Interview with Nadia Mitsopoulos, ABC Perth

4 March 2025

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: I want to go to Liberal Senator Jane Hume, who is the Opposition Spokesperson for Finance and the Public Service. Senator, good morning.

JANE HUME: Good morning Nadia, great to be with you. Let me just correct you. We're not scrapping work from home. I should be very, very clear. Arrangements can still be in place, but they have to work not just for the individual. They have to work for the department. They have to work for their teams as well and that shouldn't be a surprise. That's just a common sense approach.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Okay, well, let's talk through the plan. What are you proposing exactly?

JANE HUME: So, at the moment, in fact, let's go back a step in, back in 2019 about 22% of the Australian Public Service respondents to a census said that they were working from the office, working from home, I should say, at least part of the time, that obviously increased dramatically during COVID and you would expect that to be the case, it went up to about 50% during 2020 up to 55% in 2022. The problem is three years later, it's now at 61% and when I asked a very senior official just last week at Senate Estimates, what the working at home arrangements were for her department. A, she couldn't give me the data, which was bewildering. But B, she said, when I work from home, I know I'm more productive. Well, that's fine, but what about your team? What about the people that work for you? Are they getting that one on one time with you? Are they networking? Are they getting the coaching? Are they being more productive? And I think that's where the concern really is. There was one bewildering example that was given to me where a public servant approached my office and said that they had someone in their team that was working from home, full time, but was very difficult to contact, and in fact, was entirely unreliable. It turns out that that person was caravanning around Australia with their family while working from home in inverted commas. I don't think that's what people expect from their public service.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Are you using just a couple of extreme examples there, though, because to be clear, what data are you using? Using ABS figures or what?

JANE HUME: Well, this is coming from the employee survey of the Australian Public Service themselves. So we know that this is happening, but yes, some of these examples are extreme, but you can see why it's also inappropriate. Now look, there will always be circumstances where working from home is appropriate, but it has to be negotiated between the individual and the team and the department, because Australians expect and deserve a world class public service, but that's not what they're getting right now. We want the public service, who are great problem solvers, to come back to the office and help solve some of the big issues that are facing Australians right now. There are plenty of challenges out there, but we need everybody on deck to do the job.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And you say it can be unproductive, you also say it's unsustainable. Why?

JANE HUME: Well, it's very expensive, and we have now 36,000 new public servants just in the last three years alone. But I don't think you'd find too many Australians that fuel 36,000 public servants better served than they were. For instance, we've seen a 40% increase in the size of the Department of Health, Federal Department of Health, and yet bulk billing rates have collapsed. We've seen almost a doubling of the size of the Department of Energy and Environment and Water. But we know that approval times for environmental approvals have blown out and of course, emissions have gone up and even Services Australia that have had thousands of people added to their ranks, we've seen it take longer to get an age pension, longer to get a low income card.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS (INTERRUPTS): You can't say that's because of, well, but what proof do you have that that is a result of working from home?

JANE HUME: Well, there's plenty of studies out there that demonstrate that working from home actually decreases productivity rather than increases productivity. Now that is not uniform. There is always going to be a place for this, but the problem is the current government have embedded a right into enterprise agreements for individuals to demand the right to work from home. Now, that cannot work for everybody and in fact, Department Secretaries, through the Secretaries Board and the Australian Public Service Commission, just as recently as 2023 developed a very common sense approach to this that said working from home arrangements should exist, but they should exist, being through negotiations with individuals, with departments, with teams to make sure that we're getting the best out of our public service.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: The government, in response to this, this morning, Senator has said that your policy is not reflective of the modern workplace and a step in the wrong direction for working parents. What do you, how do you respond to that?

JANE HUME: Well, actually, that's not the case, particularly because, you know, let's face it, there are plenty of companies around Australia right now that are asking exactly this of their employees, whether it be National Australia Bank or Westpac or, you know, Amazon. There are plenty of companies out there that are saying it's time to come back to the workplace, because that's where we are most productive. But more than that, it's about building that next generation of talent too, because if your boss is working from home, well how do you expect to learn by watching? Learn by observation. It's simply about making sure that we are developing the best public service that we possibly can. This is not something that is, you know, detrimental to women, far from it. We want to make sure that there is workplace flexibility there, but the idea that it is a right to demand to work from home, regardless of what it is that is best for your team, regardless of what it's best for your department. Well, that's unsustainable.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: I’ll leave it there. We're heading towards the news. Thank you for your time. Now, that's Liberal Senator Jane Hume.