The moment Peter Dutton knew his work-from-home plan was dead

Peter Dutton knew he had to kill his work-from-home decree just halfway through the first week of the election campaign.

Coalition MPs were reporting a backlash from voters who thought, wrongly, that he intended to force every worker back to the office even if that meant being stuck on trains or in traffic away from the kids.

By the middle of last week, Dutton decided the only solution was to make a captain’s call and fully own up. He had the option of “taking the trash out” (when politicians try to bury bad news) in a low-key manner on Friday or Saturday, when he started to walk back the pledge by saying it applied only to Canberrans.

But so widespread was the worry about the flexible work plan’s contribution to the Coalition’s worsening poll numbers, particularly among the white-collar women who deserted Scott Morrison, Dutton’s team decided to give the backflip maximum exposure on Monday morning.

“Thank f- - -”, one senior MP said when they learned on Sunday afternoon of the looming about-face.

Ditching the work-from-office edict and blunting a plan to cut 41,000 public service jobs hollowed out Dutton’s agenda at a time when Labor is labelling Dutton policy-lite. It raised questions about the opposition’s ability to find fiscal savings and meant the start of the campaign’s second week was spent cleaning up a mess.

Dutton’s early stumbles mean his MPs are placing more importance than normal on his performance in Tuesday’s first leaders’ debate before the Easter school holidays take attention away from the campaign.

A trickle of complaints from colleagues about opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume’s original March 3 announcement fell on deaf ears, but turned into a flood once the MPs spent more time talking to voters in the campaign.

Details of the events leading up to the policy shift were gleaned from shadow ministers and other senior campaign sources, none of whom were permitted to speak about it publicly.

Labor MPs had spent weeks weaponising the issue. Assistant minister Patrick Gorman filmed a video playing the role of a TV reporter, walking up to people in the street asking whether they knew “Peter Dutton wanted to end work from home”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton arrived to a media opportunity in a fuel tanker on Monday.Credit: James Brickwood

Labor candidates used sporting matches, street stalls and social media to run a subterranean campaign that barely registered in national media.

Politicians tend to be reluctant to admit when they have made an error. Not on this occasion.

“We’ve made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologise for that,” Dutton said on Nine’s Today show on Monday, in even more contrite language than Hume, who was forced to own the backdown.

“And I think it’s important that we say that and recognise it.”

The Band-Aid was ripped off fast, designed in part to turn the embarrassing moment into a contrast with Albanese, whom voters in Liberal focus groups were increasingly describing as untrustworthy after he claimed he did not fall off a stage on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was preparing for a group photo when he slipped off the back of the stage.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Dutton’s admission carried echoes of famous prime ministerial U-turns, including Tony Abbott’s scraping of “barnacles” off the sinking ship that was his leadership and John Howard’s mea culpa when his government was in trouble after losing a key byelection in 2001.

Neither of those moments occurred in the heat of an election campaign; Julia Gillard’s 2010 “real Julia” did, but that was about optics rather than abandoning a key policy.

Dutton started leaning into his plan to ditch back-to-work on Saturday when he said it would only apply to Canberrans, and he would not rip up union agreements. On the same day, News Corp tabloids published polling by Redbridge showing the issue was costing Dutton, particularly among women.

Just as Hume first put forward the flexible-work plan, her colleagues learnt she had not been chosen to serve as the party’s campaign spokesperson for frontbencher James Paterson.

Jane Hume was forced to walk back her work-from-home policy for public servants.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The two events were unrelated, but some MPs felt selecting Paterson instead of Hume was the wrong call because Hume, one of the most prominent women on the opposition frontbench, is viewed as a relatable and effective communicator. Her detractors argued Paterson got the job because Hume was more prone to slip-ups when veering off script.

The March 3 pronouncement, which teased a speech she would deliver the following day at the Liberal-aligned Menzies Research Centre, was signed off by Dutton’s office, undercutting internal criticism of Hume suggesting her views on flexible work were swayed by big business.

Changing flexible work rules for bureaucrats could only have been achieved in 2027 after an enterprise bargaining agreement expired, raising questions about why the opposition brought up the idea this side of the election.

The second component of Dutton’s public service backdown was a promise not to retrench bureaucrats. The Coalition had not been clear about how it would shrink the size of the public service by 41,000 workers – the number hired under the Albanese government. Monday’s announcement confirmed the Coalition would rely on a hiring freeze and attrition.

Dutton had been hinting at big cuts to the public service since at least June of last year, well before Donald Trump and Elon Musk started tearing through US agencies. But Dutton’s threats came into sharper focus as Trump’s erratic agenda started to turn off voters in Australia, Canada and the UK.

The elevation of conservative senator Jacinta Price to a new frontbench position focused on government efficiency, bearing a similar name to Musk’s department of government efficiency (DOGE), aligned the Coalition with Trump even as Dutton worked to distance himself from the US president.

The Coalition hopes ditching the crackdown on public servants will allow it to focus on attacking Albanese’s ability to lead the nation through the havoc of a global trade war.

But even after Dutton’s about-face, Albanese’s social media accounts continued to blast out content suggesting the Coalition would ban working from home, leaving open the question of whether the opposition left its manoeuvre too late.

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