Analysis by Labor of publicly available data, including the recent census, claims families could lose $740 per week gross – or, $38,000 per year – if women were forced to return to part-time job-sharing arrangements. That figure is based on women losing the average two days per week undertaken at home, the average researchers found many of the 2.6 million Australian women who regularly work from home do away from the office. Mr Albanese accused Peter Dutton of not understanding that “working from home, when they need to, suits many families” and that with current cost of living pressures, many families “can’t afford it any other way”. Since the start of the campaign, Mr Dutton has walked back some of his earlier pledges to undertake DOGE-style cuts to the public service, as well as slashing work-from-home arrangements for government staff. On Sunday, the Coalition announced that its plan to cull the public service workforce by 41,000 staff over five years would not include forced redundancies, and instead natural attrition, resignations, and a hiring freeze. The Opposition said military personnel and reserves would be excluded from the cuts, and on Sunday also vowed to not mandate a minimum number of office days, in a major walk back of its government worker crackdown. The softening stance follows negative polling from Redbridge which showed the policy was particularly unpopular among female voters who may use flexible working arrangements to balance parenting duties. Peter Dutton has also faced mounting pressure to substantiate the detail of the Coalition’s public service cull, with reducing waste in government departments a core tenant of the Opposition’s election platform. Mr Dutton earlier accused Labor of running a “scare campaign” over the Coalition’s call to bring public sector workers back to the office, which he said was about making sure taxpayer money was spent wisely. “So I think people who are listening to the Labor Party lies at the moment and a scare campaign that’s underway, I’d say, Why? Why aren’t they talking about their record?” he said.