Canberra: Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has scrapped its contentious plan to require public servants to return to the office full-time, walking back a central policy position just weeks ahead of the national election scheduled for May 3.
The policy reversal comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party gains ground in recent opinion polls, particularly in outer metropolitan swing seats where cost-of-living pressures remain a major concern.
The return-to-office mandate, announced last month, had aimed to boost workplace productivity by ending remote work for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. However, the move quickly became a flashpoint in the election campaign.
“We’ve made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologise for that. And we’ve dealt with it,” Liberal leader Peter Dutton acknowledged in an interview with Channel Nine on Monday.
Dutton’s remarks about potential job-sharing arrangements for women affected by the full-time office return drew sharp criticism from Labor.
“Peter Dutton wants to undermine work rights and in particular doesn’t understand modern families, doesn’t understand the important role that women and men play in organising their families,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday.
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The Liberal-led centre-right coalition and Labor remain neck-and-neck in national polling, with voters in the outer suburbs expected to play a decisive role. These areas, heavily impacted by inflation and economic pressures, showed a slight shift toward Labor following the Liberal Party’s original announcement on work-from-home restrictions, according to polling conducted by YouGov.
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Labor, which was trailing earlier this year when preferences from smaller parties were factored in, has now edged ahead in the last three national opinion polls, suggesting the opposition’s policy misstep may have cost them critical momentum.
