Australia election 2025 live: Coalition backflips on working from home policy and public service cuts in major campaign reset

Shadow finance minister Jane Hume says the Coalition will “enshrine” workplace flexibility, as the party backflips on its previous demand to get public sector workers back into the office.

Hume told Sky News Labor has pursued an “unfair scare campaign” over the policy, but said the change was due to hearing public feedback, who said that they wanted flexible work to be enshrined.

We’ve listened to feedback from right around the country, not just Canberra based public servants… who are telling us that flexible work is something that they would like to see enshrined. Now, let’s face it, it always was going to be enshrined. Flexible work was always here to stay. But what our concern now is that part of that flexible work should also be an ability to work from home where it’s appropriate to do so, and that hasn’t changed.

Hume says the Labor scare campaign inferred the policy would also apply to the private sector but she promises that was never the case.

The other side of the public service policy was to cut 41,000 public servants. Hume says that will now be done over the space of five years, with no forced redundancies.

We’ll also ensure that the size of the public service is reduced by 41,000 over a period of five years. That will be done through natural attrition, and it will be done through a hiring freeze. There will be no forced redundancies.