A coalition proposal to ban public servants working from home would be a greater disadvantage to women, a federal minister says.

Federal public servants would be required to work five days per week in the office, should the coalition win the next election. It’s a move the prime minister described as being copied from Donald Trump’s playbook.

The opposition’s finance spokeswoman Jane Hume, who outlined the coalition’s proposal in a speech on Monday night, said work-from-home arrangements had made parts of the public sector ineffective.

“While work-from-home arrangements can work, in the case of the Australian public service, it has become a right that is creating inefficiency,” she said in the speech.

“Work-from-home arrangements for public servants should only be in place when the arrangements work for the employee’s department, their team and the individual.

“This isn’t controversial.”

The latest employee census of federal public servants found 61 per cent work from home at least part of the week.

But Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher said moves to ban working from home would have a greater drawback for women.

“The opposition have no idea about how modern working families operate. Working from home arrangements are a part of private and public sector workplaces in the modern age,” she told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“I’ve been told by supervisors … if they weren’t able to provide flexible working arrangements, or working from home arrangements some of the time for their employees, they wouldn’t have been able to recruit positions.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the approach to public servants from the coalition was copying the Trump administration in the US.

“We don’t have to adopt all of America’s policies. What we have here from Peter Dutton is: he’s so policy lazy, him and his team,” Mr Albanese told reporters in Sydney.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said people not wanting to go back to the office in the public sector was unacceptable.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable that people like in many other workplaces are asked to go back to work for face-to-face contact and that’s exactly what will happen if there is a change of government after the election,” he told reporters in Brisbane.

“We need an efficient delivery of government services.”

Mr Dutton denied the working-from-home ban would disproportionately affect women.

“It doesn’t discriminate against people on the basis of gender. It is for (all)  public servants … we are not going to shy away from this, this is taxpayer money,” Mr Dutton said.

A proposed ban would wind back the rights of many workers, ACTU president Michele O’Neil said.

“Ending work-from-home arrangements in this Trump copy-cat plan is really an attack on flexible work arrangements and it will hurt working women the most,” she said.

“Flexibility around where you work is helping 36 per cent of Australians balance busy lives and earn more money.”

Andrew Brown
(Australian Associated Press)