Campbell: Dutton’s IR dilemma as Libs are not happy, Jan

How to promise change without laying himself open to a scare campaign that costs him government will be one of the trickiest problems Peter Dutton must solve, writes James Campbell.

Almost a quarter of a century ago Yellow Pages released a famous TV advertisement which can be seen to have captured much about how the world of work has changed in the intervening decades.

It featured a boss, played by Deborah Kennedy, growing increasingly exasperated as it dawns on her that her business has failed to place its ad in that year’s directory and an increasingly and equally-frightened employee, played by Rhonda Doyle, as it dawns on her this is her mistake.

It ended with Kennedy shouting “Not happy, Jan!” out her window at a terrified and retreating Doyle.

The most anachronistic thing about the ad isn’t the Yellow Pages themselves, but the relationship between Jan and her boss. When Jan flees the office, the only way the boss can get at her is by shouting at her out the window.

Even if she wanted to, it wasn’t in her power to pursue her with endless emails, texts, WhatsApp messages, DMs or Zoom calls to express her displeasure.

Deborah Kennedy in the 2001 Not Happy Jan television advertisement for Yellow Pages.

The unstated assumption behind the ad is that Jan will return to the office when Jan reckons it is safe to do so.

There is also, I suspect, an unstated assumption that while Kennedy can rant and shout as much as she wants in the office, outside work it’s different. So while bosses can’t shout at you like they did back in 2000, today – thanks to our phones – there is no escaping a boss who is on the warpath. It isn’t just angry bosses, of course. The lines between home and work have become increasingly blurred. That is until now.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has a tricky problem to solve before the next election. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Kelly Barnes

Henceforth thanks to the negotiating skills of the Greens, we are apparently all to enjoy something called “the right to disconnect”.

Actually, as I learned this week, this right already exists for people who work in the public service and some major corporations, including the big banks.

It’s not hard to see why Greens would be pushing it. You can also understand why Peter Dutton’s immediate and apparently instinctive reaction was to say he will repeal it if he is elected. Was this a mistake? His opponents think so.

According to one minister, even though in his view the amendment was “a wank”, Dutton would have been better to keep quiet about it. “All he had to do was say ‘let’s see how it operates’.”

Instead, he will now face a scare campaign from the government on an amendment it wasn’t really crazy about.

It’s also just a small taste of what the Opposition is going to cop if it gets the politics wrong on workplace laws. The Liberal Party’s IR predicament is that a hatred of Australia’s industrial relations system is the almost the only thing every Liberal agrees on but almost all of them agree that it would be political suicide to meddle with it.

Tony Burke’s IR laws, with their return to pattern bargaining and attempt to force independent contractors to become employees, among other things, might almost have been designed specifically for the purpose of waking the Liberal Party from its policy torpor.

How to promise change – which the business community, as well as the party’s membership, will be demanding – without laying himself open to a scare campaign that costs him government is going to be one of – if not the – trickiest problems Mr Dutton is going to have to solve before the next election.

Recently a senior Labor official observed that the Opposition Leader appeared to be following three rules: “Keep the party united by not taking risks in the centre that could cause further fragmentation on the right; oppose everything; pursue the outer suburbs and the regions.”

Just as with the tax cuts, if he applies rule one and two to IR, it could leave him in a lot of trouble on rule three.

Originally published as Campbell: Dutton’s IR dilemma as Libs are not happy, Jan