Australia’s center-right opposition made a rare policy backflip in the middle of an election campaign, abandoning a plan for a Trump-style crackdown on work from home provisions for government employees after it appeared to become politically damaging.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the original policy position for the Liberal-National Coalition had been “wrong,” at a press conference in the southern city of Adelaide early Monday, adding that he apologized to Australians for suggesting it in the first place.
“We strongly support flexible workplace arrangements,” Dutton told reporters. “We got it wrong and we’ve apologized for it.“
Australia is headed to an election on May 3, with the opposition currently trailing the Labor government in most opinion polls. Dutton pledged to end work from home for government workers in early March, mirroring a move by US President Donald Trump to require federal departments to return to the office.
However, with Trump widely disliked in Australia, Dutton’s support dropped, while the policy itself raised questions about popular work-from-home arrangements across the economy. The opposition made the move to staunch the bleeding on Monday and abandoned it.
Dutton is also keen to avoid any further comparisons to Trump, who he had previously described as a “shrewd” politician and a “big thinker” on policy.
The Coalition also confirmed that its plans to cut the federal government’s workforce by about 41,000 positions if elected would take place via attrition and hiring freezes, rather than sweeping firings. Dutton has accused the center-left government of allowing the bureaucracy to bloat and estimated on Thursday that the cost of those employees amounted to A$7 billion ($4.2 billion) a year
The avoidance of mass layoffs raises questions over how the coalition will afford its spending promises given the public service cuts are its main saving announcement to date. Dutton has pledged to bring government spending under control to reduce inflation for Australians at a faster pace.