Australian opposition ditches Trump-style plan to end work from home

SYDNEY – Australia’s centre-right opposition made a rare policy backflip in the middle of an election campaign, abandoning a plan for a Trump-style crackdown on work-from-home provisions for government employees after it appeared to be politically damaging.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton

said the original policy position for the Liberal-National Coalition was “wrong”,

at a press conference in the southern city of Adelaide early on April 7, adding that he apologised to Australians for suggesting it in the first place.

“We strongly support flexible workplace arrangements,” Mr Dutton told reporters. “We got it wrong and we’ve apologised for it.”

Australia is headed to an election on May 3, with the opposition currently trailing the Labor government in most opinion polls.

Mr Dutton pledged to end work from home for government workers in early March, mirroring a move by US President Donald Trump to require federal departments to return to the office.

However, with Mr Trump widely disliked in Australia, Mr Dutton’s support dropped, while the policy itself raised questions about popular work-from-home arrangements across the economy.

The opposition made the move to staunch the bleeding on Monday and abandoned the policy. 

Mr Dutton is also keen to avoid any further comparisons to Mr Trump, who he had previously described as a “shrewd” politician and a “big thinker” on policy.

The coalition also confirmed that its plans to cut the federal government’s workforce by about 41,000 positions if elected will take place through attrition and hiring freezes rather than sweeping firings.

Mr Dutton has accused the centre-left government of allowing the bureaucracy to bloat and estimated on April 3 that the cost of those employees amounted to A$7 billion (S$5.7 billion) a year.

The avoidance of mass layoffs raises questions over how the coalition will afford its spending promises given the public service cuts are its main money-saving announcement to date.

Mr Dutton has pledged to bring government spending under control to reduce inflation for Australians at a faster pace. BLOOMBERG