Labor’s WFH culture war is all about winning women voters while they lose their blue collar base

Labor is more the party of middle and upper middle class professionals who Zoom into meetings and circle back for a status update than it is the working classes, writes James Morrow.

I worked at home for a good year, year and a half during the pandemic and my overriding memory is that it was hands down the least enjoyable era of my entire professional life.

While I worked plenty hard, all I remember is that every day’s effort felt like a slog through molasses.

Not only was there the lack of creative spark that comes from working in a newsroom with fellow journos, but there was the constant battle against distractions – hey, let’s walk the dog, make a lasagna, whatever.

The whole time I felt like I was stuck in second gear, which of course meant that the line from the Friends theme song (“feels like you’re always stuck in second gear…”) would pop into my head whenever I thought about the problem and I’d have that earworm to contend with, too.

So let me lay my cards on the table and say that my entire reaction to the WFH debate is WTF.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shamelessly sought to make political capital out of supporting WFH. Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

But even as a confirmed “go into work” guy, as a matter of first principles, Peter Dutton’s push for public servants to return the office – finally, a Coalition policy that is different to federal Labor! – is simple common sense.

In essence it is no different to NSW Premier Chris Minns’ utterly sensible push to get his public servants back into the office.

Some people had the opportunity to set up home offices anywhere during the pandemic.

The question thus becomes why has Prime Minister Anthony Albanese decided to not only pick a fight with the Coalition over the policy, but also to beat up the slippery insinuation that if the Coalition gets up in May they’ll draw a line through the private sector’s flexible work arrangements?

This weekend his office bashed out an “analysis” purporting to prove that workers would be $5,000 worse off if they had go into the office more often.

Meanwhile the PM’s language has been loose enough to earn him a rebuke from shadow finance spokeswoman Jane Hume for the “shameful the way the Labor Party has tried to twist this policy into something it isn’t.”

Nurses can’t work from home, unlike the laptop classes. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Add in claims that curbing WFH arrangements would disproportionately burden working women (and of course you know, Labor’s spinners love to repeat, that Peter Dutton has a “woman problem”?) and the whole thing begins to look very much like the sort of culture war Albanese always accuses Dutton of running, only fought from the left.

One clue to Labor’s thinking could be found in the most recent Newspoll, which suggested the ALP is losing female support to the Greens at a rate of knots.

Despite young women in particular being turned off by Dutton as leader, Newspoll has the overall female vote breaking to the Coalition by 51 to 49 on a two party preferred basis.

Seen from this angle Albanese’s WFH culture war is nothing more than a cynical election eve ploy to scare professional women across the economy into thinking Peter Dutton is going to make it harder for them to juggle work and care.

But that’s not all there is.

The government may be saving the Whyalla steel works but their heart is elsewhere. Picture: Dean Martin

There is another, deeper reason why this fight has proven irresistible to Albanese.

Quite simply, Labor, particularly federal Labor, is simply no longer a blue collar party.

These days Labor is far more the party of middle and upper middle class professionals, managers, and others for whom a laptop and a wifi connection is all they need to Zoom into meetings and circle back for a status update.

These are the same people who did disproportionately well during the pandemic, enjoying subsidies and asset inflation while they managed their professional lives remotely (generally with a bit more happiness than this columnist).

Albanese may promise to chuck billions at keeping Whyalla’s steelworks going but the government’s assault on Australia’s manufacturing base – part of the net zero push Labor’s white collar voters demand – has destroyed industry here like an occupying army.

But voters in those industries, as well as a host of other front line jobs ranging from nurse to cop to supermarket worker, had a far worse time of it during Covid.

Once upon a time, these people were the core of Labor’s vote.

For them not only are Albanese’s fight to preserve WFH arrangements practically incomprehensible (a nurse can’t take a patient’s blood pressure from the spare room), but they have had their own household budgets blown out by the same Labor policies that have taken an axe to manufacturing.

The obvious point here is that there is a huge constituency that federal Labor has abandoned which Peter Dutton and the Coalition can pick up if they call out Albanese’s culture war and stick up for common sense.

Originally published as Labor’s WFH culture war is all about winning women voters while they lose their blue collar base