6 August 2025


E&OE

Chris Smith:

Tim Wilson, thank you very much for your time. Firstly, is this story related to the ALP election campaign plan of working from home believable? 

Tim Wilson: 

Well, thanks Chris, thanks for having me. And of course the story is believable because Labor is just treating work from home like a political play thing. They're gaslighting voters seeking to use it as a tool when it helps them rather than actually standing up for workers, which is what they should be doing. The Coalition supports working from home. We see it as important as part of flexible workplace arrangements. They just see it as a political weapon.

Chris Smith:

Yeah what are your thoughts on what's being introduced in Victoria, very very divisive and I would have thought bosses, business leaders should have the right to work out who and for how long people work from home.

Tim Wilson:

We think that employees and employers should be coming together to figure out what the best arrangements are for them, because that's the basis you get productive workplaces in everybody's interests. Instead, state Labors just turned around and said, we're just going to mandate this. But let's not forget, they're gaslighting so many workers. The private sector isn't covered, that's covered by federal law and lawyers have pointed out that the Premier's been misleading people. Nurses are excluded, teachers are excluded. Retail workers are excluded. Trades are excluded. Everybody's excluded except for basically public sector workers who work in government offices. Now we have nothing against them working arrangements but the reality is they're gaslighting voters because they think it's popular. It's not actually going to deliver material dividends because of course those are exactly the people already have working from home arrangements with the government.

Chris Smith:

Yeah and I think that there's probably an underlying theory behind all of this. If you have a look at the way they handled the election campaign, the Labor Party. They were very keen on bribing the electorate without costing any of their policies. They had something like $100 billion in promises over those weeks. And they obviously think that this is the way to regain power. And if they start letting people know in the community that, you know, you're going to have a fine time, working from home, how great is that, another handout and that may play up to that mentality.

Tim Wilson:

Well, that and the concern is that of course, people will be at home, but it'll be because they will lack a job to support them. And that's not a desirable outcome. You had Roger Cook out there, the WA Labor Premier, saying it's great Victoria's doing this because all the other states are looking at it and saying, this might mean businesses move out of Victoria and into their state and create jobs where they are. That would be a disaster. I'm a Victorian, it would be disaster for Victoria. But more importantly, that would be a disaster for the nation because we need all cylinders firing in the Australian economy. We have rising unemployment. We have small businesses collapsing. We are not in a good economic space. And now more than ever, we need employers and employees working together to lift the economy, not simply to fight over a diminishing share of a pie.

ENDS