It’s very quiet out there this week, and not just because your usual blogger Sean has taken the week off and relieved us of his unfailingly distractive qualities. As was predictably referenced last week, the “uncertainty” that a NZ General Election every 3 years seems to cause, tied in with the dwindling number of vacancies on job boards being inversely disproportionate to the eye-watering price of onions, appears to have landed NZ business in some kind of a funk.
I detected a glimmer of good news earlier this week. I can’t ever remember hearing about the catchily-acronymed PREFU in previous election campaigns, but the idea of a sitting Government having to open up its piggy bank to opposition parties to pore over is intriguing, especially when the results appear to suggest we will be crawling back out of recession sooner than expected.
Hurrah!
But…as is the way these days, any positive chips are quickly pissed on, with this mainly being a result of all the recent migrant influx having to purchase beds and broadband, and the piggy bank in fact being stuffed with IOUs and discarded face masks rather than any actual money.
Booo!
So instead we wait, for the Election, for the New Year, for inflation to come down, for our covid-credit card to be paid back, and somehow sitting on our hands while twiddling our thumbs all at the same time. I looked back at blogs we wrote around previous General Elections to see if this democracy-induced slowdown was indeed a phenomena experienced every three years…
- October 2020 How To Apply For A Job When The Market Is F*cked – “Today, the obvious blog topic would be about the impending election. However, I realised this morning that I had no appetite for writing such a piece. Perhaps it’s the God-awful televised debates…” Not so pressing an issue (for Sean) back in 2020, when we had quite a lot more to contend with, despite this being a comparatively blissful period when NZ led the World Leaderboard in Covid Management Techniques and MIQ scandals and Delta Lockdowns were still many months away.
- September 2017 The Whiteboard’s Guide to the 2017 Election – “Like a stale recruitment firm under new and charismatic leadership, the polls indicate a resurgence from Labour, whilst according to their own data, the Greens have 112% of the vote. In this maelstrom of fake news and half-truths, there will no doubt be recruiters currently undecided on which box to tick…” Peak Sean Walters, and we should demand a follow-up post before the 2023 Election.
- September 2014…barely a mention, which could mean this was less of a thing 9 years ago, or it could also mean with both Sean and I still in our thirties, Dirty Politics was far from our realms of reference. This was, however, when our industry hosted its own political stoush, with the breakaway Chartered Human Resources Institute rising up to challenge the hegemony of HRINZ. Words were exchanged, legal action followed, and now there seems to just be the HRNZ (and no not THAT one…), so somebody got what they wanted…
Looking back at past blog posts, it did also come to my attention that it is exactly one, whole, YEAR since Sean was riffing away on the Gen 3 AOG Recruitment tender process. In fact, a year ago was Part 4 of his blogs on this topic; All of Government Part 4: MBIE Cr@p their pants.
Where does the time go? At least that worked out ok in the end….apart from the Government not hiring Contractors any more nor ever again (yeah, right).
Nice to see you again, let Sean know if you’d like an updated Whiteboard Guide to the 2023 Election soon 🫡
