Opposition leader Peter Dutton has apologised and backed down from the Coalition’s attack on working from home.
The turnaround comes as the Liberal party concedes that it misread the country’s mood and has been “listening to what people have to say” by officially dumping a plan requiring public servants to work from the office.
This marks a massive win for anyone accessing flexible work, including working from home options, especially for those with caring responsibilities.
It shows that attacking work-from-home policies is not an election-winning strategy in Australia.
Dutton failed to see just how much people value work-from-home options, whether because they have no choice but to work from home or because they know that such flexibility supports their well-being and the well-being of their families.
He failed to see the research showing that there’s little evidence that those who access work-from-home options are any less productive than those who don’t and that a hybrid work schedule of three days in the office and two days out offers a productivity sweet spot for knowledge-based work.
He failed to see how attacking workplace flexibility would hinder women’s workforce participation.
While the policy was announced by Coalition Senator Jane Hume in March — and it was Senator Hume again who first announced they would be dumping the idea on Sunday — this backflip is also a win for proving that women’s representation matters. With more women in Dutton’s inner circle, he may have had a better chance of “reading the room” before thinking an attack on working from home would widely appeal to voters. Instead, Dutton appeared off-guard and ill-prepared for questions back in March from reporters asking what such a ban would do for women’s workforce participation. There are “plenty of job-sharing arrangements” for women, he said at the time. Fifty-seven per cent of the public sector workforce comprises women, with less than 0.5 per cent of positions in the sector being available on a job-sharing basis.
On Sunday, Senator Jane Hume declared they had been “listening” and had “made a mistake.” Hume went on to blame Labor for the extent of the backlash, saying that any suggestions that the Coalition planned to ban working from home in the private sector were part of a “Labor lie” and a “scare campaign targeting women.”
But what happens in the public sector will always have flow-on impacts on the private sector, given that private sector employers often follow the lead of their public sector counterparts on workplace policies and can compete for the same pool of talent.
While the Coalition remains committed to axing 41,000 public sector jobs, it has softened the blow by now suggesting that it would do so over five years with the help of a hiring freeze and natural attrition. It has confirmed it would not rely on forced redundancies to achieve this target.
The wins of this walkback on attacking working from home extend beyond workplace flexibility and women’s representation.
It also marks a win for rejecting what could be perceived to be Trumpian tactics in the campaigning. Dutton’s attacks on productivity in the public sector share similarities with the actions we’ve been seeing in the United States, as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are tearing through various departments to find their idea of government waste. US President Donald Trump issued a five-day-a-week return to office mandate for all federal employees on January 20. Dutton gave it a go; it may now be too late for Australians to forget.
Support Women’s Agenda! We are 100% independent and women-owned. We’re covering the Federal Election from the perspective of what matters to women, and always keeping the issues that matter for women on the daily agenda. Foundation memberships are just $5 a month.
Bonus: you’ll receive our weekly editor’s wrap of the key stories to know every Saturday. Become a member here.