Kerre Woodham: Who's got it right when it comes to work ethics?

Work ethics – where do we stand on those? Is it a generational thing? Do you continue to soldier on despite Covid changing the way we see coming to work while sick? Do you still soldier on? Do you pause and take a break if you can feel a sniffle coming on because you want to A) ensure you don't infect your colleagues and B) ensure that you've got the best possible chance of getting better by staying home? Is it a generational thing or just an individual thing?  

Gerry Brownlee, the Speaker of the House, is cracking the whip. At scrutiny week yesterday, he proposed changing Parliament's sitting hours and expressed a strong view that Parliament did not sit long enough. During the 30 weeks that Parliament meets for business, it generally sits from 2pm until 10pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with a dinner break —and this is harking back to 1953— with a dinner break from 6pm to 7.30pm. None of this snatching a thing of pre-packaged sushi and scoffing it at your desk for ten minutes. No, no, no. When the House sits, there's a dinner break from 6pm to 7.30pm, and then the House sits again. On Thursdays it sits from 2pm until 6pm.  

Governments can move motions to extend sitting hours to the following morning or they can put the House into urgency, but that doesn't happen very often. Gerry Brownlee has proposed extending Parliament's sitting hours, but he wouldn't tell the media the specifics of the proposal saying it would be unreasonable to do so while all the parties were considering it. Of course, many MPs do much more work than just sitting in the House debating proposed legislation. If they're good MPs, they'll work every day of the week. I mean our electorate MP, I see him at every community thing, every community clean up, every school fair, and that's with two small children – a new baby and a toddler. When you're doing it properly, it's a job that's tough on people and on relationships.  

And while we might like the idea of them all working longer hours and getting our money out of them, working longer hours and more days is all very well and good, but if MPs are just rehashing the same old ideas and arguing amongst themselves and point scoring and whatever, we wouldn't be getting value for money out of them, we'd just be getting more of the same. Working longer doesn't necessarily mean working better, does it? If you're the sort of jobsworths that sit there and work their hours, don't add anything, don't come up with any innovation, do something that way because it's always been done that way and we don't deviate from doing that way because that's the way it's always been done. I don't really think that you're getting value for money there. 

And on the same day that Gerry was reported as calling for MPs to work longer and harder, there was an interview on Stuff with journalist and men's health campaigner Jehan Casinader talking about Gen Z getting it right when it comes to prioritising work-life balance. He said in the interview, “We hear Gen Z described or Gen Zed described as the snowflake generation, but I think they're actually just showing the rest of us how to prioritise what's important in our lives. They have better boundaries, they're more emotionally open, they're better at articulating their needs and they're focused on how do I get my work to support my life rather than the other way around." Jehan said, “I think that's challenging for a lot of older people because they grew up with the opposite story: sacrifice your health, sacrifice your wellbeing, do whatever you need to do to provide for your family, keep your employer happy." But I do think he says that we're seeing a cultural change. 

And I have to say I am probably in that generation that turns up for work. I don't think there's anything wrong than doing whatever you need to do to provide for your family and keeping your employer happy. But then I've always had good employers, so you want to work when you've got good employers. I haven't had a crappy one. And my work's interesting, so I guess that's a bit different. Who's right, who's wrong? 

I'm all for MPs sitting longer, but it's really difficult because when you are an electorate MP particularly, although I'm sure there are some good list MPs as well who work every hour God sends, but it's a bit harder to quantify what they do. Sitting longer in the House isn't necessarily going to ensure better legislation, more innovative legislation, great ideas, bright ideas.  I think there should definitely be penalties if you don't turn up for the bare minimum. Looking at you, Te Pāti Māori.  I don't know. Who's got it right, who's got it wrong? Is it a generational thing or is it an individual thing? And should our MPs be sitting longer and more often?