Peter Dutton wants to talk about the cost of living but has had to walk back his comments about work from home for the APS. Photo: Peter Dutton Facebook.
Peter Dutton has apologised for insisting he would end work-from-home arrangements for public servants, in what amounts to an embarrassing mid-campaign backflip that also retreats on his promise to sack 41,000 APS employees.
With just one week of the federal election campaign behind him, the Opposition Leader has been forced to admit the Coalition policy to force public servants back to the office five days a week was a dud.
A backlash inside his party, sparked by voter outrage (particularly from women) over the plan, brought on the U-turn, with Mr Dutton admitting the policy was wrong.
“We made a mistake,” he said in a media interview.
“I think it’s important we say that and recognise it. Our intention was always to make sure that taxpayers are working hard and their money is being spent to pay wages — that it’s being spent efficiently.”
Flexible working rights were successfully negotiated for Australian Public Service employees as part of their new enterprise agreement.
Shadow finance minister Jane Hume first announced Coalition policy in March that public servants would have to front up to the office five days a week if Mr Dutton becomes prime minister.
She now says flexible working arrangements had always been the Coalition’s position, but that didn’t necessarily mean work-from-home.
Now it does.
“We very much respect those existing flexible working arrangements, and we’ve said that we will enshrine them in future agreements,” Senator Hume told the ABC.
“So we’re not changing the current flexible working arrangements, and that includes work-from-home policies.”
The policy went down like a lead balloon in the electorate, with many workers fearing it would go beyond the public service and also apply to the private sector.
Outspoken Nationals frontbencher Barnaby Joyce said dumping the policy was the right thing to do because it made many voters “pretty upset”.
“I think the sensible thing, if it’s not working, is to change,” Mr Joyce said.
“I mean, that’s what you should do. That’s what people want to see in a leader.”
Mr Dutton, however, insists the policy was never going to apply to the private sector.
He said that was all Anthony Albanese’s doing.
“The Prime Minister was out there saying that. It was just a lie,” the Opposition Leader said.
“We’re listening to what people have to say. We made a mistake in relation to the policy.
“We’ve apologised for that and we’ve dealt with it. But we’re not going to be framed up by a Prime Minister who’s got a real problem with the truth.”
Mr Albanese said Labor had protected flexible working rights, but the Coalition backflip shows Mr Dutton can’t be trusted on the issue.
“I’m not quite sure where they are at the moment, but the Coalition certainly said they’d stop working from home. They didn’t want to support it,” the Prime Minister said.
“Today, they’ve gone from defending to pretending that they weren’t.”
The Opposition Leader has also ruled out forced redundancies in the public service, saying the plan was to reduce the workforce by 41,000 through natural attrition and a hiring freeze.
He remains confident he’ll still be able to find the $7 billion in savings by reducing public service numbers.
“There’s no change to the costing at all because the original plan of the natural attrition and the freezing was what we’d always had,” Mr Dutton said.
“It’s the way in which Labor’s contorted that into something else.”
The PM said those comments offer another example of why the Coalition can’t be believed.
“The fact is that Peter Dutton is pretending,” Mr Albanese said.
“As late as last week, his budget reply had the 41,000 job cuts front and centre.”
Those sentiments were repeated Monday morning (7 April) by a string of on-message Labor frontbenchers, including Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher, who expressed her distrust of the backflip during an ABC Canberra radio interview.
“Well, forgive me for being a bit cynical about this … but I just don’t believe them,” she said.
