Labor WFH ‘scare campaign’ hits home in suburbs

Transport analysis shows the likely WFH hot spots and electoral warning signs that led to the Coalition’s sudden abandonment of its work-from-home policy.

Labor work from home ‘scare campaign’ hit home in the outer suburban Sydney and Melbourne suburbs.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Peter Dutton has challenged Anthony Albanese to apologise for his broken $275 energy bill promise, as the Opposition Leader did after abandoning his public service work from home pledge.

Separately, analysis of public transport data by The Australian shows the outer suburban Sydney and Melbourne seats with – likely – the highest rates of working from home and as such, where the Labor “scare campaign” would have been most potent.

It shows the electoral warning signs that led to the Coalition’s abandonment of the policy would likely have been in outer metropolitan suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, some of the key battlegrounds for the election, often held by Labor or the Coalition on narrow margins.

Some of the seats with the largest drop in public transport use since Covid: in outer metropolitan Aston in Melbourne, wrested from the Liberals by Labor’s Mary Doyle with a 3.6 percentage point margin, the train stations saw a 43.9 per cent overall drop in morning weekday passenger usage between 2019 and 2024; in western Sydney seat Parramatta, held by Labor’s Andrew Charlton with a sub-5 percentage point margin, those train stations saw an overall 38.9 percent drop in Opal card tap-ons between 6 and 10AM between 2019 and 2023; and Casey, on the edge of Melbourne, held by the Liberal’s Aaron Violi with a 1.5 percentage point margin, saw a 44.8 percent drop in train station passenger usage.

Other electorates with large drops include, in Sydney – Berowra, Bradfield, Banks, Lindsay, and Hughes; and in Melbourne – Deakin, Dunkley, Jagajaga, Macnamara, and Kooyong.

The Opposition Leader, after announcing he would abandon his policy to force public servants back into the office if elected, accused Labor of a broader “scare campaign” on working from home.

“We never had any intention for work from home changes that we were proposing in Canberra to apply across the private sector, but the Prime Minister was out there saying that – it was just a lie,” Mr Dutton told Channel 9 on Monday morning.

The Prime Minister admitted as much: “the truth is that public sector conditions then flow through and are used to argue in the private sector,” he told reporters on Monday.

Liberal MPs have told The Australian they had seen a significant backlash from constituents about the WFH plan.

On Tuesday, Mr Dutton said the ability to recognise one’s own mistakes and apologise for them was a “necessary part of leadership”.

“The Prime Minister’s never apologised in relation to the broken promise around the $275 cut to electricity prices,” Mr Dutton told the ABC.