“The Communists have won.
This week the Government, with the help of the extremist Greens, passed a new law that will mean workers no longer need to respond to emails from their boss once they clock off from work.
Talk about a nation of snowflakes.
Australia wouldn’t be where it is today if these laws existed in days gone by. Our country was built on a pull-up-your-sleeves-and-pitch-in ethos that meant that when there was work to be done, you did it.
Do you think Arthur Philip chose to leave an email unread if it happened to hit his inbox at 5.01pm? Was Alfred Deakin waiting until Monday to make tweaks to the Federation presentation deck that could be just as easily actioned on Friday night?
Of course not. These men knew that important work doesn’t always fall neatly between the hours of nine and five. Lachlan Macquarie didn’t switch his phone to “Do Not Disturb’ mode on weekends, ignoring texts from the King, because he wanted to spend time with his family. When you’re called, you answer.
I’m old enough to remember a time in the 1950s when replying to a Slack message on a Sunday afternoon, or accepting a meeting invitation while watching Netflix on a Thursday night was considered normal. We didn’t complain.
Yet here we are in 2024, waving through new legislation that means you don’t have to work for your work when you’re not working. It’s madness. It won’t work.
Our grandfathers didn’t die at Gallipoli so we could disconnect from our devices after hours. They fought for a world where you could rely on a staff member to make some updates to a document at 10pm, and then ping them back ready for the sales meeting on Monday morning.
Wouldn’t they be turning in their graves now! It’s un-Australian. Another example of this woke agenda to make life fairer. God help us all”.
John Battington-Smythe is a columnist for The Shovel
