Dutton dumps controversial plans to axe bureaucrats and end working from home

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Public servants would not be forced back into the office or sacked to make savings under a Coalition government after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sought to stem the worsening political damage from his controversial vow to end flexible work rules and get rid of tens of thousands of bureaucrats.

The potentially embarrassing mid-campaign backdown was driven by voter anxiety over a plan that was only directed at government workers, but which Coalition MPs said had triggered a false impression that Dutton wanted to end work-from-home provisions in all workplaces.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has had to walk back his government efficiency plans after his work-from-home policy sparked a backlash among outer suburban women. Credit: James Brickwood

Dutton will now face questions about whether the Coalition can find $7 billion in savings given the party has ruled out forced redundancies from the public service, as he seeks to be elected as the better manager of government spending.

Opposition finance and public service spokeswoman Jane Hume, who first revealed the policy on March 3, announced the retreat on the same day Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used a Brisbane campaign rally to claim Dutton was “measuring up the curtains at Kirribilli House ... while telling everyone else they can’t work from home”.

Labor ministers have been promoting the benefits of flexible work while failing to mention the Coalition’s sole focus was on public servants, forcing the first U-turn of the campaign as Dutton tries to bounce back from a polling slump.

By ditching the unpopular policies after just over a week on the hustings, the Coalition hopes to move swiftly to new policies on housing supply, cost-of-living and migration before the Easter break.

Both sides are preparing for the first leaders’ debate on Tuesday night at a Sky TV “people’s forum”, as they reckon with the prospect of a sharemarket crash and recession induced by the Trump administration’s tariffs.

The Coalition’s finance spokeswoman, Jane Hume, was forced to walk back the policy she launched at the start of March cracking down on public servants working from home: “we have listened”, her statement said. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“We have listened, and understand that flexible work, including working from home, is part of getting the best out of any workforce,” Hume said, pointing to blowback that Coalition MPs detailed to this masthead on March 11.

“The Coalition has never had a policy impacting flexible work in the private sector. That is a Labor lie, and it is a disgrace that Labor has concocted a scare campaign targeting women.”

Hume said the Coalition would no longer mandate a minimum number of days that public servants would have to work in the office, conceding that “many professional men and women in the Commonwealth public service are benefiting from flexible working arrangements”.

Dutton had already been walking back his flexible work policy, on Friday saying the rules would apply only to workers in Canberra rather than the tens of thousands who live in key electorates around the country.

Another abandoned element of Dutton’s agenda was the commitment to wind back the public service workforce by 41,000 people – the number of bureaucrats hired by the Albanese government.

It had not been clear where Dutton and his shadow treasurer Angus Taylor planned to reduce numbers, as only a quarter of public servants hired since Labor came to power have been employed in Canberra.

The uncertainty about which jobs would go has fed into Labor’s key attack line that Dutton would “cut everything but your taxes”, which the government has been linking to the much more radical cuts to government services in the US under the aegis of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Dutton gave Northern Territory Nationals Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price the new portfolio of government efficiency in his frontbench reshuffle on January 25, but she has repeatedly denied any connection to the US department under Musk.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was given the portfolio of government efficiency, denies it was inspired by Elon Musk. Credit: Dan Peled

In the most concrete remarks to date about the Coalition’s public service plans, Hume confirmed the reduction would not involve forced redundancies, instead coming from a mix of hiring freezes and natural attrition over five years.

In the latest figures, attrition rates slowed by 5 per cent in the 2023-24 financial year as about 11,000 left the Australian Public Service and another 30,000 were hired.

Shrinking the size of government is critical to the Coalition’s ability to find enough budget savings to allow it to claim it will spend less than Labor and keep inflation down.

Dutton said in his budget-in-reply speech that cutting 41,000 workers over time would lead to “saving $7 billion a year”.

But this saving is in question because the Coalition confirmed the $7 billion figure was the yearly saving for the fifth year of the policy, with unspecified smaller savings in earlier years. The full detail will be provided in costings closer to the May 3 election.

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