‘I was just so stoked to have a job washing dishes’
You just had to work hard and hope you’d get enough hours to survive.
Corin Dann, broadcaster
“I remember just being so grateful to get a job washing dishes, at a cafe in the Arts Centre,” says broadcaster Corin Dann, recalling the tough labour market in the early 1990s.
Keeping it in the family, Money Talks host Liam Dann this week talks to his brother Corin Dann — host of RNZ’s Morning Report — about growing up in Christchurch and how the economic turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s shaped his attitudes to money and economics.
“[I was] just so stoked to have a job washing dishes. That was so sought-after . . . a job washing dishes in this busy cafe.”
It was a marked contrast to the tight job market nowadays and the choices young people have around work, he says.
“It really exploded in terms of growth at that time,” he recalls of the cafe and the hospitality business. “It was right on the cusp of the Employment Contracts Act, the very early 90s. I remember talking to people who had been washing dishes before me and they’d had all these different over-time rates and better conditions,” he said.
“When I started there was none of that. You weren’t guaranteed to get any hours. You just had to work hard and hope you’d get enough hours to survive.”
Dann, who studied political science and was also a keen surfer and lead singer in a grunge rock band, didn’t pay much attention to a professional career until his last year at university.
“I did eventually have that panic moment and went: oh man what am I going to do.”
Dann eventually found his way to a broadcasting course which put him on a path to media success. But he says money was never a driver in his thinking.
“I just never thought that far ahead. Even the whole successful career and getting on to TV and going on to do Morning Report, it was always just what was in front of me and doing a good job of that at the time.”
As well as sharing some childhood memories the Dann brothers also discuss New Zealand’s economic challenges and the politics of climate change.