Andrew Dickens: We deserve our summer break

The story that keeps getting my goat this week has been the accusation that New Zealanders take too many holidays over the Christmas-January period. 

It’s burbled along since the weekend. Business owners, economists, Simon Bridges, and talkback callers all alleging that the country closes down for a month and that’s killing our productivity. 

But there’s no proof of that and the allegations seem little better than reckons. 

Let’s remember that the rest of the Christian world are also off for Christmas-New Year, so we’re not losing competitiveness over that week.  And the northern hemisphere closes down for August while we’re working our butts off. 

Maybe some of the people moaning about the summer break have lost track of reality for most New Zealand workers.

The minimum statuary leave for most New Zealanders is 4 weeks after a year of employment. 20 precious days that week out over 12 months.  

There are four big school holiday periods that parents need to think about. 

For most New Zealanders, a big summer holiday might last until the second week of January and the longer you take over summer the longer you have to work over the rest of the year. 

Only a few people casually skive off for January. 

The successful business owners who have managers in place. The semi retired. And the superstars whose success during the year grants them privilege - I’m looking at you Mike Hosking.

And the other group are the lawyers, partly because courts close down. But while judges have nice summer holidays they’re only allowed a week in Spring during the rest of the year.

So the lawyers bugger off to their beautiful baches. 

And that’s why lawyers were the most concerned at the dropping of the new Resource Management system this week with a 6 week submission period. It means they’re going to have to work all summer.  

Like the rest of us. And that’s why they’re grumpy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you know, the story that's been getting my goat
all this week has been the accusation that New Zealanders
take too long a holiday over the Christmas January period.
And this story just keeps on burbling along. It started
on the weekend. We've got business owners and economists and
Simon Bridges and taught back callers all alleging that the
country closes down for the month and it kills our productivity.
But you know, there's absolutely no proof of that, and

(00:22):
all these allegations seem a little better than reckons. And
let's remember the rest of the Christian world are also
off for Christmas New Year, so we're not losing competitiveness
over that week, I'll we now. And of course, remember
the Northern Hemisphere closes down for August while we're here
working our butts off. Maybe some of the people moaning
about the summer break have lost track of the reality
for most New Zealand workers. For most of us, the

(00:44):
military minimum statuary leave for most New Zealanders is just
four weeks after a year of employment, twenty precious days
that we then have to eke out over twelve months.
There are four big school holiday periods. Parents need to
think about that, need to take a break. For most
New Zealanders, a big summer holiday might last until the
second week of January, and that's it. And the longer

(01:06):
you take over some of the longer you have to
work over the rest of the year. Only a very
few people casually skive off for January, the people who
have successful businesses, who have managers in place, the semi retired,
and all those superstars whose success during the year grants
them privilege and I'm looking at you, Mike Hosking and
the other group of the lawyers. Partly because the courts
closed down now. While judges have nice summer holidays, that

(01:29):
only allowed a weekened spring during the rest of the year,
so the lawyers can't work, so they bugger off to
their beautiful batches. And that's why lawyers were the most
concerned at the dropping of the new resource management system
this week, because there's a six week submission period and
that means the lawyers are going to have to work
all summer like the rest of us, and that's why

(01:51):
they're grumpy. For more from Early edition with Ryan Bridge.
Listen live to news talks. It be from five am
weekdays or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,