Working From Home Is None of the Government’s Business

The global pandemic resulted in a surge in remote working, and now ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) policy has become the latest plaything for the political class.

What was once a perfectly ordinary workplace arrangement, freely negotiated by millions of adults, has suddenly been recast as a grand ideological struggle requiring urgent intervention from the state.

In a free society, the question of whether someone works from home, from an office, from a co-working space or from a makeshift treehouse is not a matter for politicians and bureaucrats. It is up to the two parties actually involved: the employee and the employer. One offers labour, the other offers pay and conditions; they negotiate, they agree (or not), and that is how free adults conduct their affairs.

But liberty is always under attack, and the increasingly authoritarian uniparty cannot help itself. The blue team wants to bark orders and force people back into the office. The red team wants to legislate a shiny new “right” to work from home.

As Opposition Leader in the lead up to the 2025 Australian Federal Election, Peter Dutton and his Shadow Cabinet flirted with the idea of ending all WFH arrangements for public servants. They fumbled it, failed to articulate the policy detail, and left the door wide open for a fear campaign that arguably shifted the momentum of the entire election campaign against them.

Victoria’s Labor Government under Premier Jacinta Allan cynically seized upon a political opportunity, promising to legislate work-from-home as an enforceable right. The new laws, poorly drafted, sailed through the Parliament this month and come into effect from 1 September.

British MP and leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, has joined the chorus abroad, declaring war on working from home as if he, too, should have a say in where strangers open their laptops.

Why do so many politicians feel the need to express an opinion on how other people work?

These politicians pretend they are taking different positions. They are not. They are expressing the same rotten instinct, which is the belief that government should dictate the terms on which other people live and work.

There are valid arguments to be made for and against work-from-home arrangements. It’s not always good, nor is it always bad. It doesn’t suit every role or personality type, and some bosses are far too inflexible while some staff certainly abuse the privilege. Of course there are trade-offs, and of course different arrangements work for different industries. That is precisely why the government should stay out of it.

The truth is that work-from-home arrangements are messy, varied and deeply context-specific. A suburban accountant, a software engineer, a call-centre worker, a lawyer, a tradie, a nurse and a cafe manager do not operate with the same labour market realities. Even within the same business, one team may function brilliantly in a hybrid model while another needs face-to-face contact. Some workers will value flexibility over salary. Some employers will value in-person collaboration over convenience. Some will get that balance right and prosper. Others will get it wrong and lose staff, customers or both.

Good. That is what freedom looks like. Trial, error, negotiation, competition and adaptation. Not a one-size-fits-all edict cooked up in some ivory tower.

The libertarian view is not that every employer is wise, or every employee entitled. The libertarian view is that adults should be left alone to sort out their own arrangements without a politician inserting himself into the deal like an unwanted middle manager.

Freedom does not guarantee perfection; it guarantees choice, responsibility and the ability to walk away. Funnily enough, that is what the modern Australian political class hates. They’re regulating us into mediocrity.

Big Government – be it red or blue – cannot tolerate the idea that millions of people might peacefully organise their lives without supervision. If employees and employers are free to strike their own bargains, what role is left for the minister, the regulator, the tribunal member, the commissioner, the policy adviser and the press conference addict? Very little, and that, for them, is intolerable.

So they reach for their favourite trick: moralise, politicise and regulate.

The Coalition’s ‘back to the office’ rhetoric was classic top-down conservatism of the most illiberal kind. Putting aside their inability to effectively communicate that they only wanted to apply their policy to public servants, they foolishly dressed the idea up as productivity and discipline. But the underlying message was simple enough: politicians know better than agencies, managers and workers how work should be organised. It was command-and-control nonsense, the sort of thing conservatives are supposed to oppose until they get a whiff of authority and decide they like wielding it.

Labor’s answer is no better. In some ways it is worse, because it comes wrapped in the language of rights and compassion, which makes the overreach sound noble. Jacinta Allan’s push to legislate work-from-home rights is not some great leap forward for freedom; it is a cynical political stunt, and a deeply illiberal one at that. It takes an issue that should be governed by voluntary agreement and drags it into the swamp of statutory entitlements, quasi-judicial enforcement and political posturing.

Politicians love to signal their virtues. But as we know, once the state gets involved, the compliance machine follows and our rights and freedoms are quickly eroded. Whether or not someone should be able to work remotely is a private matter between an employee and their employer. It does not require government intrusion.