Are you a public servant who works from home? There’s good news with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton ditching his plan to remove flexible work rights for Canberra-based public servants. Under his plan, they would have been forced to return to the office.
The policy proved unpopular with women who want flexibility to work from home.
So, what is his reasoning behind the decision, and why was the policy so unpopular?
What were the proposed changes?
Mr Dutton had planned to require 80% of public servants in Canberra to work from the office full-time. He claimed this would improve productivity.
With 60% of Canberra-based public servants currently working from home, Mr Dutton said he wanted this to return to pre-COVID levels, which was around 20%.
What’s behind the backflip?
Polling suggested that the policy was a major reason why Mr Dutton has struggled to gain support among female voters. The policy had a negative favourability rating among Australians of -5 and for women it had a negative favourability rating of -16.
Out on the campaign trail, MPS and campaign staff had also received negative feedback about the policy.
In an interview with Channel 9’s Today Show Mr Dutton said the decision was made based on feedback from voters.
“We’re listening to what people have to say. We’ve made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologise for that and we’ve dealt with it,” he said.
He has now pledged that there will be no changes to current flexible working policies and no mandated minimum number of days working in the office.
Why was the policy so unpopular?
Working from home reduces commute times
During this election campaign, Mr Dutton is trying to win the support of outer suburban voters. According to Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally, these are exactly the same voters who benefit the most from working from home.
“When you have a substantial commute, you could be saving several hours a week,” she told the ABC.
“Families with young children are time poor, and in particular what you see is that women are time poor, so those hours matter.”
Flexible work rights benefit working mothers
Many women, who must juggle working with raising children, also use flexible working arrangements to increase their hours of work.
The government argues women’s workforce participation has increased as a result.
Women’s workforce participation is currently sitting at 58 per cent, compared to 54 per cent pre-pandemic, when flexible working arrangements were less common.
This led to claims from the government that working women could be $740 a week worse off if forced to reduce their hours to comply with the policy.
Fears of widespread implementation
While Mr Dutton was only proposing that Canberra-based public servants work from home, this didn’t seem to register with many voters. Many feared they would be forced to come into the office for their private sector roles.
Indeed, the government argued that many private sector corporations take their cues from the public sector.
This isn’t the only backflip that Mr Dutton has made during the election campaign.
He has also walked back an earlier promise to slash public service numbers by 41,000 saying there will not be any forced redundancies. This comes amid fears job cuts would impact the quality of public sector services.
For those after the flexibility that remote work offers, the public service offers endless opportunities.
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Article References
Armstrong, C, McCormack, M & Gailberger, J (6 April 2025) ‘Peter Dutton backflips on wildly unpopular WFH policy’, Daily Telegraph, accessed 8 April 2025.
Crowley, T (8 April 2025) ‘How the Liberals’ work-from-home crackdown came undone, after it created trouble in dozens of seats‘, ABC, accessed 8 April 2025.