Sneaky Labor tactic that killed off Dutton’s WFH plans

Labor has been rewarded for their visionless campaign that has no plans besides taking on more debt and terrifying voters about Medicare, nuclear power and the ability to work from home.

It is more than a little ironic that just as the latest Newspoll declares that voters find Peter Dutton the stronger, more decisive leader, the Opposition leader panicked and pulled the pin on one of his policies because of a Labor scare campaign.

As reported Sunday night, the Coalition’s policies to push public servants back into the office is, as another Liberal leader once put it a decade ago, dead, buried and cremated, the result of a tricky Labor scare campaign.

As policy, Dutton’s plan was perfectly sensible.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has been trying for months (with, it must be said, incomplete success) to get his own public servants back into the office without any panic running through the state’s private sector laptop classes.

Yet while it is understandable why he jettisoned the idea, the problem is that for Dutton the shift not only makes it look like he is trying to pitch himself as a big softie when being the tough guy is his most authentic (and therefore most electorally appealing) persona.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

It also rewards Labor for their visionless campaign that has no plans for Australia at one of the most difficult moments in our post-war history besides taking on more debt and terrifying voters about Medicare cuts and nuclear power and now the ability to work from home.

Since Dutton announced his plan to make public servants work from home, Albanese and his ministers have been on a sneaky scare campaign, creating the impression that work from home arrangements – and those of women in particular – were under threat if the Coalition took power.

Peter Dutton stops off at Ampol Carrick Tasmania to fill up on fuel on the campaign trail. Picture Thomas Lisson / NewsWire

“Working from home while he denigrates … other Australians working from home,” Albanese said last week about Dutton’s plans to live at Kirribilli House should he win the election.

“Working from home, has enabled them to work full time and therefore it has increased workforce participation, particularly for women … Peter Dutton has questioned working from home,” he said in a press conference on March 23.

Albanese’s ministers have also trumpeted the scare.

Finance minister Katy Gallagher (to single out one of many offenders) said on April 2: “(Dutton has) also said he wants to cancel work from home.”

And so on and so forth.

The scare is obvious.

Though governments were able to force us out of the office during Covid, no prime minister has a skerrick of authority that would allow him to force a private sector employee back into it.

Yet the damage has been done.

Many professional women who had previously considered Dutton on the basis of economic management or a general dislike of Labor and Albanese have swung their support back to Labor on the basis of the scare, a fact confirmed by Redbridge polling in this masthead this past weekend.