By Tom Crowley, ABC
A Liberal policy to force public servants back to the office five days a week was abandoned within a month. Photo: ABC/Ian Cutmore
Unveiling a Liberal proposal to end work from home for public servants made Jane Hume think of her son.
Over summer, when she was passing the city building of the major company where he was doing an internship, she had texted to see if he could meet her for a coffee.
He couldn't: He was working from home.
"What? It's an internship. Who works at home in an internship?" she had asked.
At the unnamed company, it turned out, nobody worked from the office on a Monday.
"Let's hope that that's one of the organisations that instils the sense of discipline that we want to instil in the public service," she joked to the audience at the Liberal-aligned Menzies think tank.
The Coalition's policy, which it dumped on Monday, was limited to the public service.
But Labor would draw the same link as Hume had between public and private, telling voters that work from home would be at risk for everybody if a Dutton government followed through on its promise.
That link resonated with voters, according to YouGov polling, Liberal Party internal research and the perception of Liberal candidates and volunteers.
After first trying to shrink the policy - to return work from home to pre-Covid levels, or to make the change only for Canberra-based public servants - it was finally shelved entirely.
"We made a mistake in relation to this policy, and I think it's important that we say that and recognise it," Dutton said on breakfast television.
"We apologise for that, and we've dealt with it."
'We're not ogres'
Hume's policy announcement was met with applause by the party faithful in the Menzies Institute crowd, which scoffed at her examples of a public servant who worked from a campervan, and a private sector stakeholder who had travelled to Canberra for a meeting only to find everyone else had dialled in.
Hume joked that she was not as hard-line as Elon Musk and would not be sending public servants an email asking them to explain what the point of their job was.
"Exceptions can and will be made, of course … There are opportunities for people to take time out if they've got a sick child or an elderly parent," she said.
"We're not ogres. But at the same time we do expect people to come into the office to do the job that they've been hired to do."
Labor responded by asking voters, even those in the private sector, whether the same logic might be applied to them.
In particular, it targeted women, whom the figures suggest are more likely to take advantage of flexible arrangements to increase their hours of work.
And it seized on Dutton's suggestion later that week that women in the public service who relied on flexibility to work full-time could consider "job-sharing arrangements" - effectively, a suggestion they go back to part-time.
In backtracking this week, Dutton accused Labor of "twisting" his words and mounting a "scare campaign".
Dozens of seats hit
But once the idea had seeded, Liberal sources say they found it hard to get rid of.
Liberal campaigners told the ABC voters were raising the issue unprompted as they knocked doors and shook hands at train stations.
That damage was concentrated in important places.
ABS Census data, collected in 2021 during lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney, paints a picture of how many workers in each electorate were able to do their jobs from home at that time.
It shows that in at least 15 key suburban seats across Melbourne and Sydney, at least one in three people worked from home during the lockdown on Census night.
The list includes the affluent seats of Wentworth, Warringah, Mackellar, Bradfield, Kooyong and Goldstein, where the Liberals are locked in battles with teals.
And it also includes the Labor seats of Macnamara, Chisholm, Bennelong, Reid, Parramatta and Robertson, all in Coalition sights, plus the Liberal marginal seats of Menzies, Deakin and Hughes.
ABS Census data from 2021. Photo: ABC
While there is no electorate-based data depicting the "new normal" of work patterns, nationwide data suggests a very large number of workers who worked from home during the pandemic have continued to do so at least once a week since then.
Some 35 per cent of workers still work from home sometimes, according to the ABS, while the Melbourne Institute's HILDA survey suggests women are more likely to do so than men, but that it is popular for both.
Even in states that did not experience lockdowns, Census data on the prevalence of white-collar workers suggests a number of other key seats where the issue might have traction, including two in Adelaide, three in Perth and six in Brisbane, including Peter Dutton's own seat in Brisbane.
ABS Census data. White-collar professionals include occupations classified by the ABS as professionals, managers, or clerical and administrative workers. Photo: ABC
And while this list includes mostly inner- and middle-suburban electorates, work from home is increasingly popular for lower-income workers in the outer suburbs, too, which includes several more Liberal target seats, especially with the Fair Work Commission moving to incorporate work from home into awards for clerical and admin jobs.
Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally said that the gains to working from home were largest for outer-suburban workers with long commutes.
"When you have a substantial commute, you could be saving several hours a week," she said.
"Families with young children are time poor, and in particular what you see is that women are time poor, so those hours matter."
Ms Sathanapally said that, despite some companies and the NSW government ordering staff back to the office, worker flexibility could also benefit employers.
"Studies of work from home are showing that workers do also give a substantial portion of that time they save back to their job, so employers are seeing some of the benefit of the time saving too," she said.
"And the evidence doesn't indicate any detrimental effect on productivity."
Damage control
Even as sources in the Labor camp said they believed the work-from-home issue was starting to fade, within Liberal ranks concerns continued to be raised about the electoral fallout.
The eventual reversal was met with a combination of relief, frustration that it took so long, and recriminations directed at the party's economic team, seen to have driven the idea.
"There are people out there seeking election who are working very hard. Messaging like this, that isn't as good as it should be, makes that job a lot harder than it should be," said one Liberal MP.
"It was very damaging and I hope the damage hasn't been done," said another.
- ABC
