The Coalition’s work from home policy has raised significant concerns in its ranks, with many taken by surprise and some criticising it as not “fully thought through”.
As the Liberals face an uphill battle to reclaim several blue-ribbon seats lost to the teals, there is growing worry inside the party that the policy will take it backwards in areas with high numbers of working professional women.
Coalition insiders have expressed concerns to Guardian Australia that the policy was messaged poorly and had been misinterpreted by the public as affecting all workplaces – not just the public service.
The shadow finance and public service minister, Jane Hume, introduced the policy on 3 March, stating all public service workers would have to return to the office if the Coalition won government. “Exceptions can and will be made,” she said. “But they will be made where they work for everyone.”
The policy was announced the same day the government released gender pay gap figures, showing women earn almost $30,000 less than men on average a year.
The next day, Peter Dutton backed the policy. Asked what impact the plan would have on women with caregiving duties, he replied: “There are plenty of job-sharing arrangements.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable that people, like in many other workplaces, are asked to go back to work for that face-to-face contact,” he told 2GB radio.
“That’s exactly what will happen if there’s a change of government after the election.”
On Thursday, Dutton appeared to walk those comments back, saying levels of working from home in the public service should return to pre-Covid levels.
Some senior Coalition figures and candidates who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity said there were “no positives” to the policy. The Coalition should be more focused on the cost of living instead, they said.
“Flexible work arrangements are cherished in many households, and it looks like we [the Coalition] don’t get that,” one said.
Some said there was growing discontent about the Coalition’s economic policy, that it was not robust enough, and the work from home policy added to those concerns, they said.
“It does nothing to actually build [our economic policy] or point to what we’re good at,” a senior Liberal source said.
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Andrew Stewart, an employment expert and professor at Queensland University of Technology, told Guardian Australia the existing EBA would make it difficult for the Coalition to enforce a work from office policy.
“Changing an enterprise agreement is not easy. You essentially need to get staff to agree by majority to vary the agreement, or you have to wait until the agreement is expired and renegotiate,” he said.
“If there was a new blanket policy of saying no to these [flexible work] requests, it’s clearly foreseeable that you end up with cases in the Fair Work Commission and in the courts.”
But Stewart said there was scope to shift the balance between work from home and work from office arrangements within the current agreement.
Other Coalition insiders who supported the policy agreed there was a risk it was being misinterpreted. They added that maintaining flexible arrangements in the workplace, including in the public service, were important.
One MP said employees and employers “should have the opportunity” to come to an arrangement.
Labor’s Katy Gallagher, the minister for the public service and women, claimed the policy showed the opposition had “no idea” how working families operate. She said workplace agreements in the public service already set parameters on how staff can work from home.
“The EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement] is clear. Employees have a right to request working from home arrangements and employers have the right to approve or not approve that,” she told reporters.
Gallagher also criticised Dutton’s apparent backflip, saying that “policy ideas copied from the US won’t work for Australian families”, referencing Donald Trump calling time on public servants working from home.