Dutton says women in public service could consider job-sharing arrangements as alternative
Ordering employees back onsite does not discriminate based on gender, according to Coalition leader Peter Dutton, as they seek to end working from home for Australia's public servants.
Dutton rejected claims that office-return policies would disadvantage women in the workplace, ABC News reported.
"It doesn't discriminate against people on the basis of gender. It is for public servants. It doesn't have an impact, and we are not going to shy away from the fact that this is taxpayer money," Dutton said as quoted by the news outlet.
"I want to ensure we have an efficient public service."
The opposition leader also said that women who could not be in the office five days a week had "plenty of job sharing arrangements".
Dutton made the remarks as the party promises to end remote work for public servants in Australia if they get elected in May.
"Our desire is to get public servants who are, at the moment, refusing to go back to work … and that is not acceptable," he said as quoted by ABC News.
"There will be a commonsense approach as there always has been, but I am not going to tolerate a position where taxpayers are working harder than ever to pay their own bills and they're seeing public servants in Canberra refuse to go to work."
But unions called out the Coalition's proposal as an attempt to copy US President Donald Trump, who made full-time office return for federal employees one of his first orders as president.
"Ending work-from-home arrangements in this Trump copycat plan is really an attack on flexible work arrangements and it will hurt working women the most," said Michele O'Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, in a statement.
According to O'Neil, flexibility around where to work is helping 36% of Australians juggle between their personal life and earning money.
"If this enables a woman working in Services Australia in Goulburn, Townsville, Nowra or Perth to work full time and provide for her family, then the Coalition should support that instead of mindlessly following whatever Trump is doing," O'Neil said.
Melissa Donnelly, national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, called the unveiled office-return policy as the "latest attack from Peter Dutton and the Coalition on the public sector."
"Research has shown that working from home increases productivity. It also supports people to work more hours, earn more money, and balance things like caring responsibilities for little kids and ageing parents," Donnelly said in a statement.
"The last thing workers need in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis is Peter Dutton coming in and swinging an axe [at] their working rights and conditions. He should be supporting women to stay in the workforce not making it harder."
