The Coalition is trying to walk the line that it scraped the work from home policy, that it maintains was good policy, because people didn’t like it. And they are saying that people didn’t like it not because it wasn’t good policy, but because Labor managed to snowball people about it.

Which is a bit of a an odd line to take. The Liberals official spokesperson James Paterson was asked about this on Canberra radio 2CC today and said:

Q: You’ve had to walk back a couple of policies that I actually think were good policies. But you’ve been unable to sell them. I mean, is that the answer, or do you need to get the messaging right?

Paterson:

Well, I think it’s really important, when it came to flexible working arrangements, particularly in Canberra, for the public service, that we listened and heard what people had to say. And what they told us was that in a modern economy, many families make their lives work by having that
flexibility.

It is really important for them to be able to work from home occasionally, not all the time. And they value that flexibility. And we didn’t want to take that away from people. We know how much they’ve suffered under Labor’s cost of living crisis, and we don’t want to make it any harder for
them. And that’s why we’ve listened, we heard, we’ve acted, and we’ve changed the policy.

Which then begs the question – why was the policy created in the first place? Did the Coalition just learn about the modern labour market? Or did it ignore what it was previously told? And if it were in government when it came up with this and not trying to win an election, would it have just pushed through even if the same voices were speaking up with how much they hated it?