Fewer public servants are going to their work Christmas parties this year. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
I’ve picked up on a growing phenomenon in the public service this year, across jurisdictions, and that is the number of employees skipping their Christmas parties.
There is obviously always a handful of workers in the private and public sectors who don’t do Christmas shindigs for a variety of reasons and that’s everyone’s prerogative.
But, anecdotally at least, their numbers in the public sector seem to have expanded in 2025, with apologies and no-shows having become a regular thing this December.
Directors aren’t even turning up in some cases.
There could be some quite complex reasons for this, which go to the makeup of modern Australian workplaces.
Christmas celebrations might not be at all an attractive proposition for a proportion of the growing multi-cultural numbers on staff.
A number of agencies have placed the emphasis on ‘end-of-year’ rather than ‘Christmas’ yet the absences are still noticed – and increasing.
There could be a neurodivergence issue.
The hugely positive step of increased neurodiverse inclusion at most public sector levels might well have a spinoff that some of those employees aren’t too comfortable with crowds and the social settings of pubs, high teas or restaurants.
Another reason could be that work-from-home has been so fully embraced by some staff that even a party with workmates is too much to face.
Add all of those reasons to the already existing legitimate conscientious objectors and you could have a picture of why so many public servants are calling in sick or otherwise avoiding their workplace’s festivities this time of year.
While that’s all plausible, there is another culprit causing a number of government workers to pull out of their Christmas parties.
That reason is the expense of it.
Here are a few separate comments received from public servants over the past two weeks as to why they have skipped or will skip their work’s Christmas party.
“It’s fifty bucks and I can’t spare it.”
“I couldn’t get the one person I like in my team to come so I’m not going either.”
“I’m going to be sick that day.”
“I can’t afford it this year.”
“A senior executive booked a very expensive place – $75 a head for afternoon nibbles. They have no idea there are different levels of salary grades and some of us can’t afford that. Well, they do know that but all they are thinking about is where they’d like to go. They can afford it. Some of us aren’t going to this one.”
While Christmas parties and work dos in the private sector are by and large paid for by the company, that’s not the case in the public service.
Any form of socialising off campus for public servants comes out of their own pockets.
Even tea parties inside the office require a whip around for someone to go and buy a cake.
Public servants can’t go out for a team coffee without bringing their purses, transaction cards or phones.
They definitely don’t go to lunch on the agency coin, and a night at the pub doesn’t see the boss put the company credit card on the bar.
Christmas time doesn’t allow for any changes to this approach.
At best, public servants might get a couple of hours out of the office without getting their pay docked.
There are good reasons for this. It’s taxpayers’ money after all and the public service has to be accountable for how it is spent.
For the most part, those in the lower ranks of government workforces get no social hospitality paid for at all, while those further up the ladder have a lot of onerous reconciling to undertake for whatever ‘entertaining’ they are allowed to share with ‘clients’.
If only that were the same for their political masters.
In the lead-up to Christmas this year, public servants (along with most Australians) have been left aghast at how flippantly politicians use taxpayers’ money to give themselves and their families a good time.
Family holidays, sporting events, lavish dinners, interstate travel to parties … the list goes on.
It’s not just Federal Communications and Sports Minister Anika Wells, although she has certainly milked the system (while keeping within the rules, which she doesn’t write anyway).
No, it’s cross-party and there are far too many MPs and senators on all sides being exposed as willing to legally ‘rort’ the system.
Some (over the years as well as more recently) have been forced or persuaded to pay back their indulgences.
But right now there must be more than a handful of public servants begrudging the fact they have to pay for their Christmas lunch knowing that the politicians they serve are living the high life also at their expense as a taxpayer.
So maybe, just maybe, that sentiment has added to the reasons why so many public servants are currently opting out of their self-financed end-of-year gatherings.
Or perhaps it’s just that more of them are willing to let their colleagues know that they don’t really want to socialise with them outside of the office anyway.
