Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says Labor’s scare campaign over his work-from-home policy had gotten out of hand. Photo: Peter Dutton Facebook.
Peter Dutton insists his now abandoned plan to end work-from-home arrangements was only ever going to be applied to public servants in Canberra, but the whole policy has been dumped because of Labor lies.
The Opposition Leader suggested the Coalition had dropped the policy because the confusion was a distraction from being able to win the election and “manage the economy well”.
“I’ve apologised for the decision that we took in relation to work from home. It only applied to Canberra,” he said when answering questions about the backflip on Monday (6 April).
“Labor’s run this scare campaign, and I think we bring an end to that today.
“We strongly support flexible workplace arrangements, and it never had any application to any part of the economy except for the public service in Canberra.
“But that’s not how Labor’s portrayed it. I think you’re seeing a lot of scare campaigns from Labor in this election campaign because they don’t have a good story, a positive story to talk about.
“We’ve got it wrong, and we’ve apologised for it. We support flexible workplace arrangements and our plan, which was only ever targeted for the public service in Canberra.
“Labor’s been able to create it into a scare campaign, which is not what it was intended, and as I’ve said before, we will make sure that we can help families, and that’s exactly what our positive plan of getting our country back on track is about.”
Mr Dutton still insisted, however, that he could find 41,000 public servants willing to leave the APS without having to force redundancies.
Voluntary redundancies, natural attrition and a hiring freeze would reach that total and save the taxpayers $7 billion.
An average of 6000 employees have left the service each year in recent years.
The Opposition Leader said his costings for savings in the public service were done in conjunction with the Parliamentary Budget Office and were all credible.
“We’ve worked with the Parliamentary Budget Office to achieve that profiling and that’s the work that we’ve done with the PBO,” he said.
“And I’ll have more to say about that, obviously. I just want to point out that our country is going into $1.2 trillion worth of debt. We may have a global recession.
“People are going to see the value of their superannuation funds really dramatically decrease if that happens. Labor can’t manage money; they can’t manage the economy, which is why they always tax.”
Finance and Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher held a joint media conference with Education Minister Jason Clare on Tuesday to refute the Coalition’s latest position on the public service.
“Now is not the time for cuts and chaos that we’re seeing from Peter Dutton and the Opposition,” Senator Gallagher said.
“Yesterday, we’re meant to believe that they have abandoned their plan to cut 41,000 public servants across the country, and also that they’re now not against working from home arrangements.
“So they’ve spent two years or more investing in cuts to the public service, in telling people they need to get back to the office, and then, in the teeth of an election campaign, in an attempt to chase votes, they’ve decided that all of a sudden, those aren’t their policies anymore.
“Well, we don’t believe them, and I don’t think the people of Australia believe them, and this morning, we’ve seen Peter Dutton say they’re still going to get their $7 billion worth of savings from sacking 41,000 workers.
“It’s pretty clear you can’t take $7 billion out of the public service without sacking 41,000 people.”
Mr Clare said Mr Dutton’s election campaign was “falling apart” and that he’s “getting desperate”.
“He’s now desperately trying to con the Australian people that he’s all of a sudden changed his mind when it comes to working from home,” the Minister said.
“But Australian people aren’t silly. They can tell when Peter Dutton is trying to con them, and Peter Dutton has tried to con them before.”
