Imagine you work for a small business. You’ve been interested in politics for a while, and have decided that this year, you’re going to throw your hat in the ring for shot at higher office. You tell your boss that you want to give it a really good shot, so you won’t be coming in and doing as much work for much of the next few months - but if you could keep paying me at the same rate, that’d be swell, thanks. And if you don’t get elected, you’d be happy to come back and work at the job again, it’s just not what you’d rather be doing.
Your boss would point you to the door, and tell you not to come back. And yet, it’s exactly what not one, but two National candidates are doing to the people of Canterbury this election.
First up, National’s new Rangitata candidate, Megan Hands. Less than a year ago, Hands was elected to Environment Canterbury, representing the urban West constituency. Now, she’s the National candidate for Rangitata, following the seedy demise of Andrew Falloon. It is unclear whether she will be forgoing her ECan remuneration while she is running for parliament. In fact, it is not even clear whether she would resign from ECan if she was elected - which seems bizarre. She would be an MP for Rangitata, and also a councillor for ECan, representing two separate constituencies. How you could claim to do both jobs in a way that best represented the people who pay you is beyond me.
Second is Banks Peninsula candidate, Catherine Chu. Not only is she an elected councillor, paid almost $110,000 by the Christchurch ratepayer, but she’s also an elected member of the Canterbury District Health Board, y’know, that health board that is being so disastrously managed that most of the senior management have quit because they want to maintain health services, rather than pursue the board’s cost-cutting agenda. For her part in this calamity, she gets paid about $26,000. That’s about $140k a year. The election campaign period is about 3 months, which means that for that period, we’re paying her about $35k to campaign for a different job than the two that she’s doing.
She’s doing plenty of work on the campaign too. This is a flyer with her street meeting schedule:

Given the number of meetings, and the amount of travel to get between them, it’s hard to imagine that she’d get anything else done on those days. It would certainly seem to contradict this statement she made about when she would be campaigning:
“Campaigning has not affected my dedication and focus to my roles as it is done during any personal spare time I get, mainly after hours.”
I don’t see how 8 full days is “mainly after hours”. Of course, street meetings are only a small part of an electorate campaign. What is perhaps of more concern to me is the workaholic attitude that underpins her political career:
Chu said she would not take a leave of absence while campaigning because she believed she could carry out both roles effectively and slept just three hours a night. “I work pretty long hours,” she told Stuff at the time. “I literally have no life. I just work all the time.”
She is campaigning to be a national representative (whilst already being a local one) and boasting about how she has literally no life. All she does is work. She only sleeps three hours a night. I don’t want to be the one who has to tell her … but that is not healthy. Not physically. Not emotionally. It certainly doesn’t give you a good grounding to be an MP. Sure, you have to work hard. But an MP has to have some sort of life. They have to interact with people from their community, to go to all sorts of meetings and fairs and schools and whatever. They have to be present. Someone who “literally has no life” is exactly the sort of person we don’t need representing us.
In recent days, National leader Judith Collins has attacked the government, calling Minister of Health a “part-time” Minister. It echoes attacks from earlier in the term, with former leader Simon Bridges calling Jacinda Ardern a “part-time” Prime Minister. While the allegations are laughable, maybe they are bringing it up because they are aware it is happening within their own ranks. Both Hands and Chu are being paid good money by the public to do a full-time job, which they are both treating as a part-time role while they campaign to be MPs. Any rational employer would tell them that such behaviour is unacceptable; as the public is their employer, here’s hoping they do exactly that in October.
Late to the party I know but good read about this otherwise mysterious councilwoman. TBH I know nothing about her, I noticed her face billboards in Christchurch a few years ago and it only mildly peaked my interest looking at an ethnically Korean young and attractive face. Not your everyday stereotypical politician.
Onto your point, she has 2 rather well paid jobs bearing a lot of responsibility. Because she works 3 / 12 months, 25% of the year, campaigning, that leaves her only Thursday and Sunday* during, to deal with jobs which most likely pile up (her inbox probably), otherwise have to work like a demon, which leaves her pulling more load than she is capable of.
* (That calendar brochure, has a big typo right? I assume the last two entries were supposed to be Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th of September? If we are going off the pamphlet, she takes Thursdays and Sundays off.)
Given the poor results of the CDHB, your observation is probably correct. However may I also offer that she is young, and seems determined, maybe she can pull of such a Herculean effort, but she would need some serious form of management and delegation, I don't know if part of her wage goes toward paying others to work for her. Your assumption being part time is probably right, and work may be getting left undone.
I'd love to see her working schedule and be able to rate her real productivity, and see how she does it. Maybe she can teach me how to manage 2 1/2 jobs at once lol!
You wrote: I don’t see how 8 full days is “mainly after hours”. When you said 8 full days, this does not mean 8 consecutive days, am I right?
Who knows what her work ethic is like, versus the amount of useful productivity and difference she makes? Is she achieving anything and making peoples lives better? Figuratively speaking, is she streamlining things, oiling the cogs, and keeping the economic machine humming along nicely? Is there any evidence what she is doing works? Or is she in charge of a mess or let things slide, or give minimal effort to what she does. Or is she burning out and setting unreal expectations for other future candidates, Has she got something to prove? What the hell is her agenda? Make heaps of money and work your ass of whiole young then give up, by age 35 to settle down with kids and a house? Lol - We can both speculate my friend..
I'm a populist. Bring on the business boss types. A Trump, Leighton Baker, <insert your favourite person of choice who matches the following> <wo>men with real world experience. Someone who got ahead as a successful business type, so at least they understand, at an instinctual level, what works, what doesn't, and how to manage people and how to delegate. Believe it not, some people *can* do the impossible and run multiple things well, at once, but again, you are probably right about, having no life, does not sound like someone who has it under control (and I note your most recent article :p)
On on to a weird tangent here, if I may -
I'm curious what you think about Benjamin Price, Dale Stephens & Duncan Webb and who would you pick among those three Christchurch Central candidates, in a matchup. Thanks!