Union vows to fight Dutton’s five-days-in-office edict at the tribunal

The public service union is prepared to take the Coalition’s pledge to order workers back to the office to the industrial tribunal, as they seek to cast Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s vow to clamp down of working from home as a “tone-deaf” response to the needs of working women.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused Dutton of adopting a Trumpist policy, sparking a fight over government efficiency.

Federal bureaucrats will be expected to return to the office five days a week if the Coalition wins office, opposition finance spokesperson Jane Hume revealed in a speech on Monday after the number of public servants working from home rose sharply under Labor.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Rhett Wyman

The latest Australian Public Service Commission census reveals 61 per cent of federal public servants worked from home some of the time in 2024, a 15 per cent increase from 2021.

National secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union Melissa Donnelly argues the number of people who work from home aligns with an increase in women working full-time.

APS employment data reveals more than 89,000 women worked in the APS full-time in 2024, a 30 per cent increase from 2021 when just over 65,000 women worked full-time.

“The comments from Dutton and the opposition are really tone-deaf to the challenges working families and working women face when it comes to their working life,” Donnelly told this masthead.

“What we’re seeing from Dutton is just the latest attack on public servants, and it is echoing what we’re seeing in Trump’s America and I think most Australians don’t want to see that here.”

The public service union’s latest enterprise agreement, which is in place until 2027, included a proviso that there be no caps on the number of days a public servant can work from home and a bias towards approving requests.

The union said it would file a dispute in the Fair Work Commission if a Coalition government introduced a ban on working from home.

Dutton defended his pledge, saying it was unacceptable public servants are “refusing to go back to work” when their positions were funded by taxpayers.

He dismissed the argument that female public servants with children would be disproportionately affected by the change, saying the policy would apply across the board and a future Coalition government would apply common sense when considering any exceptions.

“It doesn’t discriminate against people on the basis of gender. It is for [all] public servants … we are not going to shy away from the back of this [because] this is taxpayer money,” Dutton said.

Hume dismissed what she described as “Labor and the union hyperventilating”.

“No one is banning work from home arrangements, that is a Labor lie,” she said. “Labor has made working from home a right rather than a request. Working from home has to work for everyone: the individual, the team and the department. This is a commonsense policy that reflects the arrangements for everyone else outside of the Australian Public Service.”

Anthony Albanese has overseen a sharp rise in the number of public servants, and the percentage working from home.Credit: Rhett Wyman

The opposition’s move to curtail the public service follows Dutton’s declaration that he would find billions of dollars in savings by cutting thousands of APS jobs.

Albanese accused the Coalition of adopting policies from the US. “If [the Coalition] hear something on the news, an announcement from overseas about sacking public servants, or people working from home, or DEI – the dreaded inclusion policy they’re so worried about – they say ‘yeah, I’ll have some of that’,” Albanese said.

Major companies such as the Commonwealth Bank and Woolworths have joined international firms, including JPMorgan and Amazon, in trying to get their staff back to the office.

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