in 2022):

His frank, no nonsense, approach to life and politics was laid bare in thousands of interviews and articles throughout his lifetime and was no less sharp in his later years – although I do wonder how he viewed his own legacy toward the end of his life. I say this as someone who, as a young man, wanted to be ‘just like’ Jones and who sought to emulate his abrasive dismissal of people who he saw as being less informed than he was so as to be seen as ‘clever’. But as I got older – and particularly as my faith in Jesus Christ strengthened – I realised that, while this behaviour affords notoriety and popularity for a time, it doesn’t necessarily bring inner peace.

I don’t know what sort of relationship Bob had with God in later life. I know he was an atheist as a younger man but this may well have changed with the passing of time and the wisdom of age.

I hope so – because, one day soon, Bob will be resurrected to stand before His Maker and required to give an account of his life. And on that day he won’t be thinking about his many properties, his fame, his $2 billion+ in personal wealth or his stunning home overlooking the Wellington harbour.

The only thing he’ll be thinking about will be the choices that he made leading up to that moment.

Just like you and me.

Rest in peace Bob….