Ultimately he isn't going to be "living" in NZ permanently any more than any Billionaire can be said to live anywhere. He has a bunker in the south island. A bond lair. If the milk supplies run out in the shop he can probably afford to get the Antanov to fly a new shop in, or he could rent 10,000 hot air balloons and fly his bond lair to another location with a woolworths.
Why does he like NZ? Because the air is clean, and he can hold mainstream anti-union cooker ideals without offending the sheep.
Contrast with Matt Demon, who genuinely seems to love Australia, comes here frequently, and one could imagine in the future being a citizen: he has tolerably well grounded reasons to be here. His mate Chris has a nice beach house at Byron and he can relax with his fam and only minor amounts of Paparazzi annoy him assuming he ventures outside the block.
Thiel needs to fly in the hoardes of government flakes who want to buy Palentir services. He has a stack of kleenex boxes for them to stand in, and a fake beard to become Howard Hughes as needed. Presumably when he makes the landing strip for the Antonov to deliver a new milk bar and petrol station, he can also construct a private monorail to the lair, and a shark-tank to dispose of the ones he doesn't like. I don't think Matt needs that, Hollywood green screen them in as needed.
TBH much though I love Oz, I think we deserved Thiel more than NZ and NZ probably deserved Matt more than us. Nicer people with the nice Kiwis and nasty people in a land absolutely packed with .. Cookers (seriously: Oz is full of them) although, now I've written that, two of the nicest cookers I know are in fact .. Kiwis. So it maybe is aligned.
"His citizenship became a minor national scandal in 2017 when the Ombudsman revealed that the billionaire had only spent 12 days in the country, less than 1% of the usual criteria."
May he stay as far away from NZ as possible.
