We are, in this country, industrially accustomed to the idea that if you do particularly dirty or dangerous work, you can sometimes claim a salary loading in partial compensation for – inter alia – elevated laundry liquid consumption, annoyed spouse, or the fact that you live in constant, reasonable fear of being maimed in some way. These agreements date back to the time when more Australians were involved in physically dirty and dangerous work, and I now question whether our definition of what constitutes workplace peril is slightly narrow and out of date. For instance, when Finance Minister Mathias Cormann popped his head above the parapet on Tuesday, thus identifying himself as the Government's Day Two Prince Philip Guy, it did make me wonder. Shouldn't there be a loading for being the person called upon to defend, publicly, a daft decision that had nothing to do with you? I mean, coming home covered in sump oil and coming home covered in the ignominy of someone else's foolishness are quite different propositions, but they both involve wear and tear, am I right? Since we're just blue-skying here, let me raise some further industrial questions prompted by the events of the past week.

Some awards still feature "Follow the job" loading, which accounts for workers obliged to practise a nomadic professional lifestyle; circus employees, prospectors, shearers and the like. But what about, for example, ministers who are obliged to flee to distant locations in order to escape questioning about something bonkers the Prime Minister's just done? Shouldn't there be some kind of "Run away from the boss" loading? Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who had the uncanny foresight to repair to Kabul just before the announcement of the Australia Day honours list, should probably be entitled to reimbursement for last-minute helmet expenses and general inconvenience. And what about Malcolm Turnbull, who not only had to go to Silicon Valley to hide, but then was forced awkwardly to pretend there was no phone coverage in the globe's most famous technology playground? Dangerous environments are dangerous environments. Whether you're scrubbing boilers or shifting rolled-steel joists or chipping barnacles from the hull of a perilously-listing national vessel, a risk is a risk. Why do you think Joe Hockey was wearing a hard hat on Friday? Commissioner, I'm just warming up here. There are plenty of regulatory areas here that could benefit vastly from an unjaundiced eye.

Let's have some fresh thinking, for example, about new techniques to protect workers from unfairly being given the old heave-ho. Here's one, just off the top of my head: How about asking Rupert Murdoch to demand their sacking in a Tweet? That seems to be functioning surprisingly well as a job security measure in the PM's office right now. Obviously, the way we even assess what constitutes work has come along in leaps and bounds since we last had the IR debate in this country. There is at least an argument, arising from the intriguing federal travel expenses imbroglio of 2013, that going to a friend's wedding can count as legitimate work, as can participating in an Iron Man competition. Commissioner: I hope to find evidence that you've at least considered these matters when I pick up your final report (i.e., when it's accidentally left on a Starbucks counter and handed in to the ABC by a trainee barista on his comically over-recompensed meal break). I do hope it's not going to turn out to be another of those instances where the Productivity Commission works terribly hard on something, comes up with eminently sensible proposals and then is noisily howled down by a mob of pitch-fork-wielding agrarian socialists, subsidy-drunk captains of industry or existentially-challenged political leaders desperately hacking off policy limbs in order to save their sputtering central nervous systems. Hope springs eternal, eh?

Yours in the best of spirits, Twitter: @annabelcrabb