Opposition leader Peter Dutton has ditched a pretty unpopular election pledge to end work from home for public servants, admitting the party “made a mistake” with the plan.
The move comes just one week into the election campaign, with the Coalition forced to ditch one of its few headline-grabbing policies already.
The policy’s copped a lot of criticism for disproportionately disadvantaging women, especially parents, in the workforce and sparked concerns the private sector to follow suit.
It fuelled claims of the Coalition seeking to copy US President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), given Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was even named the Coalition’s new shadow minister for government efficiency.
Last week, voters were further left disgruntled after Dutton told reporters he would choose to relocate to Kirribilli House in Sydney if elected — as opposed to the Lodge in the national capital — even as the party was seeking to end flexible work arrangements.
On Monday, the Opposition leader told Nine’s Today program that the Coalition had “made a mistake in relation to this policy” and that it’s important “that we say that and recognise it”.
When asked if he was seeking “forgiveness” from female voters, Dutton replied: “I think I think I am today”, per SBS News.
“We want to spend taxpayer’s money efficiently, but I think Labor’s been able to get away with twisting this into something it wasn’t,” he said.
Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said the party “have listened” to all the feedback that flexible work is “part of getting the best out of any workforce”.
“We need the best from our public servants, and that is why there will be no change to flexible working arrangements or working from home arrangements for the public service under a Coalition government,” she said in a statement.
Last month, Hume told The Australian Financial Review that a Coalition government would implement a policy for public servants to work from the office five days a week, with few exceptions.
She accused the Albanese government of giving public servants “a blank cheque to work from home” and said the Coalition’s “common sense policy” would “instil a culture that focuses on the dignity of serving the public, a service that relies on the public to fund it, and a service that respects that funding by ensuring they are as productive as possible”.
But amid fierce backlash, Dutton softened the stance days later, stating public servants should instead return to work back to pre-COVID levels, which was about just over 20 per cent of people who work from home.
In April, he further reframed the edict that he said would only apply to Canberra-based workers, where around a third of all federal public servants are based.
In its announcement on Monday, the Coalition also modified its pledge to reduce the size of the public service by 41,000 workers. Rather than redundancies, it said this will be achieved over five years using a hiring freeze and natural attrition (aka workers quitting their jobs and not being replaced).
On Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rubbished the Coalition announcement, stating “nobody believes Peter Dutton has changed his mind on work from home”.
“He will rip up flexible work and slash the services you rely on the minute he gets the chance,” he told reporters.
Public service minister Katy Gallagher added she was “cynical” about the announcement, given the Coalition’s labelled investment in the public service as “wasteful“.
“They’ve been campaigning against additional investment in the public service for the last term. They’ve argued every investment we’ve put. They’ve called it wasteful, rebuilding the public service, they’ve said it’s wasteful. And working from home, they said they wanted to abolish it and frog march everyone back to the office,” Gallagher said, per The Guardian.
“So, two weeks into an election campaign after years of campaigning against it, I just don’t believe them.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether this backflip comes a little too late for the party, given the latest Newspoll shows Labor is leading the coalition 52 per cent to 48 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.
With input from the AAP.
Lead image: Getty
The post Dutton Has Already Ditched His Wildly Unpopular Policy To End WFH For Public Servants appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
