Coalition rethinks its return to work mandates

The Coalition has softened its work from home policy, with Peter Dutton now declaring his strong support for it and pledging to further reduce the number of public servants who may be affected by return to work mandates. Liberal frontbenchers had previously stated all public servants would need to return to work if the Coalition won office, but on Saturday Dutton confirmed this change would only apply to Canberra-based bureaucrats. Only one-third of the Australian public service is based in the nation’s capital, according to a 2024 government report, raising the prospect that colleagues in the same government department could be subjected to different conditions based on where they live. Several major government departments have offices and headquarters that stretch across the country, including in marginal seats and states that are key to the federal election. Dutton’s explanation came after he was asked for a response to polling by the research group YouGov, which listed the Coalition’s work from home policy as one reason for a dip in the opposition leader’s personal satisfaction ratings. In response, Dutton accused the Labor campaign of spreading a “scare campaign” by suggesting the policy would impact women working in the private sector. But some within the Coalition have previously warned the policy was not “fully thought-through” and could hurt them in seats with high numbers of working professional women. When the policy was first announced in early March, the shadow finance and public service minister, Jane Hume, said all public service workers would have to return to the office if the Coalition won government. “It will be an expectation of a Dutton Liberal government that all members of the Australian public service work from the office five days a week,” Hume told the Menzies Research Institute. Later in that same week, Dutton appeared to walk those comments back, saying levels of working from home in the public service should return to pre-Covid levels. On Saturday, Dutton said “I strongly support work from home” and shifted the Coalition’s policy to stress it would not have “any impact on the private sector” or on “the public sector outside of Canberra”. “We want the most efficiency for our taxpayers who are working harder than ever under this government,” Dutton said. The opposition leader said the Coalition would not tear up flexible work agreements struck between Canberra-based public servants and their managers, further restricting the number of people who will be told to return to the office. “That flexibility continues, whether it is in Canberra or outside of Canberra,” Dutton said. “We are not proposing to change those and that’s the reality,” Dutton said. Andrew Stewart, an employment expert and professor at Queensland University of Technology, has previously warned that existing enterprise bargaining agreements would make it difficult for the Coalition to enforce a work from office policy. “If there was a new blanket policy of saying no to these [flexible work] requests, it’s clearly foreseeable that you end up with cases in the Fair Work Commission and in the courts,” Stewart said. Dutton said “the bulk of the public service is in Canberra”, despite the Australian public service commission’s latest state of the service report stating it was home to 36.9% of the workforce. Dutton accused the prime minister of “lying to Australian women” by suggesting the return-to-office orders would impact anyone other than people who are working for the public service in Canberra. “I think it’s actually pretty tardy and I think the prime minister has been caught out telling fibs a few times now and his record is starting to build up of somebody whose word I wouldn’t trust on some of these issues,” Dutton said. Labor’s Katy Gallagher, the minister for the public service and women, has said the policy showed the opposition had “no idea” how working families operate. Gallagher has also criticised the return to work push as an example of “policy ideas copied from the US won’t work for Australian families”, referencing Donald Trump calling time on public servants working from home.