Coalition calls for APS to return to office

The Coalition’s pledge to end work-from-home arrangements for government employees has been met with backlash from political opponents, who say it will unfairly disadvantage women.

“Some departments tell stakeholders to avoid meetings on Mondays or Fridays as no one is in the office,” shadow finance minister Jane Hume wrote for The Australian Financial Review.

“However, the Albanese Labor government has ignored this and given public servants a blank cheque to work from home.

“Using existing frameworks, it will be an expectation of a Dutton Coalition government that the APS will move towards returning to working five days a week from the office.”

While most federal agencies have work-from-office mandates of two to three days, according to reporting by the Financial Review, the change would encourage all federal workers to return to the office for five days a week.

Flexible work arrangements are currently protected under the Fair Work Ombudsman for certain groups, including parents of young children, carers and people with disabilities. Employers can only refuse a request on reasonable business grounds.

Critics have said that this policy shift would unfairly target women with caring responsibilities, who have seen increased workforce participation following the widespread adoption of flexible work practices.

“This policy would wind back productivity gains and labour supply in the public service and undermine decades of progress on economic equality for women,” Greens senator Barbara Pocock said in a release.

“Let’s face it, most of the caring responsibilities for families still falls on women which means that women need access to flexible work arrangements including working from home in order to participate in the workforce.”

Workforce participation jumped 9 percentage points for women with young children from 2019 to 2023 in jobs where employees can work from home, as flexible work arrangements became the norm, according to data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.

“The growth and acceptance of WFH and hybrid work have clearly helped overcome barriers that previously made it harder for these groups to participate in the labour market,” CEDA wrote alongside its analysis of HILDA data.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) found that flexible work is key to workplace gender equality, as it supports those with outsized caring responsibilities.

Women in Australia perform more unpaid care activities than men across all age groups, OECD analysis found. Differences are most stark in the 35-44 age group, where women spend 9.5 hours per day on unpaid care activities, compared to 5.5 hours for men.

“Employers who promote quality flexible work for all staff and at all levels of the organisation enable more equitable division of paid and unpaid responsibilities between women and men, and more equitable workforce participation and career progression, both of which can lead to reduced gender pay gaps,” the WGEA said in a policy guide.

The latest WGEA data showed that, despite progress on closing the gender pay gap, men’s average base wages remain 16.7 per cent higher than women’s.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the APS return-to-work mandate is not intended to disadvantage women.

"It doesn't discriminate against people on the basis of gender. It is for public servants. It doesn't have an impact, and we are not going to shy away from the fact that this is taxpayer money," Dutton said, ABC News reported.

"I want to ensure we have an efficient public service."

He added that, for women who could not return to the office for five days a week, there would be "plenty of job sharing arrangements.”

2024 APS data showed that approximately 60 per cent of APS employees are women.

Jane Hume said remote work arrangements had negative impacts on productivity and employee collaboration.

She referenced reports consolidated by Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) in a speech to the Menzies Research Institute, including one which found productivity fell by 20 per cent after work-from-home arrangements were put in place.

A 2025 research summary by SIEPR highlighted some evidence that remote work had a negative effect on productivity through its impacts on teamwork, collaboration and mentoring. However, other included studies found that remote work had neutral or positive effects on productivity performance.

One SIEPR report found that while fully remote work is associated with 10 per cent lower productivity than fully in-person work, “hybrid working appears to have no impact on productivity but is also popular with firms because it improves employee recruitment and retention.”

The summary concluded that there was no simple positive or negative relationship between working from home and productivity.

Critics have called the policy a copycat plan of US President Donald Trump, saying it mirrored his attack on the public service.

“The Coalition is blindly following US President Trump’s lead on workplace priorities,” said the Community and Public Sector Union.

Labor’s Minister for Public Service, Katy Gallagher, also opposed the Coalition’s proposal.

“I would see this announcement – if you can call it that – from the opposition, as certainly a step in the wrong direction for working women,” she told ABC radio.