It is sad we have an environment within American industry which almost matches that of Wall Street. Industrial leaders are all about the compensation package they receive and in order disguise that fact, it comes under the heading of stock holder value. Their remuneration is directly linked to the stock price and cutting costs. Not often, I look to my former homeland New Zealand as a beacon of commonsense and fair play, but I can recount a story of one of New Zealand’s most successful businessmen who also happens to be in the same industry as me.

Bruce Plested, founder of Mainfreight (now in the USA after taking over Target Logistics) one of Australasia’s largest transport companies began his career working for Brambles, a large Australian conglomerate. He rose to become Auckland branch manager of Brambles International. The forwarding industry in N.Z. in the seventies was continually being held to ransom by the labor unions. Bruce always settled the disputes ahead of his competition and when he was finally fired in 1978, it could be said his career in transportation should have been at an end. He had burned his bridges! Instead he partnered with former Bramble’s head storeman, Howard Smith and opened up on his own. Over the next twenty five years he swallowed up every one of his opposition to become one of the largest public companies in N.Z. Not only did he and Howard become multi-millionaires, but also many of his staff who came aboard during the eighties enjoyed huge financial reward when the company completed its IPO in 1996.

About four years ago in his annual report, as Chairman he restated his corporate objectives in order of priority; firstly staff would continue to benefit from the company ESOP, it would maintain the same levels of re-investment and above all Mainfreight would keep to its program of investing back into the local communities. His last consideration was to ensure after all this was accomplished, hopefully the company’s profits would continue to sustain a fair dividend yield for shareholders. The “Wall Street” of N.Z. and the media pilloried Bruce and told him these actions were destroying shareholder value and they would have no alternative but to place a sell recommendation on Mainfreight’s stock. Bruce’s response was the company’s prospectus upon going public in 1996 clearly stated these philosophies. Now the company’s revenue through exponential growth exceeded a $billion it was even more important not to lose those core ideals. He told those gathered at the AGM that if they did not agree, they were free to take the recommendation of their financial advisors and sell their stock.

My point in relating this story is Bruce Plested is a fearless leader. He proudly stands up for what he thinks is right. And he is right. Every major Australian or New Zealand competitor over the thirty years since he has built up his business has either folded or been swallowed up by Mainfreight. His belief in his people to always do the right thing for the company and for him to do the right thing by his people has created probably one of greatest success stories in N.Z. business. Funnily enough in spite of Bruce’s “unorthodox” attitude towards the financial world has worked to the benefit of all Mainfreight’s stockholders, as the company is still the darling of the N.Z. Stock Exchange.

America was once full of Bruce Plested’s, Lee Iococca being one of the better examples. Today, we need to see the return of leaders who will act in doing the right thing by America. It starts with bringing the plants back home and re-employing Americans. The Skilling’s, Embers, Kozlowskis, of this world who dominated the headlines because they were nothing but crooks are just the tip of the iceberg of the corporate world as I see it today. Most Fortune 500 CEO’s are self serving thieves who conduct business hiding behind a bunker. They cannot fail. If they get the boot, their golden parachute takes care of them for ten lifetimes; if they succeed, they earn more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. We need the return of true leaders to help rebuild industrial America. For starters maybe we should ask octogenarian Lee Iacocca to take over the reigns of General Motors! With former workmate Bob Lutz, (seventy seven and still Deputy Chairman of GM) the pair of them could restore Detroit back to being the industrial capital of the world!

It is very interesting for me just to listen to New Zealanders take on what is going on in the world. My former country was brilliant at breeding mediocrity where the income of a lawyer is not that much different from the mainstream and where a “she’ll be right” attitude prevails. The successive socialist governments have on the surface since the eighties promoted a “fairness for all” philosophy while at the same time embarking upon a sinister style of government, “Mother knows best and don’t ask any questions.” Unlike most western countries where the media is run like Murdoch’s London tabloid, “News of the World”, in New Zealand, journalists are as politically correct as the village Anglican vicar. Recently defeated and now retired Prime Minister Helen Clark along with most her former senior colleagues, were originally members of the sixties rabble rousing, university student dominated, Atheist, anti-Vietnam, Soviet Union sponsored Progressive Youth Movement party. Whilst still holding to their Marxist ideals they “mainstreamed” themselves by forming the Princes Street Labour Party inside the university campus. Their agenda never changed and once in power, New Zealand society was transformed.

Why do I call Clark and her band of smoked salmon socialists, hypocrites? For starters, today most gays revel in coming out, no matter what their situation is. Helen or Miss Clark as she preferred to be called was a closet poofter (Anglo for homosexual) in a sham marriage living, walking, talking and acting like a butch lesbian. In any other country, if she refused to come out, the media would have exposed her with headline grabbing, salacious stories. No, not in New Zealand; they would rather attack Prince Harry for being seen nightclubbing at the age of twenty-one with a beer in his hand and telling us the British Royal family is nothing but a bunch of useless drunks. A blessing of today’s society is the claim that differences unite us, not separate us. If Clark was doing a good job; who cares about her gender, why the cover up?

Dumb New Zealanders have sat by and allowed ridiculous laws to be enacted such as: automatic bail for re-offending murderers, seen thugs from the Polynesian gangs take over government-owned housing projects to turn them in “P” factories and allowed foreign Chinese so-called millionaire investors to fill downtown Auckland with “shoebox” (squalid little studio flats you can’t swing a cat in) high rise apartment slums and then go broke with creditors not being paid a cent just to provide cheap accommodation for Asian students. For a country which claims to be so “green” and environmentally conscious, Clark and her buddies have destroyed the landscape in the cities by adjusting laws for the greedy and entitled where there is no accountability whatsoever. Only in New Zealand would newly built leaky homes become more of an issue than what the sub-prime debacle became to America. What sort of government would stand by and watch the desecration of a country regarded by many in the outside world as paradise? A government run by social misfit hypocrites!