The Sword of Damocles

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

I have spared you some of the dull, boring, awful and depressing details of our lovely right-wing National government who were elected last year. 

They've been f***ing useless and horrible, as expected. The environment? Eff that. The Treaty of Waitangi, eeechhhh who cares? 

They've spent their first six months in office on stupid culture war sh*t and running down social programmes. They've cut funding to child welfare, education, justice...

...And now housing. 

Today the initial paper on the "restructuring" of Kainga Ora was published. Now I'll be honest and say there is definitely fat which could be trimmed. I see it all the time. 

But these are just cuts. Plain, blunt, no thought, no strategy cuts. 

So the mood in the office was pretty funereal all day. The business analysts look to be safe, so that's Briar, Olivia and Luke. I'm probably going to be okay too, because Data Analysts are like hen's teeth*.

But Fazzy's team is going to be gutted. Also Lee-Ann's. They don't specifically know if they are going to lose their jobs yet. This is the worst thing. The need to re-apply for jobs in the new "structure" of the company. The uncertainty undoubtedly makes it even more stressful. 

(Ironically, it sounds a lot like the structure they had at KiwiWank when I started there in December 2022. But by March of 2023, they'd decided it wasn't working and were reverting back to the old way. But that's another story.)

So today was pretty bad. Not that we all haven't been through this many, MANY times before. But the Kainga Ora staff took it really hard. And I think that's because they ARE so nice and the DO care about each other, like a family, like a household. Even though the BA's were unaffected, they were depressed.

It's a strange thing about this place. I remember noting it when I very first started my first contract here in June of 2020. 

But National do not care about families or homes. Work families or other sorts of families. 

S.

* I am SO bloody lucky that my job title is Data Analyst and not Business Analyst - or as a contractor my bum would be out of the window by now.