They say that there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
I try hard to listen to what people are saying. I talk to a lot of people. I read a lot. And every now and then I tune in to talkback. I’m often surprised by how wound up we get about things that don’t matter.
Here we are, racked with a multitude of major economic, social and even racial problems, and yet earlier this week the “collective we” ran off to talkback and became distracted by our MPs rightfully claiming their entitlement to a housing allowance for the time they spend in Wellington. It’s an entitlement. If we wish, we can stop it. But, in the overall scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.
Later in the week, we seemed to get ourselves all twisted about something the PM said “yesterday”. Admittedly I’m paraphrasing, but he said he was pleased he had a top-quality delegation of business interests represented with him in Japan. He called them an A-List. He went on to refer to a previous delegation as a C-List by comparison. That upset the commentators.
We were still talking about it 48 hours later. Should he have said it? Probably not. Does it matter? Not really. We should be more concerned about whether he and his A-List colleagues can drum up some business in Japan in order to help get us out of the economic mire we are in.
I’ve often said that we Kiwis care more about the All Blacks’ coach than we do about the state of our country. I genuinely think the All Blacks will be okay. We don’t need to worry about that. The country, on the other hand, has some problems.
We get wound up about the little things because we would like to think that we care about the behaviour of our politicians. When they are elected we have a sense of hope for what they may contribute. Currently, we perceive that they are not meeting those expectations.
It’s a reasonable thing to get exercised about. But we need to be consistent. And we need to start in the right areas.
The expectations we have are constantly set and reset by the standards of behaviour demonstrated by our elected representatives. Sadly, the recent conduct of our MPs suggests that those standards are declining.
Like anything, standards start at the top. We have expectations of how our politicians should behave, how they should dress, and what they should be focusing on. They are our leaders after all. But recently we’ve seen a wide range of MPs from a number of political parties fail to meet those expectations.
Towards the end of the last parliamentary term, the wheels started falling off the Labour Government and a number of their MPs were caught out acting inappropriately. Since the new parliamentary term began, the Greens have been a one-party headline machine, with repeated failures on the behaviour scale. A National MP was outed for failing to declare donations appropriately. To all of those involved in these indiscretions I would say the following. “You now hold office in our national Parliament. Such behaviour is not good enough.”
You see, the more we see inappropriate behaviour, the more desensitised we become to it. Pretty soon, we start accepting it.
A few years back, male MPs were seldom seen in anything other than a suit and tie. We have to accept that fashion settings have changed. But we should still expect our MPs to be presented appropriately. Even in my life, there is still a place every now and then for a suit and tie. And there are certain parliamentary traditions that should still require MPs to be dressed in their “number ones”.
Sadly, such disciplines have gone. Late last year, we even saw some MP’s turn up in casual attire – some would say fancy dress – for that most traditional of settings, the swearing-in of Parliament. We need to be better than that. That particular event was also marred by the behaviour of some MPs that day.
Next time around we won’t expect as much. As expectations decline, the behaviour is bound to follow. And so the decline will continue.
The decline of standards is a slippery slope. I used to wear a suit and tie every day. Many of the people in the business I led wore T-shirts. I was often asked why I wore a tie. My answer was simple. If I dressed down, the team might turn up in singlets! In short the standards are set by the leaders. And those standards are reflected in the work that follows.
When presentation standards decline, it’s only natural for our expectations around performance standards to follow. If our All Blacks turned up as a scruffy rabble, arriving late and saying whatever they wanted, perhaps even being disrespectful to the opposition, we wouldn’t expect much of them in terms of performance.
In the government sense, our performance expectations extend to what we are prepared to accept in our education or healthcare frameworks. Then, we have hopes for poverty or housing or transport. At present, just like the behaviour of our MPs, those standards are in decline.
As members of our society, we should not accept the delivery of services or solutions that don’t meet acceptable standards. We should only accept outcomes that meet our expectations in terms of timeliness, budgetary performance and quality.
And yet, we see brand new roads crumbling within months of being laid. We have school teachers who don’t know what times tables are, and we have council properties where the grass isn’t cut. Police cars are allowed to go out in the morning without being washed and public bus services likewise. We hear of hospitals on the West Coast that are closed on weekends because of staffing, and a brand new hospital on the North Shore that hasn’t opened yet because of budget shortfalls. So why build it if we’re not going to run it?
The point is this. Standards are not just about how we dress or how we communicate or how clean our car is. Standards extend to include what we are prepared to accept from others. Among those others, are our parliamentarians. And right now they’re not exactly shining, are they. All the tit for tat, the name-calling and the racial slurs do not represent standards of leadership we should expect. And in parallel with that, we are not seeing the performance we might expect either.
If standards are failing around us, we will all fall into the same trap. We will reset our own expectations of others to a level where we are less likely to be disappointed. Thereafter our own behavioural standards will decline. After all, if no one else bothers, why should I? It’s a recipe for a country in decline.
The standards we are prepared to accept are the backbone of our society. We should expect decency, competence and people doing the best that they can. While they are at it, we should expect individuals to be treated with respect and integrity at every turn.
It’s not just our politicians who need to check their conduct. Our own behaviours should reflect our expectations of others. If someone gives us an opportunity we should give it our best shot. If the boss is flexible enough to pay us while we work from home, the least we can do is give him or her an honest day’s effort. If our parents or our employer are supporting us to earn an education, we should work hard and make the most of that opportunity.
As noted above, it starts at the top. That’s where the headlines are. That’s where the expectations are set. And frankly, that’s where the stakes are so high that we need the very best of outcomes from every working hour.
The recent behaviour of some of our politicians has me thinking about whether our system of government is no longer appropriate. The proliferation of list MPs means many of these people are not accountable to an electorate or, in fact, to any community other than the party they represent. As a result, the MMP system is soft on consequences and poor behaviours are seldom punished. Even if an individual falls over completely they are replaced. By the party, not the people. A new face slots in and the system is undermined just that little bit more.
And so as one of our members of Parliament sits accused of inappropriate behaviour, and remains absent from Parliament on full pay, while her party’s investigation into that behaviour enters its 100th day, the once solid credibility of our system of government slips away a little further as our decline in standards continues, and our capacity for accountability is lost.
We must be hopeful that one day, we will once again have public leaders that we can look up to. People who come to public life and earn the admiration of their public through their actions and achievements. People who give us confidence that their night in Wellington is critical to the needs of their job, and thus worth us paying for.
To achieve that, they should all focus their attention on the things that really matter. And so should we.
Only then can we celebrate those who meet our expectations.
This article first appeared in The New Zealand Herald, 22 June, 2024
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee.