Three challenges for Dutton in landing the backflip on working from home

Peter Dutton has been forced into a costly backflip that shows he has deeper problems in this election campaign than his approach to working from home.

The opposition leader has made a necessary decision to stage a big policy shift so he can assure Australians – especially women – that he will not force them back to the office.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and his public service spokeswoman, Jane Hume.Credit:

The backflip is ungainly and has an air of desperation at a fairly early stage of the campaign. The move is a big admission that Labor is winning the argument by painting Dutton as someone who will side with the bosses in his derision for those who work at home.

There are three challenges for Dutton in landing on his feet after spinning in the air.

The first is to convince voters that he means it when he says he supports working from home. In truth, Dutton never said he wanted every worker to return to the office. But he and others used strong language about curbing the practice in the public service and this tough talk backfired. Labor was very successful at making it sound like a blanket ban for the entire workforce.

Dutton during a state campaign launch in Exton, northern Tasmania, on Sunday.Credit: James Brickwood

The argument began on March 3 when the Coalition’s finance spokeswoman, Jane Hume, warned about waste in the public service from too much remote work. Hume backed the chief executives at major banks and other companies in requiring staff to return to the office, and she cited academic research to claim that working from home cut productivity by about 20 per cent.

Dutton and his colleagues got their tone wrong from the start. They began a crusade about all workplaces, not just the public service. Will voters trust them now they have a softer tone?

The second challenge is to make sure the new message sinks in when early voting begins in two weeks. One Liberal expressed concern on Sunday that Dutton had left it too late to announce major policies and that the public service cuts were a prime example. MPs have been hearing complaints about Dutton’s message on working from home when they talked to voters in the community.

Dutton and his team could have recovered from a mistake or two if they had finalised their policy on the public service a month ago and revealed the details, but now they have to scramble in the middle of the election campaign. Every move is caught in a spotlight now.

Meeting a supporter at the Exton event.Credit: James Brickwood

The lights reveal Dutton retreating from a policy that seemed copied directly from Donald Trump. Just as the United States president began to slash departments, Dutton talked up his war on waste. But this comparison has weakened the Coalition vote – the policy shift proves it. It is an admission that the Coalition has to break with Trumpist ideas to lift its campaign.

The third challenge is to manage the policy cost. Dutton prepared a budget reply speech on March 27 that claimed the Coalition could save $10 billion over four years from his cut to the public service. This was in his draft speech.

He cut this when he delivered the final speech and instead claimed he would save $7 billion a year once the cuts were put in place in full, without saying how long that would take.

This was a big giveaway. The policy looked rushed. The details bounced around, as they have with the gas policy. Why wasn’t the costing nailed down earlier with the Parliamentary Budget Office? In the backdown on Sunday night, the Coalition said it would cut the 41,000 positions through a hiring freeze and natural attrition. This will take many years – and it means the $10 billion saving over the next four years is simply impossible.

For all the chest-thumping, the saving will build slowly. The Coalition says it will support flexible work practices and will preserve working from home – the very thing it was complaining about.

Dutton admitted on Monday morning that he and his team made a mistake on this policy. He owned the outcome — a wise move. But there are certain to be recriminations about why the Coalition ended up sounding too much like Trump — and how it woke up so late to the backlash from voters.

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