Roshena Campbell: Why Melbourne needs its public servants to get back to the office

The state is the largest employer in the City of Melbourne and while getting public servants back into the office won’t solve all the city’s woes, their return is part of the solution.

One of the most powerful levers to get Melbourne’s economy moving is in the hands of the state government.

And it’s long past time it pulled it. The state is the largest employer in the City of Melbourne. Before Covid, about 30,000 Victorian public servants worked in the CBD, about 13 per cent of all city employees.

In February last year Spring St was telling other major city employers that it was planning to get public servants back in the office. Preparations were reportedly under way to get government offices open.

But the workers did not come. Or at least not in significant numbers. Pedestrian traffic continues to be lower around public sector office buildings compared to the rest of the CBD, suggesting fewer public servants than other city workers are attending the office.

It is hard to measure what the decline in productivity has been as a result but a recent ruling of the Fair Work Commissioner confirmed what many already know – there are significant productivity benefits from face-to-face interactions.

Why should we care if public servants are less productive tapping away from their mid-century home office desks than their CBD workplaces?

Weekday activity in Melbourne CBD continues to lag. Picture: David Geraghty

Because those productivity losses are paid for by taxpayers.

And it’s not as though top public servants are underpaid.

The bosses of Victorian government departments earn between $577,716 and $778,492 a year, hundreds of thousands more than their counterparts overseas.

Our city’s economic recovery has been strong, but it is incomplete. The city now is busier at nights and on weekends than it was before the pandemic.

But weekday activity during business hours continues to lag.

Melbourne’s office occupancy rate, at 56 per cent, continues to lag well behind Sydney and Brisbane at 75 per cent, 85 per cent in Adelaide and 91 per cent in Perth. Of course, Melbourne’s lower office occupancy has been influenced by its extensive pandemic lockdowns. And of course public servants are not the cause of all our woes.

But getting them back is part of the solution.

That’s why on Tuesday night I will be moving a motion in Melbourne City Council calling for the return of Victorian public servants to their CBD workplaces.

Melbourne is the engine room of the Victorian economy. Let’s get her roaring.

Roshena Campbell is a Melbourne City Councillor.