Justice without bitterness
She was a successful businesswoman who became a prominent and tireless campaigner for victims of crime, but what drives Ruth Money? Kelly Dennett reports.
It’s not often you see Ruth Money nervous. But the day after our interview on Auckland’s Ponsonby Rd, a week or two before the Christmas break when bars and eateries are a little fuller than usual at lunch time, I bump into her again at a Mt Albert gardening centre. Money is cringing, with gusto, at a story she had recounted the day before. One she had clearly started to rethink.
The story goes like this. Money and a group of good friends were dining at a Taupo¯ restaurant where Money had ordered a ‘‘thick and creamy’’ seafood chowder. The food came out and the chowder, Money says, ‘‘was definitely not thick and creamy’’. It was watery.
The story devolves into Money following the head chef back into the kitchen with the soup bowl and chastising him for serving crap chowder. In the story the chef digs his heels in and says Money is wrong, but there is a hint at the end that he realises the soup is in fact watery. The ending concludes with a satisfied Money feeling like she’d proven her point, and her friends scuttling out of the restaurant, red-faced.
It’s an analogy about her fight for justice, her refusal to let things go, initially told with relish while I, admittedly, cringed for the wait staff and chef. The next day, doubt has clearly set in and she’s been quietly telling herself off for sharing the yarn. But there’s another allegory in there: Money says what she thinks and probably that’s why she’s so well liked. What you see, is what you get. ‘‘Ruth the disruptor,’’ she calls herself.
For the prominent justice advocate, a welldeserved summer break in Auckland means more time for meditation and yoga, a spot of gardening or paddleboarding, lots of belly-laughs with friends (her words), and Christmas spent at the Auckland home she’s shared with her husband for eight years. December is a reflective time for much of the country, so what did 2019 mean to Money?
‘‘Well, I never believed my mother when she said, as you get older the years go quicker. But I do believe her now. 2019 was quick, and I think busy is a very over-rated word in our language... Do I think 2019 was any busier? No. But I feel it went quicker.’’
On the day of the seafood chowder story Money is heading to a yoga session and politely declines the offer of wine before adding ‘‘you should have one though’’. A day earlier Whakaari/White Island had erupted, and the projected death toll was grim. Despite being Auckland-based, Money’s work can take her across the country and it’s no surprise that when a contact calls asking if Money can point her in the direction of any advocates in the Whakata¯ ne region, Money is able to put her in touch with someone in Tauranga.
While the country quietened for Christmas, Money wasn’t off duty. Disaster and crime don’t break for the holidays, if anything it’s the opposite. Her years of hard work were rewarded over the New Year, when she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to victim advocacy, a field in which she has become known as one of the country’s most tireless crusaders.
Money is everywhere.
At a justice summit in Wellington making sure victims are considered in new legislation; on current affairs shows critiquing the parole system; in murder trials and inquests.
She’s also routinely called upon by journalists to comment on justice issues because she knows her stuff, she’s frequently available and doesn’t speak in lynch mob-like terms. She can be extraordinarily measured given the nature of her work must be cause for the odd ugly cry. She’s also warm, and easy to get along with.
‘‘I’m sure my family think I’m obsessed about law and order and about the injustices that happen in the legal system, but what I don’t want to ever become is this really angry and bitter person,’’ Money says. ‘‘I had a good mentor in Garth McVicar in that I didn’t want to become Garth McVicar.’’
She’s referring to the now departed Sensible Sentencing Trust founder, who in 2012 jumped at a chance to have a volunteer in Money. After Money sold her marketing business (more on this later), she wrote to the SPCA and the Sensible Sentencing Trust offering her
services on a voluntary basis. The SPCA never replied. McVicar did.
‘‘I said, ‘your website is terrible, I’m going to help you with that, if you like’. That was in February and Christie Marceau had died in November,’’ Money recalls. (Teenaged Marceau was stabbed to death by acquaintance Akshay Chand, who was on bail for a previous attack against her. The decision to bail Chand a close distance from Marceau, despite her pleas for her safety, became the subject of much scrutiny.)
‘‘I was like, ‘‘f..., how was he given bail?’’ Money says now of the moment she realised she wanted to do more.
By the time she left the trust after McVicar made a run for the Conservative Party, she was the group’s most recognisable volunteer.
Money grew up in Tai Tapu, a small rural community in Canterbury’s Port Hills, where she had a pet goat and shot river rats as a hobby. Mum was a teacher, dad, fittingly, was a court reporter for the Timaru
Herald and the New Zealand Press Association. Her parents met in Timaru after her father migrated from the UK. Money’s earliest memories are of her dad writing columns on his typewriter. ‘‘And Mum wrote recipes for the Christchurch Star.’’
The eldest of two, Money loved rules and responsibility. She attended Christchurch’s Burnside High School then obtained a Bachelor of Communications, followed by a Masters in marketing from Canterbury University for a thesis on ‘why we buy’ and materialism and, as Money says, ‘‘really bloody evil s---’’. It was published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
Afterwards she took a sales rep job at Coca-Cola, Christchurch, secretly hoping she’d make the marketing team. And she loved it there, eventually scoring that promotion and a job in Auckland.
Eventually she was approached by agency Apollo Marketing to be an account director in the male-dominated marketing world and worked on Ponsonby’s Brown St.
‘‘What I don’t want to ever become is this really angry and bitter person. I had a good mentor in Garth McVicar in that I didn’t want to become Garth McVicar.’’
Ruth Money
Bit by bit she started to buy into the business before she and her business partner sold it in 2007. The money from the sale has allowed her to support the upwards of 60 hours a week she spends helping victims and their families.
(The only other time Money seems nervous – though still smiling broadly – is when she’s asked to give a ballpark of how much her volunteer work costs her. ‘‘Ummm, yeah, I’m uncomfortable with that. It’s significant.’’ She agrees it’s not sustainable, though she’s grateful for support from Golf Warehouse.)
There’s a lot of work to do. Sometimes it’s helping survivors navigate the brutal court system: showing them how to apply for things or sitting in court with them for days or weeks. Aside from supporting the Marceaus through a weekslong coronial inquest and helping spearhead a campaign to tighten bail decisions, Money also supported the Gotingco family in its quest for answers and accountability from the Department of Corrections, after monitored offender Tony Robertson abducted, raped and killed Auckland mother Blessie Gotingco.
Eventually, Money hopes, the system will become more victim-focussed and the court process less alienating and inefficient. But ‘‘do I think that’s going to happen in my life time? No.’’ (She’s 44.)
Money is also a member of Te Uepu¯ Ha¯ pai i te Ora, the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group – a Governmentappointed group working on improving the criminal justice system.
When Money was due to meet fellow group member, JustSpeak chair Julia Whaipooti, who does a lot of work with young offenders, she says they had both been told that they were unlikely to get along given their different vantage points of the justice system. Fireworks were predicted.
Instead, Money recalls the pair bonded over a cheese platter when they both began cling-filming the leftovers to reuse.
‘‘I couldn’t deal with all these leftovers,’’ Money says. ‘‘So we started wrapping hunks of cheese in Glad Wrap and she said, ‘‘I knew you were a good b .... I think I’m better (in person) than most people’s perceptions. I think she had this preconceived idea. I love her, she is so energetic.’’
Whaipooti says the pair have been ‘‘friends ever since’’ and speaks highly of Money, calling her ‘‘the Queen’’, after Money’s investiture.
‘‘She has a very high moral work ethic and she treats people with respect and dignity whatever their background or community. She’s a beautiful woman and an endless servant,’’ Whaipooti says.
She also can’t resist adding a story about ‘‘yoga guru’’ Money stretching between flights while the group embarked on its tour of New Zealand communities. ‘‘She looks like this flash, rich
Pa¯ keha woman, and then you see her doing these moves at the airport,’’ Whaipooti laughs.
Money isn’t a stranger to some hostility in her work. At court cases she has been harangued by opposing family members, some of whom have torn at her clothing while she’s at the courthouse.
‘‘I just don’t care. I think, if I’m dealing with that, what is my family dealing with? It’s not about me,’’ Money says.
She’s so recognisable now that others have contacted her to find out what designer outfit she was wearing on the 6 o’clock news, which Money is exasperated by – she’d rather they paid attention to her message.
Privately, Ruth Money says she doesn’t often talk about her work with her family and friends, not even to offload.
‘‘I just think what people trust me with is so precious that it doesn’t need to be shared. A lot of what I do I can’t talk about so it’s really hard for people to understand what I see and do every day,’’ Money says.
‘‘There’s some really sad parts of the job and there’s a lot of struggle out there, and I think it’s really easy to bury your head and not read that article on that news app because it looks terrible... or to flick through the news channels.
‘‘You hear it all the time, ‘I don’t know how you do what you do, I can’t even read it’. If you can’t read it, if you’re not educated enough to understand what’s going on in society and you just get the party line... this stuff is only going to get better if we work collectively for a vision. I’m not sure that burying your head, as much as it helps you, not learning about the harm, I don’t know if that helps society as a whole.’’