Speaker 1: Already and this this is the Daily This is the
Speaker 1: Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to
Speaker 2: the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the twenty fifth of March.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
Speaker 2: Earlier this month, the Coalition announced it once public servants
Speaker 2: in the office five days a week. That's, of course,
Speaker 2: if it wins the next election. Then over the weekend,
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Anthony Aberzi came out swinging against the proposal,
Speaker 2: saying that working from home is important for flexibility, women
Speaker 2: in the workplace and the economy. In today's podcast, we're
Speaker 2: going to take you through what the coalition is proposing
Speaker 2: and some of the criticisms that the government has leveled since.
Speaker 3: Zara. We first heard of working from home as an
Speaker 3: election campaign issue when the Coalition announced its plans to
Speaker 3: make public servants work from the office. Yeah, tell me
Speaker 3: about election commitment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it was earlier this month and the coalition
Speaker 2: announced that if it wins the election, it expects all
Speaker 2: public servants to work from the office five days a week.
Speaker 2: At the time, Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume described the
Speaker 2: current work from home arrangements for federal public service workers
Speaker 2: as unsustainable.
Speaker 3: And So by public service workers, you mean people who
Speaker 3: work for government agencies, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So people that are working for the federal
Speaker 2: Department of Health, Defense, Education, among other things. We're talking
Speaker 2: about three hundred and sixty five thousand people when we
Speaker 2: talk about the public servants in this story. So just
Speaker 2: to give you a sense of who would be impacted
Speaker 2: by this potential policy, the Coalition has spent quite a
Speaker 2: bit of time talking about the public service. This isn't
Speaker 2: a one off. They have made the public service a
Speaker 2: kind of election issue for themselves. Last month they vowed
Speaker 2: to cut wasteful government spending and that included the number
Speaker 2: of people who work in the public service. Just quickly
Speaker 2: to connect those two things when they say wasteful government
Speaker 2: spending and then connect it to the public service, we're
Speaker 2: talking there about the fact that public servants are taxpayer funded.
Speaker 2: So back to the work from home announcement. The most
Speaker 2: recent Australian Public Service survey showed that sixty one percent
Speaker 2: of public servants worked away from the office at least
Speaker 2: some of the time in twenty twenty four. So that's
Speaker 2: a majority have worked at some point away from the
Speaker 2: office some of the time. In this context, the Coalition
Speaker 2: said as I led with that it once works in
Speaker 2: the office every day of the week now At the time,
Speaker 2: Opposition Leader Peter Dunnen said that Australian taxpayers expect government
Speaker 2: employees to be working as hard as they are. People
Speaker 2: refusing to go back to work in Canberra is not
Speaker 2: acceptable and.
Speaker 3: We've seen similar moves from private companies across Australia who
Speaker 3: have said that they want to increase productivity and that's
Speaker 3: why they're asking people to come back into the physical
Speaker 3: Is the Coalition using the same argument in putting forward
Speaker 3: this idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, essentially, yeah, it's exactly the same idea. The
Speaker 2: policy was first announced by Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume
Speaker 2: in a speech to the Menzies Center, and I was
Speaker 2: reading through that speech and just pulled out a few
Speaker 2: key quotes there. She said that working from home has
Speaker 2: become a right that is creating inefficiency. She also cited
Speaker 2: a recent report from Stanford that claimed that after working
Speaker 2: from home arrangements were put in place, productivity fell by
Speaker 2: about twenty percent. She didn't go into the kind of
Speaker 2: technicalities of that research, so we don't know particularly what
Speaker 2: workforce it's talking about. There. She also, as you said,
Speaker 2: highlighted the fact that other big Aussie companies, including NAB
Speaker 2: and CBA, have instructed their staff to return to the office.
Speaker 2: So she was saying there that the government wouldn't be
Speaker 2: an outlier if it were to have this proposal come
Speaker 2: into fruition. And I do just want to clarify before
Speaker 2: we go any further that she did say that there
Speaker 2: could be exceptions for people coming into the office. She
Speaker 2: said that if the working from home arrangements work for
Speaker 2: the employee's department, the team, and the individual, that they
Speaker 2: would be willing to allow for that to happen.
Speaker 3: So the coalition's position is really clear. What about the government,
Speaker 3: how have they responded, you said. Anthony Aberenezi responded to
Speaker 3: this policy over the weekend. What did he say?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's fair to say this is one
Speaker 2: of those times where we aren't seeing bipartisanship. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of the time we have an announcement by
Speaker 2: either the government or the coalition and then the other
Speaker 2: kind of matches it. That's sort of what happens during
Speaker 2: a campaign period. That's not what's happening here. This kind
Speaker 2: of light and day between the two parties positions. On Sunday,
Speaker 2: in a press conference, Anthony Albernesi defended working from home.
Speaker 2: Here's a bit of what he said.
Speaker 1: This is an advantage in modern families that have enabled
Speaker 1: them to take advantage of it. It is also meant
Speaker 1: for working families where both parents are working, they're able
Speaker 1: to deal with those issues of working from home has
Speaker 1: enabled them to work full time and therefore it has
Speaker 1: increased workforce participation.
Speaker 2: So clearly they're Labour coming down hard on the other side,
Speaker 2: advocating for work from home options continuing to be available
Speaker 2: for the public service and also for kind of Aussies.
Speaker 3: Across the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The government's criticism of the opposition's policy has broadly,
Speaker 2: i'd say, been from two main angles. The first is
Speaker 2: the impact on women and the second is the economic
Speaker 2: impact of cutting work from home options.
Speaker 3: Why don't we start then by talking about this impact
Speaker 3: on women argument?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this criticism was really led by Labour's Minister
Speaker 2: for Women, Katie Gallagher, who said when the Coalition's policy
Speaker 2: was first announced that they again referring to the Coalition,
Speaker 2: don't have women's interests at heart. They don't see it
Speaker 2: as a central economic driver of growth. She went on
Speaker 2: to say that clearly the Opposition have no idea about
Speaker 2: how modern families operate, and that women have a right
Speaker 2: to feel at risk. In response, we heard almost immediately
Speaker 2: from Opposition leader Peter Dudden, who said that this policy
Speaker 2: doesn't discriminate against people on the basis of gender, and
Speaker 2: he suggested that there were plenty of job sharing arrangements
Speaker 2: available for women who couldn't be in the office five
Speaker 2: days a week.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's Labour's argument around the impact on women.
Speaker 3: But then another issue there highlighting is the economic impact.
Speaker 2: I found this one really interesting. So basically over the
Speaker 2: weekend Labor released new modeling that's just numbers that they
Speaker 2: said shows that Ozzie's would be worse off financially if
Speaker 2: they couldn't work from home. So let me walk you
Speaker 2: through it. According to this analysis, again by Labor, that
Speaker 2: needs to be said, the Coalition's plan would cost the
Speaker 2: average worker up to an extra four nine hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy six dollars a year because of the cost of
Speaker 2: transport and parking.
Speaker 3: They were forced to go to the office five days
Speaker 3: a week.
Speaker 2: Correct, So they're saying that if you work from home
Speaker 2: then you're not paying for the commute, inn you're not
Speaker 2: paying for a parking spot if that's how you get
Speaker 2: into work, and that if you have to do those things,
Speaker 2: you as the employee, will be worse off than if
Speaker 2: you were able to work from home. Labor also claimed
Speaker 2: that commuters would have to spend an extra two hours
Speaker 2: additionally in the car each week, or around ninety seven
Speaker 2: hours a year if they were required to be in
Speaker 2: the office every day of the week.
Speaker 3: Which would probably be good for podcasting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so listening to this podcast.
Speaker 3: Well, it is an interesting angle given the economic argument
Speaker 3: that we normally engage with on this topic is on
Speaker 3: the other side of things, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really surprised to read this because, as
Speaker 2: you said, usually the economic argument is used to justify
Speaker 2: bringing people back to work, not keeping them at home.
Speaker 2: I remember last year Billy and I did a podcast
Speaker 2: about the New South Wales government wanting to implement something
Speaker 2: similar and at the time there was a lot of
Speaker 2: talk about how it could reinviger rate Sydney's CBD. That's
Speaker 2: because at the time some businesses were saying that they'd
Speaker 2: lost up to twenty five percent of profit on Fridays
Speaker 2: compared to pre pandemic levels. It's because the after work
Speaker 2: bev Regino was not happening. When you're working from home,
Speaker 2: you're not going into the city and things like office
Speaker 2: spaces were becoming vacant at a rapid rate. And so
Speaker 2: that really dominated a lot of the announcement as to
Speaker 2: why the New South Wales government wanted New South Wales
Speaker 2: public servants back into the office.
Speaker 3: And obviously that comes from you know, business groups and
Speaker 3: the businesses in the city who not just want the
Speaker 3: drinks after work, but the coffee in the morning and
Speaker 3: the cleaning of offices. I mean, so many businesses attached exactly.
Speaker 2: But I guess for the federal government there's different jurisdiction,
Speaker 2: there's different kind of things that they have power over,
Speaker 2: and labor has as I said, kind of whittled it
Speaker 2: down to these two key areas of criticism.
Speaker 3: And I think what's really interesting about having this debate
Speaker 3: as an election topic, it sounds like, is that there
Speaker 3: is for most people point to relate to it really closely. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean this is a discussion about setting the tone
Speaker 3: of how government sees flexible work. I mean, it just
Speaker 3: affects public servants at the moment, But.
Speaker 2: I mean public servants a kind of the only workers
Speaker 2: who can be affected by a government ruling like this
Speaker 2: if you were for a private company and it's come
Speaker 2: down from your private company, not from the government. But
Speaker 2: you're right, it's a really interesting tone and precedent.
Speaker 3: And we've previously pulled our audience on this topic. What
Speaker 3: was the response like from TDA readers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we asked them, I believe when the new
Speaker 2: South Wales government announcement was first tabled, and at the time,
Speaker 2: ninety percent of respondents to our pole said that office
Speaker 2: policies should be hybrid so that they allow for both
Speaker 2: work from home and in the office, which is as
Speaker 2: we know what happens in most workplaces now. Only six
Speaker 2: percent of respondents said office policies should be a mandate
Speaker 2: to work in the office full time. It's quite a
Speaker 2: low percentage there. We then also went on to ask
Speaker 2: them if they would reconsider working for a company if
Speaker 2: they were required to always be in the office, and
Speaker 2: around sixty percent said that they would reconsider it, And
Speaker 2: so I think these are interesting numbers to keep in
Speaker 2: mind if the coalition, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: ifs here but if the coalition does win the next
Speaker 2: election and then does follow through on this election commitment,
Speaker 2: I do think that trying to understand how the public
Speaker 2: service both attracts and retains young staff will be really
Speaker 2: really interesting.
Speaker 3: That's a very interesting way for a lot of people
Speaker 3: to have a touch point with this election. I mean,
Speaker 3: as you just said, this is just about the public service.
Speaker 3: But if sixty percent of people responding to a poll
Speaker 3: are going to reconsider their jobs, if they're told to
Speaker 3: work from the office every day, then a lot of
Speaker 3: private businesses will be looking at the tone that's set
Speaker 3: in this discussion as well and the views that come
Speaker 3: out on this topic.
Speaker 2: Of course, and it must be said that young people
Speaker 2: have a different perspective on this. You know. We a
Speaker 2: lot of us entered the workforce for the first time
Speaker 2: around COVID and I don't really know anything else. So
Speaker 2: there's lots of layers to this, lots of nuance and
Speaker 2: definitely one to keep an eye on.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Sarah. We are certainly getting into
Speaker 3: election territory now that we're starting to break down these
Speaker 3: kind of foreign against on some big issues. We'll be
Speaker 3: back again with some headlines in the afternoon. Until then,
Speaker 3: have a fantastic day if you're working from home or
Speaker 3: at work. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a
Speaker 3: proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalkutin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily
Speaker 3: oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands
Speaker 3: of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
Speaker 3: and Torres Strait island and nations. We pay our respects
Speaker 3: to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.