Coalition abandons ‘end’ to work from home, walks back 41,000 job cuts

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has apologised for a demand to end work from home arrangements for public servants. Mr Dutton confirmed the policy has been abandoned while in Adeliade this morning, where he faces a grilling on the about face.

Transcript

00:00Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has admitted it was a mistake for the Coalition to demand

00:08all public servants return to the office five days a week, with limited exceptions.

00:13Peter Dutton this morning confirming that policy was dead, as well as confirming that

00:18forced redundancies would not be applied in order to achieve the Coalition's goal of reducing

00:23public service headcount by 41,000 people.

00:26Instead, that will be achieved through a hiring freeze and natural attrition.

00:31He's just faced a round of questioning from the press pack here in Adelaide over this

00:37backflip and it was a pretty relentless round of questioning from the press, but Mr Dutton

00:43managed to evade some of the tougher questions quite well, suggesting that the Coalition

00:49had costed this policy, had modelled it with the Parliamentary Budget Office and was confident

00:54it could still achieve its 41,000 staff headcount reduction goal.

01:00Mr Dutton also defending questions over whether the Coalition had received internal polling

01:06suggesting its policy was unfavourable to women, saying that the Coalition was prepared

01:13to acknowledge a mistake had been made and now would move on.

01:16We've made our announcement that we got the policy wrong in that regard and we've made

01:19it clear now our position.

01:21Now Labor will continue to lie about it and run scare campaigns, but I think every Australian

01:25should hear that at the next election there's a choice about who is best able to manage

01:29the economy, who can most efficiently spend taxpayers' money.

01:33Well look, Mr Dutton would have been bracing for a pretty unfavourable round of questioning

01:38this morning, but the party has made a decision to rip off the Band-Aid on this one week into

01:44the federal election campaign, with polling in recent days suggesting it was a pretty

01:49unpopular policy among voters and that Peter Dutton's favourability had taken a direct

01:55hit as a consequence.

01:57The Coalition is also aware that this is in practical terms a shorter campaign than usual,

02:01with school holidays beginning shortly, the Easter long weekend and Anzac Day long weekends

02:07on the horizon.

02:09Better to clear the air now and get some more oxygen for campaigning on the issues the Coalition

02:14wants to talk about down the road.

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