Stop the woke ‘9-5’ madness

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Dear Australia,

Unlike other media organisations like ABC and News Corp, The Chaser is not funded by taxpayers. (Well, not anymore). As such, to make ends meet, we must constantly make hard-nosed business decisions, such as offshoring the writing of this weekly newsletter to underpaid Bangladeshi orphans. (আমাদের ভীতিকর কর্তারা তাদের কাস্টার্ডে কাঁদে)

Now you might think that our position as a proprietor of a business would taint the objectivity of our opinion on the issue of how workers should be treated by business. You might even argue that it would be unethical to use our influence as a media company to cravenly argue positions that are flagrantly in our own self-interest.

If you do, then you’re starting to understand why we got into the media business in the first place.

All this is to say that all this ‘only working the hours you are paid to work’ nonsense that the Federal Government is try to impose on Australia is just woke garbage.

For centuries, this great nation has been built on employees being forced to answer emails at 3am.

How do you think the Eureka got stockaded? It wasn’t by the rebels turning on their Out-Of-Office Auto Replies, was it? It was by pulling an all-nighter!

When Burke and Wills set out on their ill-fated journey into the Simpson Desert, do you think they stopped walking on the dot of 5pm each day? No! (Mind you, if they had, maybe they might have survived a bit longer).

And what about the great Don Bradman! Did he make 99.94 by rigidly following the workplace rules set down about when to take breaks? Actually, yes. Cricketers do follow strict rules around breaks. Scrape that one.

What about the Melbourne Metro Tunnel? Do you think all those contractors managed to get their kickbacks by knocking off on the dot of 5pm? No way. Some of the brown paper bags that were instrumental in building that great project would have been delivered at 10 or 11 O’Clock at night.

The new law that requires employers to follow the laws around work hours creates a complicated legal mess.

After all, work hours have always been ignored by businesses. But now the government wants to make it so that if workplaces ignore those rules they can get in trouble? If you follow that logic through, then suddenly workplaces would have to follow every law that covers workplaces. That’s completely unworkable. Where will that end?

Remember there are real victims in this story. Does your freedom from unpaid work really outweigh the cost of seeing this guy cry?

Yours,

John Delmenico
Editor of The Chaser and Yacht Owner

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