Having rowed back on his flexible work policy for the Australian Public Service at the weekend – announcing it would only target Canberra-based government employees – Peter Dutton has said current APS WFH arrangements would remain in place.
The opposition leader has also pivoted away from the proposal to slash the APS sector by 41,000 workers. Pledging there would be no forced redundancies, Dutton said numbers would decrease over a period of five years through a hiring freeze and natural attrition instead. “We made a mistake in relation to the policy, we apologise for that,” he told media Monday.
The announcement prompted the Community and Public Sector Union to warn that Dutton’s latest plan will have “a devastating and uneven impact” across the sector. “In fact, cutting public services by attrition and implementing a hiring freeze could lead to public sector cuts that are significantly higher than 41,000,” CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said.
“Peter Dutton hasn’t backed down on his cuts to public services, he’s doubled down,” Donnelly added. “Cutting public services by attrition is not a strategy – it’s a ticking time bomb. These are uncontrolled, uneven cuts that will hurt the public sector and have a disproportionate impact on frontline services.”
Dutton’s ever-changing stance on APS reform is as dizzying as the moves of a swirling dervish. Unsurprisingly, response to the latest announcement has been met with scepticism. “Nobody believes Peter Dutton has changed his mind,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “He will rip up flexible work and slash the services you rely on the minute he gets the chance.”
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher also expressed cynicism on ABC Radio. “[The Coalition] has been campaigning against additional investment in the public service for the last term. They’ve argued every investment we’ve put.” she said. “They’ve called it wasteful … And working from home, they said they wanted to abolish it and frog march everybody back into the office.”
Speaking Saturday at a campaign event in Darwin, Dutton said the WFH policy would only apply to Canberra-based government employees. “The policy doesn’t affect anybody except for public servants in Canberra.” Although, originally, Dutton said the policy required all members of the APS to work from a government office five days a week.
Dutton’s WFH policy has drawn relentless criticism from the CPSU over recent weeks. Hybrid working arrangements “are positive and productive”, Donnelly said – especially for women. “The ability to be flexible about when and where they are working is helping them to keep their heads above water. The reality is that flexible work is helping women increase their working hours, with benefits for both them and their families, as well as increased productivity.”
And it’s not just women who benefit from working from home, added Donnelly. “Flexibility has opened the doors of employment to people who have otherwise been shut out, including people with disability and people from regional and rural Australia.”
Seizing a political advantage, Anthony Albanese also came out in support of public servants working from home. “We know that working from home has had a range of advantages,’’ the prime minister said. “It has meant, for working families, where both parents are working, they’re able to deal with those issues of working from home – it’s enabled them to work full-time and it has increased workforce participation, particularly for women.”
Labor further attacked Dutton’s policy by releasing figures that show women would be financially penalised if they were unable to work from home. “Peter Dutton’s outdated plan to end work from home will leave women thousands of dollars a year worse off,” Gallagher said. Indeed, the released data shows women would lose $38,000 annually.
These cuts will be devastating to South Australia
In response to Dutton’s about face on cuts to the APS, South Australian Greens Senator Barbara Pocock warned voters not to be fooled by Dutton’s rhetoric. “He still aims to cut 41,000 government jobs that provide vital services to the Australian community. He just plans to do it slowly. The impact will be the same, a reduced capacity across all government departments and frontline agencies,” she said.
Figures released by the Greens reveal that if the cuts were to happen SA public servants would be most vulnerable to the cull. Analysis suggests 3,700 APS workers would lose their jobs under the proposal – or one in four SA-based public servants.
According to the figures released by the Greens the largest losses would come from:
- the National Disability Insurance Agency – 441
- Services Australia – 290
- Australian Taxation Office – 278
- Veterans Affairs – 258
- Home Affairs – 245.
“These cuts will be devastating to South Australia,” Pocock said. “Make no mistake, Peter Dutton will cut a swathe through the APS workforce across all the key service delivery agencies including Defence where almost 10 per cent of SA-based non-military jobs are set to go. Almost 70 per cent of federal health and aged care jobs will go, over 60 per cent of jobs at Veterans’ Affairs and more than half the current staff at the NDIA face the chop under a Dutton government.”
Pocock added: “For Peter Dutton to threaten the jobs of so many South Australians sends a strong message to the electorate that he does not care about APS workers or the vital services they provide.”
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