Dutton’s Dickensian approach to workers’ rights

So the Coalition intends to strip back workers’ rights should they win government (“Public servants’ right to disconnect repealed if Coalition wins election”, March 9). Can we expect to see child labour reintroduced, along with the six-and-a-half-day working week (with time off on Sunday morning for church), and other Dickensian measures such as the poorhouse?
Dave Horsfall, North Gosford

Can a balance be found between office and home?Credit: iStock

Alternative Trump

Self-professed diversity hire Parnell Palme McGuinness offers up the most embarrassing assessment of Donald Trump and geopolitics to hit the pages of any Australian newspaper since 2016 (“Trump’s madness makes world safer”, March 9). To believe McGuinness, Trump is playing three-dimensional chess. A man making the world safer with tough love for allies by sucking up to Vladimir Putin on their behalf, to teach them to fend for themselves for the greater good. McGuiness even ponders a thoughtful Trump reflecting on Winston Churchill’s place in history as he lovingly admires his bust. Who would put their name to such a facile article?
Paul Davies, Crows Nest

Culture war

Before the pandemic, working from home was a rare exception in most workplaces (“Working from home’s now a culture war, and Dutton’s drawn the battle lines”, March 9). During COVID, many businesses and governments organisations could only operate due to staff’s willingness to operate from home when they were basically directed to do so. For many, WFH has been an excellent work/family compromise and many would like those arrangements to continue. Many workers are willing to return to the office full-time. However, all employees deserve the right to negotiate WFH arrangements and for employers to reasonably consider such arrangements. The Coalition needs to be reminded that this is 2025, not 1955. Tony Heathwood, Kiama Downs

Liberal Senator Jane Hume has confirmed all working people will have their right to disconnect from work removed. This is consistent with the LNP WorkChoices-driven IR policy. They might not use the term WorkChoices, but it remains at the core of their policy.
John Harris, Goulburn

Sinodinis’ insights

The brilliant summary of the Trump revolution given by Arthur Sinodinos (“In the Oval Office with ‘disrupter’ and ‘radical’ president”, March 9) ought to be compulsory reading. Summary: neither side of Australian politics is willing to face the need for real change in our resource allocation; they only do it when there is no other choice (sorry Arthur, I mean it when I say compulsory reading). We have seen this again and again, and no doubt the same will play out here. Australia has a tax to GDP ratio of about 26 per cent. It rose to that under Gough Whitlam because he decided to reform our education and health systems, and those are the big spending items in a modern society, before the change in the life expectancy resulted in a lot more social security spending. Unfortunately, the first oil crisis also disrupted the cost of energy: it’s amazing how often that has happened in the last 50 years. So now we have three pending crises: the national security crisis that could demand 5 to 10 per cent of GDP; the energy transition and climate change adaption crisis, which is not the cost of renewables, but the threat to our exports of iron ore, coal, gas, agricultural products, and education; and, of course, our ongoing crisis of the bottom 20 per cent living in poverty, which includes the public housing crisis. These are really serious issues, and I don’t think people like Angus Taylor have a serious word to say about them. But if we think that we can trade off climate change and water and koalas to pay for drones, we really will suffer, eventually.
Noel Thompson, Riverview

Arthur Sinodinos suggests that Australia impress on Trump that he needs us. That may well be true, but more than that it needs to be impressed on Trump that he needs all of his friends. The way he has been treating the likes of Canada, the UK and Europe suggests that friendship doesn’t matter to him, which makes sense if everything is just a transaction to him. Whatever Australia does in those circumstances would seem futile. The assumption that Sinodinos makes is that America will remain a democracy. There seems to be some doubt about that. So, is it best to act as if that assumption is certain? Or would we be better to somehow “hedge our bets” in case the assumption doesn’t hold? Our best interests may not necessarily be to always side with the US.
David Rush, Lawson