Did you hear? Prime Minister Scott Morrison went on holiday to Hawaii while Australia burned. He eventually cut his holiday short, but for most that was too little too late.
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On the surface, this seems like a fair criticism: you're the leader of the country, you should at least be in the country during times of national crisis. And preferably doing some leading as well.
If you scratch beneath the surface though, the Prime Minister's actions seem quite reasonable. Politicians, especially ministers, work around 45 weeks a year. And not 40-hour weeks, either - 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week. It's no wonder they only return from holidays when a national crisis becomes a national crisis, because those holidays are the only downtime they get. They don't get to make it up in February. And this is quadruple the case for politicians with kids, like the Prime Minister. Being away that often puts him somewhere between Divorced Dad and Absent Father. No amount of video calls at bedtime will change that. If my Christmas holidays were the only time I got to properly spend with my children, I'd be pretty bloody recalcitrant about cutting my holidays short too.
In fact, the working conditions of politicians are so bad that some politicians simply give up altogether. Tim Hammond is the case in point. Mr Hammond was a barrister - a profession often considered the antithesis of family-friendly - before being elected to Parliament at the 2016 election. Despite Mr Hammond's family-unfriendly professional background, he barely made it halfway through his first term as a federal politician before quitting, purely due to the impact it had on his family.
We end up in a classic catch-22 where all our politicians are insane, because if they weren't insane, they wouldn't be politicians.
Even more recently, Richard Di Natale came down with an acute case of sanity (his replacement, Adam Bandt, not so much) and resigned from Parliament so as to spend time with his children.
One feels somewhat sympathetic to parliamentarians and the Prime Minister at this point; ready to tone down the criticism, at least. Until you ask who sets politicians' working conditions.
And the answer is: politicians!
To begin with, that's a bit weird. Employees don't set their own employment conditions. Can you imagine if they did? Excessive salaries, great benefits, allowances for everything, low productivity... By what must be pure coincidence, that's the same for politicians! Their salaries start at about $211,000 (three times the median wage, five times the minimum wage, and fifteen times Newstart) and go up to about $550,000.
They get 15.4 per cent super (ordinarily 9.5 per cent), and in practice unlimited sick and parental leave. In addition to their base salary, they get $288 every night away from their electorate "home" (which can be most nights), their family's travel to where they are working is paid for, and much more besides. And they often do not have enough potential laws to debate (i.e. they are not doing their actual job).
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If you ask a politician why this is, they have lots of answers. It's the 24/7 news cycle. It's that politics is too competitive and so if you stop working you get dismembered. It's the "compulsory" and never-ending social functions. It's that you're public property and the public demands 24/7 access. On and on it goes.
The problem with all these answers is they assume politicians are powerless to change the system. But politicians are the system. Parliament does have the power. For example, there is no legal barrier to Parliament passing a law that says: "No parliamentarian shall conduct parliamentary business before 6am or after 8pm on any day, and no parliamentary business shall be conducted on a Sunday."
The barriers to such a law are political. But if it passed with bipartisan support, there would be no political risk, as any politician not re-elected would be replaced with a new politician that followed the law anyway. The public and the press would have to lump it, and politicians would get sensible hours.
Admittedly such a law is an extreme example. Many smaller steps could be taken - politicians choose to answer constituent emails on a Sunday afternoon. They choose to do doorstops at stupid o'clock. They choose to go to functions ending at 10pm straight from "finishing" in their office at 7pm. They choose to feed the 24/7 news cycle. If there was bipartisan support to choose not to do some or all of those things, then those things wouldn't happen.
Besides, after the public had finished complaining about this shady and self-interested manoeuvre by politicians to work less for the same pay, we'd get over it. Moreover, we would probably like it. We don't actually want our politicians to be divorced alcoholics who work insane hours and never see their children. Plus, when politicians self-inflict those conditions, it makes it OK for ordinary employers to inflict it on their employees. Further, we end up in a classic catch-22 where all our politicians are insane, because if they weren't insane, they wouldn't be politicians (and so we miss out on being represented by the sane people we do want, such as Mr Hammond).
So we end up back where we started: it was inappropriate for the Prime Minister to stay on holidays overseas while the nation burned. He doesn't deserve too much sympathy for being torn between his family and his job, because such a choice only exists within the broken system he willingly perpetuates.
Politicians are pretty good at self-interest. Sensible working hours are in their individual and collective self-interest. It's about time they improved their working hours together, for the benefit of us all.
- Christopher Budd is an ordinary guy living in Canberra. This includes full-time work, part-time study (law), going to church and parenting his three children.
