Gallagher says forcing employees back to the office ‘a step in the wrong direction’, particularly for women, as opposition’s plan to cut public service remains unclear

 

Labor accuses ‘policy-lazy’ Dutton of copying Trump as Coalition pushes to end WFH for public servants

BY Josh Butler

 

Anthony Albanese has accused Peter Dutton of “lazy” ideas and borrowing policy from Donald Trump after the Coalition pledged to end public servants working from home, a reform the nation’s workplace equality commissioner says could affect the gender pay gap.

The opposition has refused to say how it would seek to cut the 36,000 Australian Public Service workers Dutton promised to remove, withconflicting answers from senior Coalition MPs. But Dutton on Tuesday appeared to suggest some cuts could come from the health and education departments. He again committed to not sacking “frontline” workers, following his proposal last week to cut all public servants Labor has employed since coming to office, and use the savings to pay for Medicare boosts.

Jane Hume, the shadow minister for finance and the public service, said in a Monday night speech that the Coalition sought to “bring our public servants back to work”, and it would be “an expectation of a Dutton Liberal government that all members of the APS work from the office five days a week”.

The public service minister, Katy Gallagher, claimed on Tuesday that most of the Coalition’s policy platform was “stolen from the United States”, referencing Trump’s push to end work-from-home arrangements and slash the American public service, along with further US plans for nuclear power stations. Gallagher, who is also the minister for women, announced new figures from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) showing nearly three-quarters of all Australian employers had a gender pay gap favouring men, with women earning on average $28,425 less than their male counterparts in the last year.

She said working-from-home arrangements helped families juggle home and work life.

“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.

Albanese, in a Tuesday press conference, also tied the Coalition announcement to Trump.

“We don’t have to adopt all of America’s policies,” the prime minister said.

“[Dutton] is so policy-lazy, him and his team – if they hear something on the news, an announcement from overseas about sacking public servants, or people working from home, or DEI, the dreaded inclusion policy they’re so worried about, they say, ‘yeah, I’ll have some of that’.”

Appearing with Gallagher at a separate press conference, WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge declined to comment specifically on any party’s policies, but said work-from-home arrangements had broader benefits for families.

“Workplace flexibility is an important enabler for particularly women, but anyone who has parental and caring responsibilities, to be able to balance competing responsibilities” she said.

“There is no doubt that enhanced flexible working arrangements [enhance] access to participation in the workforce and to working at the highest possible level to contribute both to the workplace and the economy as a whole.”

On Tuesday, Dutton defended the opposition’s push, denying it would have an outsized impact on women, and pledging a “commonsense approach” to curbing work-from-home arrangements.

“It doesn’t discriminate against people on the basis of gender,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/04/labor-accusation-dutton-trump-policies-wfh-katy-gallagher

 

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