Christine Holgate’s call on remote work to hit women

Team Global ­Express CEO Christine Holgate wants staff back in the office. Picture NCA Newswire/ Gaye Gerard

Christine Holgate certainly sounded like she was channelling Elon Musk at a recent town hall event with her staff at logistics firm Team Global ­Express.

Musk, as some may remember, crash-landed at Twitter in November and immediately purged the luxury of remote-working arrangements. He did the same at Tesla some months earlier, telling employees to find another job if they weren’t willing to come back to the office.

That seemed to be the message parroted by Holgate as she instructed staff to return to work four days per week, based on feedback from frontline workers toiling in the warehouse at 5.30am.

Describing an office job as a privilege, she said anyone who didn’t want to be at their desks could sit down with management, privately, and receive help looking for a new career, or opportunities closer to home.

Bit harsh, perhaps, especially when remote-working arrangements have been so useful to a certain population cohort the CEO seems to care quite deeply about: women.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency mentions prominently on its website that flexible work has been “clearly linked to an increased proportion of women in leadership”.

Whether that’s actually true is disputable – working from home comes with its own opportunity costs, viz., getting passed over for promotion.

Empowerment, that buzzword of recent years, has been a pet project of Holgate’s ever since she was treated rather shabbily by the Morrison government in 2020. Remember the Cartier watches?

It’s why she’s a reliable presence at women’s summits and gender equity breakfasts, and why she joined forces with Brittany Higgins, Lucy Turnbull and others seeking to, yes, empower women for a “more equitable Australia”.

Is the foot-stamping on staying home at odds with those ambitions? At least we know Musk would tell her to shoot for the moon, or Mars.

Packer’s housing pitch

James Packer and affordable housing – unusual bedfellows. Maybe not in the unfolding “third act” of his life, as the billionaire calls it.

Many would be familiar with the 55-year-old’s vast real estate portfolio – the mansions, the beachfront blocks, the split-level penthouse spacious enough to fit a palm grove, the vast Argentinian polo ranch, Ellerstina.

But that doesn’t mean the businessman is deaf to Australia’s housing crisis.

Margin Call has previously reported Packer’s involvement in the development of Edenville, the site of a former primary school in, of all places, the Geelong suburb of Corio. It remains in the approval phase with local authorities.

Turns out Packer’s $50m project is indeed an “affordable housing” collab, with the syndicate planning to build 120 dwellings comprising 72 single-storey townhouses and 48 two-bedroom apartments.

“Across Greater Geelong there is a significant disparity between socioeconomic settings, with the northern suburbs of Corio and Norlane experiencing some of the most entrenched disadvantage in the region,” the group’s pitch to council reads.

Edenville’s plan touts an opportunity to “drive renewal in an area of disadvantage” with permanent housing for “women and children escaping domestic violence, vulnerable young people and others living in precarious housing situations”.

Looks like the development will roll out in three stages and require its own internal road system. It’s already had some tweaks and design modifications, judging by the back and forth with local authorities.

Perhaps a few more to come, given the proposal is now open for public commentary.

T-shirt power

Last week we briefly mentioned the rebellious sartorial displays of Infrastructure Secretary Jim Betts, a big-shot bureaucrat with a predilection for pot-stirring.

That was after we noticed Betts looking a bit schlubby during a recent supply chain summit in Brisbane. During his keynote, Betts appeared on stage in a T-shirt emblazoned with “Notorious RBG”, a reference to former US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, probably, Christopher G. Wallace, familiar to some as the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has taken issue with Jim Betts’s choice of clothing and its possible political message. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It made no sense in the context of the occasion, and Betts wasn’t too happy with our drive-by critique of the matter, either.

“To avoid confusing the Murdoch press, please ensure that your speeches and T-shirts are aligned,” he posted on Facebook the next day. Talk about missing the point.

It seems we’re not alone in our confusion. On Monday Betts was challenged by Nationals senators Matt Canavan and Bridget McKenzie during a Senate estimates hearing, this time over another T-shirt worn at a departmental briefing.

In that case, the garment contained an Aboriginal flag and a raised fist. It’s the fist, not the flag, causing consternation – apparently it was interpreted by some as a “black power” symbol and might have suggested a political position on the upcoming referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Betts denied that assertion. “It symbolises my signal of solidarity to Aboriginal staff within my department,” he said, with a rainbow-coloured lanyard – worn in solidarity with his LGBTQI+ staff – unmissable around his neck.

Betts, evidently, is seeking to push boundaries. There’s ample room to do so in his multibillion-dollar management of national infrastructure, in the straitjacket of policies regulating those works, and in the control he possesses over ports, vehicles and aviation. Go nuts, pal.

But larking about in loud T-shirts at conferences is self-serving, a bit undergrad. It’s hardly what corporate and commercial Australia expects of an otherwise reputable government department. And while Betts may not give a toss about all that fusty convention (renegade that he is), it’s his employees left to deal with the stakeholders. Their credibility is on the line, too.

Jim Betts in his ‘Notorious RBG’ T-shirt in Brisbane.