The Chaser Report - Dutton's Working From Home Goal

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Peter Dutton has backflipped on a major working from home policy in the middle of his campaign, which Charles and Dom think could be disastrous. Not for the election, but for their office productivity. How are they supposed to get anything done now when they aren't forced into the office?See A Rational Fear LIVE:https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/a-rational-fear/Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Now, tomorrow on the podcast, we've got the Chaser editor, John Del Menico, chatting about everything that's happening in the election. And if you want to catch John live, he's at the Malt House Theatre this Wednesday at 645 as part of the Irrational Fear lineup. So if you're wanting tickets to see John and Dan Illick and Alice Fraser and a whole heap of fantastic performers, get down to the Malt House Theatre in Melbourne, that's at 6.45 on Wednesday and you'll get to see John live and also you'll get to hear John tomorrow. Before we get under it though, I should warn people that I think Charles is also coming to Melbourne to do Wankanomics. Oh yeah, that's right. I mean, go to John by all means, but yeah.

Yeah, I think we haven't heard good things about Wankanomics. We've sold out most of our show so don't really need to plug it. Okay. But there are actually tickets left for today and tomorrow, but then it's sold out the rest of this week. I think there are, there's lots of tickets available on Good Friday. This is making on miserable. We're playing on Good Friday. How sacrilegious.

Okay. I hope you die as much as Jesus did. Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigall Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles Peter Dutton has made a mistake. I'm going to call it. Oh, okay.

He's made a mistake. And his mistake was when he fronted the media a short while ago and said he made a mistake and then he got it wrong. Never admit your faults. Never admit your fault. So this is all to do with the working from home policy, Charles. And we are currently recording this podcast from your home. So I've commuted to work, kind of, you're working from home.

Yes. And given that you've just brought out a piece of sardines on toast in our podcasting space, I think we can all agree. working from home is a nightmare and Peter Dutton was right before he was wrong. Before you go on, can I just check that you've closed the door? Because I don't want any of the lizards to escape. I have it closed the front door. Hang on a sec.

It's just a two-seated. Did they escape? And just make sure you don't tread on any of the lizards either. And don't worry about, just ignore the mess, okay? Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's go to that. I mean, whether the lizards eat the sardines or the sardines eat the lizards, I don't care just as long as there's fewer things here.

Yes, so it's all a bit of a disaster for Peter Dutton. But don't you think this is just, like, if you haven't 10 days into the election. Let's just put it. Let's just re-cut the election. So what this is about was Peter Dutton had announced a plan to sack 41,000 public service

employees. Yes, good. And he needed a waste. He needed to do that to make his budget balance, basically. Yes. Let's get, and get rid of the useless bureaucrats to look after the hospitals, schools and roads. And fund the fuel exercise. That's how he's going to do that.

And then the ones who remained were going to have to work for the office. They'll be frontline workers. Five days a week in the office. Now, there are a couple of issues with this. The first problem was that despite saying, well, they're all in Canberra and painting as an attack on Canberra, apparently most of them weren't in Canberra, meaning that a lot of them would have been in, I don't know, electorates, Peter Dutton might want to win in this campaign.

But in fact, I would go so far as to say, is the federal government's reach is large enough that there is likely to be public servants in every electorate. But basically when you don't know which 41,000 are going to get sacked. So it could be any of them in the current workforce. Now, this 41,000 admittedly, is the number that Albanesey added since taking government. But then Albanese would say, but then we stop using expensive consultants. So I think the 41,000 public servants cost about the same as 100 consultants. Yes, basically.

So that's the first one. And if you look at lost tax revenue from leaked secrets from consultants, probably actually just made money sacking the consultant. Whereas presumably the 41,000 would have had no access to sensitive information because they're all lovely. Anyway, so that's the first problem. The second problem is that Anthony Albanese

was then able to say, Peter Dutton wants to stop you working from home. Now, that wasn't true. It was only the public servants who were going to have to work in the office. But the problem is, Charles, this is an Australian election. Yeah. So no one's paying attention to the fine detail. Because I saw an Instagram post

the other day from the Labor part. Like, it was an ad. And all it said was Labor will protect your right to work at home. I just assumed that Peter Dutton was stopping everyone's right to work from home. I assumed that this podcast would have to happen in a studio. So my point is, that's what the rule should be. It's a much better system.

Worker of home is a nightmare as we're establishing today. So Peter Dunn's come out and said, look, I made a big mistake. I got it wrong. We're listening to what people have to say. We've made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologize for that. we've dealt with it. Which is always impressive to see a leader doing a rapid reverse.

They so rarely do that. Donald Trump never does that. And he's now not going to sack 41,000 workers. He will wait until they leave through natural attrition. Right. That sounds a bit sinister, though. Is that like with the rabbit population, how we introduced the mixomatosis virus and then you think they'll be a public side naturally?

Yeah, yeah. Right. Because doesn't it incentivise, you know, more workplace accidents and stuff like that? I'm sure that Peter Dutton would say, well, the economy will perform so much better under a coalition government, but the 41,000 will have amazing jobs in the emerging nuclear energy sector. I don't know. I don't know where they'll go, but that's the thing.

But public servants will not be made to work at the office. And so I think this is a terrible mistake. I think everyone should be forced to work at the office, even those who have always worked from home running their own small businesses. Because working from home is a nightmare. I've never successfully had one day of getting anything done at home. in history. There's a cheesecake in my fridge.

How am I supposed to work? Right now, there's a cheesecake in my... I can't get any work done. It's too distracting. I think we need to take a bit of a step back here because I think you're... You'd weigh down into the policy details, far too much. Oh, no one was that.

And I think what you've got to look at is more from a strategic perspective of, was it the right thing to sort of... Like, presumably the polling was really bad on this stuff. Well... Especially amongst women. Like, I think women were sort of going... how do I work from home?

Yeah, because women value flexibility because of that small point when men make them do all the child care while also working full time. And I think Jane Hume's response to that was, well, can't women just job share? Didn't one of the coalition people come out? Jane Hume did get up and make some comments.

I'll find what she said. So, and the point being that to take a step back, this is a sort of policy reset, isn't it? This is the coalition going, okay, these policies haven't been working for the last 10 days. We're 10 days into the election. Let's actually just a bit of a clean slate, right?

Let's just clear the board. We'll admit a few errors, but that means we can go forward into the next few weeks of the election and do another clean slate in about another 10 days. Scrap off the barnacles. Well, Charles, this is the thing that's fascinating about this election is that any point of difference between the two parties is just basically being erased as quickly as possible, right?

Like, there was a race last week to see who'd be the first person to say they were going to cancel the lease on the. port of Darwin. Yes. That's the same. So now this policy is the same as Labor, except that it sounds like the coalition will be happier when public servants leave through attrition. But other than that, yeah, it's essentially the same.

Would you rather have Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese delivering the same policy? Seems to me that's actually going to be forward on personality. On charm. On charm. On engagement. I feel like that's a strategic error from Dutton. Well, I mean, to be fair to Peter Dutton, when he kicked the football and it made the cameraman's head bleed. I think anyone who's ever been, you know, chased down the street by a cameraman,

not an experience most people have had, but I think you have. Yes. Oh, definitely, yeah. I mean, that, you would have been on board with that way. Yeah, look, there is a small segment of the population for whom it's going to be very popular. Although, wasn't there some suggestion that the cameraman was Islamic? Really? Yeah, I think he might have been a Muslim, in which case, I think that that's the election one for... Well, I haven't seen any ads saying what a good job was done. So, anyway, so the point is, look.

Like, what is the strategy from here? Because I think you're going down into the details, right? Yeah, that was a big mistake. And I think... They don't do... None of the parties are going down into the details. No, exactly. Like, you've got to keep it all surface level.

And so you clear the slate. You do expose yourself to a slight risk of being flip-flopper. Well, but I don't think actually people really keep... No one care. No, but we don't forget, Albo flip-flopped on the stage three tax cuts. And he's been saying it's a virtue to change your position of people. I don't like what you're doing. Exactly.

But it's so you're imagining as well that the voters actually remember what you were said in the past because they don't care at all. But what I'm wondering is what will happen in 10 days time when Peter Dutton realizes that the last 10 days has also been a disaster? Like what's the next stage of the cleaning the state? Are we talking nuclear? Are we taking that off the board? And why wouldn't he have used this as the opportunity?

Because clearly he doesn't want to run on nuclear. I mean, they're deemphasizing nuclear. It's been very little discussion. of nuclear. Yeah. And that's, again, that's another difference between the parties. Yeah. Which probably will be erased by polling day.

I'm not expecting any policy differences at all. And again, it'll just come down to a question of charm. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. You think it's also that the Libs, whenever they talk about workplace issues, their intuition is just slightly, like the long lunches thing. Yeah, have they ditched the long lunch thing?

That's been de-emphasized as well. I don't know if the long lunches are still posse, and I think that's what they want, right? Yeah, and it also makes me question, because the other thing that I just find mystifying, right, because if you're right in saying the whole job of the opposition is to just do the same thing as the government of the day, right? And that's how Alba got elected.

It is. You just sort of eliminate the differences, get elected, right? And just be a bit more boring than the other side, right? And that's why the tax cuts thing is so weird, right? Because it was such an obvious thing for the libs to be able to come out and say, Labor is going to do 1% tax cuts. We will match that plus we'll do the petrol thing, right? But instead, they said we're not going to match that.

So they go into the election, I think for the first time, certainly in my lifetime, when the libs are promising to be the higher taxing government. Didn't our love that? party. I mean, that is in terms of income tax. They'd say the fuel X size, etc. It's a big of a cut, but only for one year. No, no.

And it's like a, I think I sprang a trap. Income tax is when they say your personal tax, they mean your income tax. But Charles, what this suggests, if you're right, is that Labor hatched a cunning plan that might actually have come off because they suddenly were getting the opposition to actually appies what they are doing. Now, Charles, just on the lunches, I don't know. In February, Samantha, the maiden reported that, Sutton had been accused of quietly walking back to the plan.

And they're saying the lunches. Treasury Costings previously said it was going to cost $1.6 billion a year. And back then the treasurer, Jim Chama said it was $500 million a year. Now the coalition says it's going to be $250 million, but hasn't released it the costing as of February. So it basically seems to be a bit dead in the water, which is a shame, Charles, because couldn't we have lunch on that plan? Well, not if we're working from home because that would just be, that would just

be lunch, wouldn't it? It would just be lunch. You can't really tax deduct working from home lunch, can you? I don't think the taxpayer should pay for your sardine on toast sandwiches. I don't think anyone would pay for my savings. These change, so, oh yeah, they did walk it back quite a bit. So it was only for meals. It was for meals and not entertainment. I thought you were about to say only for men. No, no, no. So it was meals, not entertainment, which is a pity because, I mean, entertainment, that can cover any number of things. So does that mean people could buy Wankonomics tickets and claim it on their tech? They Could have.

Because for a brief period. As a work expert. Would you describe your program as entertaining? Oh, no, it's workplace training. In fact, I've just come up with a perfect plan. That's what we should call our next show, workplace training. Yeah, yeah. And then just, oh, my God.

It just made you a lot of money, haven't we? Yes. I mean, all I want to know is, was it, could Bruce Lammon have expensed all of his Channel 7 fun as entertainment at one point out of the coalition's plan? Well, how does it work? because Channel 7, you know, put up a whole lot of stuff in kind. They did expense it already, didn't they? Does he, did they get it off their tax bill?

Presumably it's a business expense. But all the massages and fancy money. Yeah, exactly. Paying his rent for a year. How does that work? Imagine if you're a 7 West shareholder. Yeah. I don't know.

Or just the accountant. Like, just trying to work out how to write it off. Yeah, but how do you code that? That's a very good question. I want to write the answer to that. If you know the answer of that, by the way, if you want to leak this information, And podcast at jasa.com. If you're a 7-West accountant with a grudge to settle.

Or just an accountant who knows how to do these things. And just for research purposes. We do need some advice on this sort of thing. Okay. So, I mean, the campaign is rapidly, you know, every attempt to get some sort of advantage to getting brought back. I feel like that's your take because you are seeking to be balanced. And I think that you're allowed to have that take.

What's your take? My take is Peter Dutton's. campaign is a hot mess and is losing confidence. Like, the thing that you shouldn't do a few weeks out from an election is lose confidence in some of your key policies that you've been promulgating for the last few weeks. You look like a fucking idiot. And you, not only that, you look like you don't quite know what you're doing. You don't have confidence in your own self.

I think even if they've been polling badly, you should just only go on the attack at this point. I think it just shows, like, I think he's had bad judgment picking these policies, but I think it's even worse judgment to go, oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to start Monday morning. Like, if you're going to ditch it policy, ditch it on Friday night, you're fucking idiot. I mean, Charles, don't you think that if you go out to try and kick a ball with the kids and you end up with blood on their head of a camera operator, you want to... You're just kind of going, this is just going to be one of those campaigns, quite possibly.

And I think it's one of those things where it is absolutely. true that if you're in the middle of a campaign, you're a human being. Like, this is the thing that people forget when they see the politicians, right? It is very hard to get up day after day after day if you start stuffing up. And that is what is happening with Peter Dutton. And I actually think it's going to be a lot closer than the polls show. I think Victorian New South Wales are actually leaning to the libs and it's not in the bag for labour at all, right?

But the counterbalancing there is if you've got the head candidate who's just literally putting his foot in a bucket and then banging his head on the wall and then falling over. The bucket sails through the air and locks a cameraman. He's bleeding. Like, it's just, I just can't see him. Like, this is a hard reset. Like, what he's done is gone, it's such a disaster. I just need to staunch the bleeding and start again. But then if you're going to do that, why don't you take the other things that are making

you bleed off the table? Why not you also take off nuclear power and also being a creepy lib, you know, take them off the table? Do you know what I'm realising? Yeah. Because it's certainly true that, yeah, Peter Dutton has had to pivot, change things. He seems to have lost confidence in a lot of what his pitch was. And we haven't mentioned yet, but a big part in all of this, the 41,000 job cuts, of course,

is Doge-esque. Yes, yes. It's got that Trumpy feeling. Anything that looks Trumpy is now looking very, very uncomfortable. Which admittedly a few months ago might have seemed like a good idea. Like Dutton was sort of leaning into the whole, we need a bit of a Trump. We need a bit of an efficiency review. But you know what this means, Charles, if he's having a lack of confidence, if he's worried about it,

if he's a little bit unsure of his footing. Yeah. This means that the whole time when they're telling us that Peter Dutton wasn't the hard man, that he had his softer side. It was actually true. He was doubting him. We're seeing the gooey side. The guy is just not sure.

If he kicks a ball wheel at Brainer, a cameraman. You go. This is the new Dutton, the unbit unsure of himself. What he needs to do is start writing angsty poetry. And maybe hop on one of those boats he used to try and stop and just chat to the refugee. Just have a chat. Yeah. Instead of stop the boats.

Embrace the boats? Chat with the boats. What are we doing with the boats? I don't know. Make love to the boats. The love boat. I mean, Charles, the thing is, and this is something that hasn't been said in Australian immigration policy, but I'm going to say it now. From one perspective, boats are, you know, a massive threat to the status quo and people doing illegal immigration.

From another perspective, a boats arriving towards you, it's a harbour cruise that hasn't happened yet, right? Can't it be a love boat? Yeah. Can't we get the disco ball out and at the point where we see Peter Dutton crooning ballads? And having an upside-down pineapple on his shirt. I just think what we need now is Scott Morrison in the ukulele. There's a way to humanise. Peter down a bit of a sing-along.

Yes. Why not? Kumbaya. We're part of the Iconoclass Network. Catch you tomorrow.