Interview with Tom Elliott, 3AW Mornings

4 March 2025

TOM ELLIOTT: Working from home, the opposition, the Federal Opposition, led by Peter Dutton, has said, if they're elected at the upcoming federal election, as the new government of Australia, they will force federal public servants to go back to the office five days a week. Our next guest is a Senator, she's also the Shadow Minister for Finance and Shadow Minister for the Public Service. Jane Hume, good morning.

JANE HUME: Good morning Tom, great to be with you.

TOM ELLIOTT: Well, first, I mean, let's just pretend I'm a public servant, I'm not. Why is it better for me to go back to work five days a week in the office?

JANE HUME: Well, we know that public servants do so much better when they work in teams, when they can talk to each other, when they have that one on one interaction with meetings with supervisors, time networking, it really helps bring up that next generation of public servants, so that we maintain the skills and the quality of delivery of service within the public service that's so important. Now, last week, when we were at Senate Estimates, I asked one very senior public servant about the rates of staff working from home. They couldn't tell me how many people were working from home in their own department, which was bewildering in the first place, but they said to me that they thought that their own experience, that they were the most productive working from home. But what about their team? This is really the issue. Is the team the most productive while their boss is working from home? Do they get the leadership and the guidance they need? Are they appropriately mentored? Are they appropriately acknowledged? And every report, every academic study that's coming from overseas in particular, show us that productivity is declining because people are working from home.

TOM ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think a lot of the time, when people talk about their improved productivity, what they mean is they can get more of their personal tasks done, like cooking dinner or doing the washing or mowing the lawn, but less of work. Tell me, do the vast bulk of federal public public servants live and work in Canberra?

JANE HUME: Well, a lot do, some live in state, of course, but that doesn't matter. There's still office space for these people. In fact, in 2019 about 22% of APS employees worked away from home, some of the time away from the office, some of the time. Now, obviously that went up during the pandemic. We know that it went up to around 50% then 53% in 2022 but it's now three years after the pandemic, at 61% so something's gone pretty horribly, terribly wrong here, and our concern is that we want to see the APS move towards returning back to the work, workplace five days a week from the office. Now, obviously exceptions will be made. There are always going to be exceptions, but they have to be worked out with your team and with your department. It can't be the right of an individual to demand to work from home.

TOM ELLIOTT: But aren't you going to have a problem there? Because, as I understand it, the last enterprise bargaining agreement that was done with the Federal Public Service basically enshrined the right to work from home, something which, as you point out, 61% of them do every week. So, won’t you have a battle on your hands to force all those people to come back to the office?

JANE HUME: Well, we have said we won't be overriding any existing enterprise bargaining agreements, of course, but this is a common sense policy that's going to instill that culture that focuses on the dignity of serving the public, and let's face it, it's a service that relies on the public to fund it, back into our system. So, it will happen progressively, but we would expect that departments and department secretaries and senior officials would get on board pretty quickly.

TOM ELLIOTT: But if you don't make it compulsory, they'll just be able to point to their employment agreement and say, well, you know, it's not compulsory. It says here, black and white, I can work from home if I choose, so that's what I'm going to do.

JANE HUME: Well, that was the decision of this government. In fact, there was a guideline that was worked out and agreed by the Secretaries Board, so all the Secretaries of Departments and in conjunction with the Australian Public Service Commission, just in 2023, so it was under this government that these arrangements made, where there could be arrangements put in place that would allow people to work from home, but it had to be worked out with between the team and the department and the individual. It was actually the Community and Public Service Sector Union working with Labor that gave that, you know, gave birth to an enterprise agreement that gave people the right to demand to work from home, not an arrangement that works for everyone.

TOM ELLIOTT: So will you, will you reverse that right? Will you do a new enterprise bargaining agreement, which says you no longer have that right, except in exceptional circumstances?

JANE HUME: Well, we have we're not going to override current agreements, but where there's an agreement already in place, but this policy will certainly apply to future agreements, and those agreements do have time limits.

TOM ELLIOTT: Let's just say you do a new agreement, and it does force the public servants back into the office five days a week. As taxpayers, will we notice any difference? Like will it seem different to us?

JANE HUME: I would hope so. Because, as you know, we've seen an extraordinary growth in the size of the public service. In fact, a 20% increase in the size of public service just in the last three years, about an additional 36,000 new public servants, but I'm not entirely sure Australians feel 36,000 new public servants better served. We've seen things like wait times to get an age pension or low income card blow out, even though the number of new public servants in Services Australia has increased. We've seen things like almost a doubling of the size of the Department of Environment and Water and Energy, but emissions have gone up and approval times have blown out too. So, just because you've got a bigger public service doesn't mean you have a better public service or a better service to the public. We want to make sure that improves. Productivity is so important, both in the public sector as well as the private sector, and that's what a Coalition Government will be driving.

TOM ELLIOTT: All right. Well, good luck with it. Jane Hume there, Shadow Minister for Finance and Shadow Minister for the Public Service.