Another step towards the end of working from home with 365K Aussies ordered back to the office

The latest effort to wind back working from home allowances will see a huge number of Aussies forced back to the office five days a week.

Peter Dutton has declared war on working from home, vowing to force all Commonwealth public servants back to the office if the Coalition wins government.

The proportion of Commonwealth employees logging on remotely has surged since the pandemic, thanks to an overly generous deal struck by the union two years ago.

Last year, 61 per cent of public servants worked from home, which has leapt from 55 per cent during the pandemic and is miles away from the 22 per cent of staff on remote arrangements in 2019.

In stark comparison, data from mid-last year found 36 per cent of all Australians regularly work from home, down from 40 per cent at the height of Covid.

The latest attempt to wind back working from home allowances will see federal public servants ordered back to the office full-time if the Coalition wins government.

MORE: The good and the bad of working from home

Liberal Senator Jane Hume, the opposition’s finance and public service spokeswoman, outlined a number of the consequences of the trend in a speech to the Menzies Research Centre last night.

One federal employee was allowed to work from home full-time but in reality was frequently uncontactable because they were travelling across the country in a caravan with their family, Ms Hume claimed.

“We know some departments and agencies are telling stakeholders not to schedule meetings on Mondays or Fridays as there will likely be no one in the office,” Ms Hume said.

“In one instance, a stakeholder travelled to Canberra only to be shown into a meeting room where they were greeted by all departmental participants dialling in from home.”

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Working from home had become a blanket right that was “creating inefficiency”, she added.

In late 2023, the Albanese government reached an agreement with the Community and Public Service Union that requires all departments to effectively rubberstamping work from home requests by default.

Requests can only be rejected in extreme circumstances. Any public servant can ask for a flexible arrangement.

Senator Hume slammed the deal, saying Anthony Albanese had signed a “blank cheque”.

“While work from home arrangements can work, in the case of the [public service], it has become a right that is creating inefficiency,” Senator Hume said.

The Federal Government employes a total of 365,400 public servants across a broad range of departments, agencies and service deliveries.

Peter Dutton wants working from home to be a thing of the past. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Jane Hume claims one public servant ‘works’ remotely full-time while travelling around Australia in a caravan. NewsWire / Martin Ollman

She said a Coalition government would force a return to the office five days a week for all public servants and exceptions will only be made “where they work for everyone, rather than be enforced on teams by an individual”.

“This is common sense policy that will instil a culture that focuses on the dignity of serving the public, a service that relies on the public to fund it, and a service that respects that funding by ensuring they are as productive as possible.”

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher slammed the proposal and accused Mr Dutton of ‘stealing’ another policy platform from US President Donald Trump.

One of the returning president’s first acts was to order all government employees back to their offices as soon as possible.

“The only new ideas they seem to have are cuts to services and the $600 billion nuclear reactors,” Senator Gallagher told ABC Radio.

“It seems that every other idea is being stolen from the United States, and they clearly have no idea about how working families manage modern life. Across the economy, working from home, arrangements are in place. They are a feature of modern workplaces.

“And they allow women in particular [the chance] to manage some of the other responsibilities they have outside of the workplace. I would see this announcement, if you can call it that, as certainly a step in the wrong direction for working women.”

Katy Gallagher said it appeared Peter Dutton has stolen another policy from Donald Trump. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

As the pandemic becomes a thing of the past, parts of the private sector are making moves to limit working from home perks.

Research last year by KPMG found a whopping 82 per cent of CEOs want to see a full-time return to the office within the next few years.

Computer brand Dell told its workers last September that working from home was finished, hot on the heels of betting company Tabcorp, travel agency giant Flight Centre, and tech juggernaut Amazon.

The New South Wales Government is also keen to scale back remote allowances, last year telling public servants to “principally” work from their offices.

The number of Aussies working from home is slowly falling – except in the public service, where it’s soared since Covid. Picture: Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

Forcing people back to offices to do jobs that can be done from home would “unravel the economic benefits” that have flowed from flexible work arrangements, Leonora Risse, an associate professor in economics at the University of Canberra, said.

“Fewer people, especially women and parents with young children, would put themselves forward for work,” Dr Risse wrote in analysis for The Conversation.

“The pool of skills that employers are looking for would shrink. And job-matching in the labour market becomes less efficient.

“The result would be more Australians unemployed, and more Australians dropping out of the paid workforce, than if we had continued to embrace working from home.”

The current federal public service union agreement runs through to 2027, so Mr Dutton’s plan could be easier said than done. A mandate might not be possible until the end of a Coalition government’s term.

The opposition’s commitment comes on top of a contentious plan to gut 36,000 jobs to save an estimated $6 billion a year.

Treasury projections show the total yearly bill for public service wages will hit almost $30 billion by the end of the financial year, marking a 29 per cent surge since Labor seized power.

Originally published as Another step towards the end of working from home with 365K Aussies ordered back to the office