Interview with Warwick Long, ABC Melbourne Drive

4 March 2025

WARWICK LONG: If you're a public servant, you can give me a call and tell me what you think about this. The Federal Coalition is vowing to force you to go back into the office if they win the election. Jane Hume is the Shadow Finance Minister and a Liberal Senator for Victoria, has been out talking about this today. Welcome to the program.

JANE HUME: Great to be with you. Warwick.

WARWICK LONG: So what is the plan here?

JANE HUME: So the plan is using existing frameworks that it will be an expectation of a Dutton coalition government, that Australian public servants will move towards returning to work five days a week from the office. Now that is not banning work from home. It's not banning flexible working arrangements. Of course, exceptions can and will be made…

WARWICK LONG: Telling to people to work from home for five days, is banning work from home, isn't it? Or are they going to work six days? So they can have one day off?

JANE HUME: There’s an expectation that as a default, if you accept a job with the public service, that it is done within an office. Now, exceptions will be made, you know, but it has to work not just for the individual. It has to work for the team, and it has to work for the department, and we'll look to commence that this change as soon as possible, but of course, we will respect the existing agreements that the government has already put in place. It's simply a common sense policy that's about instilling a culture that focuses on the dignity of serving the public, the service that relies on the public to fund it, there is a taxpayer expectation that the public service that it employs will be delivering a productive public service.

WARWICK LONG: So what is the argument that work from home is not as good as working from the office? Is it about efficiency?

JANE HUME: So there is certainly that. You know, I was speaking to a very senior official just last week in Senate Estimates, who said that while she couldn't tell me the data about how many people in her department worked from home, she could say that she personally was more productive when she was working from home, and that's fine and terrific. But what about her team? Is her team more productive when she works from home? Are the younger people in the office learning from her while she's working from home. Are they getting that coaching, that one on one time with their supervisors? That doesn't seem to be to be adequate at the moment, and we want to improve public service capability, but that is done through collaboration. Now, if it works for the team, if it works for the department, of course there should be flexible working arrangements. We want to make sure that we have an attractive and appropriate and flexible public service. But as a default, it should be an expectation that you work from the office. And understand too Warwick, there are lots of frontline workers that don't have the option to work from home. It's that you know that mid tier office workers that seem to be spending an awful lot of time away from the office. Now it's about 61% of the Canberra public service that have worked from home arrangements. It used to be 22% prior to the pandemic, 61% now.

WARWICK LONG: Jane Hume is with you, the Shadow Finance Minister and a Liberal Party Senator for Victoria, Katy Gallagher, from the Government, though, says this will adversely affect working women. Here's her speaking to RN today.

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KATY GALLAGHER: They clearly have no idea about how working families manage modern life. I mean, across the economy, working from home, arrangements are in place. They are a feature of modern workplaces. And so 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.

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WARWICK LONG: Does this adversely affect one gender that's working in the public service now?

JANE HUME: No, well, we disagree entirely that it's only women that have work from home arrangements. This isn't a gender specific policy. It's a policy that applies to the whole workforce, and that's why we continue to have flexibility available.

WARWICK LONG: Does it adversely affect one gender worse than the other?

JANE HUME: No. Well, it's certainly not intended to. There are all genders use work from home arrangements. And look, this is not an unusual request. It's not shouldn't be controversial. Large companies like national banks or Commonwealth Bank or Flight Center or Coles, they've all told their staff to return to the office. Even the New South Wales public service have done that. Why is it so exceptional that the Australian Public Service shouldn't have the same rules? Now let's be very clear, the Department Secretaries Board, along with the Australian Public Service Commissioner in 2023 agreed on flexible working from home arrangements that work for everybody. It was a guideline that was established then it was the new enterprise bargaining agreements that were negotiated by the Community and Public Sector Union and Katy Gallagher as the Finance Minister, that made working from home for public servants a right, rather than an arrangement.

WARWICK LONG: That's the bit that you want to scrap if you win government.

JANE HUME: Well, it's unsustainable. It's unsustainable. There are plenty of public servants that know that the system that they've got at the moment isn't working. So for instance, there was one story where a public servant told us that somebody in their team who was working from home full time was unreliable, very difficult to get hold of. Now, it ends out, but the reason for that was because that public servant was traveling around Australia in a camper van with their family. That's their idea of working from home. Another stakeholder told us…

WARWICK LONG: Do you change the rules to one bad story, though, is it one bad story enough to make a blanket rule?

JANE HUME: I’m giving you an example here Warwick. There was another story where an organisation told us that they had gone into a department to give a presentation to that department, to the public service. They had their flip charts ready to go. They'd done their photocopies of handouts. They were shown into a meeting room, and all the public servants appeared on a screen. They were all working from home. People had turned up to Canberra specifically for this meeting, only to find that there was no one in the office to meet with them. Now I don't think that that meets the expectation of the taxpayer that is funding the public service. Moreover, we've actually seen an expansion of the size of the public service…

WARWICK LONG (interrupts): And you're planning on cutting that to service…

JANE HUME: …but not an improvement in the service. We want to see an improvement in the service.

WARWICK LONG (interrupts): And how will you judge that?

JANE HUME: Well, I can tell you, there are plenty of metrics. Here's a good example. Wait times for getting an age pension have blown out by, I think now, about 45 days to get a low income card. It has blown out five times. The wait time has blown out five times. If you go on to the the parenting and families helpline, there's an hour long wait that's just crazy. Again, the Department of Energy and Climate, Energy and Environment, you know, we've seen that that's almost doubled in size, and yet emissions have gone up, and approval time for environmental approvals have blown out. And of course, the Health Department that's increased by 40% but bulk billing times have collapsed.

WARWICK LONG (interrupts): So you have metrics?

JANE HUME: A bigger public service is not necessarily a better service to the public. We want to make sure that we deliver on the expectations of taxpayer an efficient and effective public service that works for everyone.

WARWICK LONG: I take your point in terms of that you have metrics that you will look at if you win government, despite if you cut the public service or you change the rules on how they can do their work, you can measure it against Jane Hume’s with you, the Shadow Minister and a Liberal Senator for Victoria, speaking about this plan from the opposition and what they'll take to the election around the productiveness of the public service. The idea of ending work from home, a lot of people are comparing to a similar decision that was made by the Trump administration with an executive order signed by the new President of the United States, Donald Trump. Is that where this idea has come from Jane Hume?

JANE HUME: No, I mean, look, we don't sign executive orders. This has been something that we've been speaking about for a…

WARWICK LONG (interrupts): But it’s a similar policy isn’t it?

JANE HUME: …considerable period of time. I've been asking questions of the public service for three years now, in Senate Estimates, but the idea that somehow in 2019, 22% of the public service worked from home at least part of the time, that that had increased to 53% during COVID, and it's now 61 three years after a pandemic. That just doesn't sound right.

WARWICK LONG: So you're not copying Donald Trump?

JANE HUME: No we’re not copying Donald Trump. This is an Australian policy for an efficient and effective Australian Public Service.

WARWICK LONG: And what if this doesn't work? What if you do not have a more efficient public service after you, if you win government, you make a decision like this, will you review it? Are you open to changing your mind?

JANE HUME: The responsibility of the government is to deliver to all Australians on the promises that it makes and the policies that it considers. So, of course, an effective and efficient public service is going to be a priority. We can't deliver without it, and we want to make sure that we can, we can do everything that we possibly can, whether it be through technology, whether it be through manpower, making sure that they're appropriately resourced, but also that there is an awareness that every dollar that a tax that a politician spends, or public service spends, is $1 that somebody else has earned. It's taxpayer money, and there needs to be a respect for that when we see profligacy and waste well, that drives everybody mad. You know,

WARWICK LONG: So is allowing someone to work from home, wasting that dollar that someone's earned?

JANE HUME: Well, let me give you an example. So last week, we learned that there had been a desk manufactured in house by the public service for one public servant that cost $20,000 now that's crazy. That's actually about the average tax that the average Australian pays each year, and it was spent by one on one desk for one public service.

WARWICK LONG: The public servants might need to manufacture a lot more desks if you make them all work from the office Jane.

JANE HUME: Plenty of empty desks and empty offices in there already. We want to bring people back to the office and solve all the problems of the nation. There's some great problem solvers, great people that work for the public service, come back to the office with me and solve those problems.

WARWICK LONG: Thanks very much for your time. Good on you. Finance Minister Liberal Senator for Victoria, Jane Hume speaking there.