Joe Hildebrand: It’s time all public servants returned to the office

Among the clamour from public servants furious at being ordered back into the office this week, paramedics, police, nurses and train drivers were oddly quiet, writes Joe Hildebrand.

The price of freedom, we are told, is eternal vigilance. And so we must turn our

laser-like gaze to the green shoots of tyranny wherever we may find them. Shockingly, in the once-free state of NSW, they have been hiding in plain sight.

Yes, this very week, Premier Chris Minns committed the unthinkable hate crime of asking desk-bound bureaucrats to return to the office for three out of five days a week.

Not since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has such a brutal autocrat committed such a shameless assault on the common people.

Little wonder there was an immediate revolt. Gil Scott-Heron famously declared “the revolution will not be televised” but nobody said it couldn’t happen on a Zoom call.

Not only was there a lack of consultation but there was not even any counselling offered to those affected.

Time for NSW public servants to shrug off their jammies and dig out their officewear. Picture: iStock

Tapping on and off is traumatic at the best of times, let alone during peak hour.

But perhaps most disgraceful of all is the lack of support from others in the so-called “public service”.

Despite the mass uprising of the workers from — quite literally — all over NSW, there was a sinister silence from some quarters.

Paramedics, police, nurses and train drivers have been oddly quiet in their championing for the rights of their managers to instruct them from their loungerooms.

So much for solidarity.

Obviously this has been a cruel blow for those still labouring in their studies, some of which haven’t even been renovated yet. You wait for the wave of reinforcements but nobody comes.

It makes you wonder what else they could be doing.

And yes, it is true that these working-from-home measures were only ever supposed to be temporary while the ravages of Covid tore through the community. But surely this was an enlightenment moment that enabled us to progress as a society?

The clear purpose of this was that back-office workers needed to be protected while frontline workers did trivial things like saving lives, building things and delivering Uber Eats.

By contrast, those who sent emails, built Substacks and tirelessly circled-back were too valuable to risk.

And yet, tragically, it is now those unsung heroes whose lives are at stake.

Not literally, to be fair, but who knows what horrors they might be exposed to on the Western Line. Someone might cough.

The cruellest cut is that these are the very same freedom fighters who fought for our freedoms to be restricted.

“Lock us down now!” they cried, with selfless disregard for those whose livelihoods were on the line.

Yes the cops and docs would still have to fight at the coalface of the deadly Covid apocalypse but it was vital some life would be preserved for future generations.

There are few enough people who know how to use Excel as it is.

Premier Chris Minns has ordered public servants to return to the office. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Sure, it turned out the lockdowns did much more harm than good.

The school closures were catastrophic for a generation of children, the mental health impacts were catastrophic for a generation of young people, and the economic consequences are etched in the cost-of-living crisis we’re experiencing today.

But that’s a small price to pay for the God-given right of the clerical white-collar class to work, or not, wherever the hell it wants to.

If that’s not a hill worth dying on then the Battle of Iwo Jima was for nothing.

All wars have their casualties and this one is no different. The public service POWs death-marched into the CBD will undoubtedly suffer.

One desperate act of self-preservation will be the enforced purchase of a small coffee for the price of $6.50 — a cost I have carefully calibrated to coincide with the date of publication.

Right-wing liberals and left-wing Luddites might argue that the over-caffeinated hordes of the civil service could simply get by on International Roast, but that is to break faith with reality. We all know there’s no going back to instant when there is a coffee cart in the foyer.

Indeed, that is precisely the point. It’s not just the wellbeing of the public servants that is at stake but that of — not to put too fine a point on it — the public.

The city workers and businesses who have been hit harder than Angela Carini.

It’s not exactly Gallipoli. The only public service that NSW public servants are being asked to perform is to get back to where they are supposed to be and maybe buy a sandwich.

And if they can’t bring themselves to make that gallant sacrifice they can always take up Jacinta Allen’s offer and move to Victoria.

What a win that would be for both states.

Listen to The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you get your podcasts