Today in Parliament, Abigail passed a motion calling on the NSW Government to repeal their return to office mandate and encourage NSW Public Servants to work from home where possible in light of the cost of living and fuel price and accessibility crisis currently unfolding.

Abigail said:

I move:

(1)     That this House notes that:

• The International Energy Agency issued a statement in relation to the unfolding fuel price and accessibility crisis recommending 10 actions member nations such as Australia could take to conserve their fuel supplies,
• One of the IEA’s key recommendations includes additional remote work for those whose jobs allow it, finding that an additional three remote working days could reduce oil consumption by cars by between 2 and 6 per cent,

(2)     That this House further notes that:

• The NSW Government is the single largest employer in the Southern Hemisphere, and
  
  
• In 2024, following lobbying from the commercial real estate industry, the Minns Labor Government abruptly released the Premier’s Department Circular ‘C2024-03 NSW Government Sector workplace presence’, upending developing remote working practices and setting a default NSW Government position for public servants to be pushed back into the office,

(3)     That this House calls on the NSW government to repeal the NSW Government's return to office mandate, and encourage NSW Public Servants to work from home where possible as a cost of living and fuel conservation measure.

In August 2024 Premier Chris Minns issued a circular directing 430,000 New South Wales public servants to work principally from an approved office. At the time, many of us said it was bad policy. Today, in the middle of a national fuel crisis, it is indefensible. The mandate must be scrapped immediately. Let us be clear about what the mandate always was. The Premier told us it was about culture, mentorship and strong institutions.The Daily Telegraph promptly claimed credit for the announcement, which tells us everything about the intellectual seriousness of the exercise. There was never any evidence behind it.

Research has shown that public sector workers were actually more productive at home. They handled more cases per day, error rates did not increase and the quality of work was maintained. The stated rationale was contradicted by the evidence before the ink was dry. But evidence was never the point. As it always is with this Government, there was another explanation. The Property Council, representing commercial landlords, banks and financial institutions, had been lobbying furiously to get bodies back into CBD offices, not to improve government services but because their buildings were emptying out and their yields were suffering. The Property Council's New South Wales executive director called the mandate a "game changer" for central city businesses. That is who this policy was for—not taxpayers or the public, but property investors.

Then came the farce. The previous Government had already downsized office accommodation to save money. Some of that was before COVID even hit. When the mandate started rolling out, Transport for NSW workers were literally sitting on the floor because there were not enough desks. The Premier's own department was set up for less than 70 per cent occupancy. What was the solution? It was to lease more space. The Government was going to spend more public money on commercial office leases, and that money flowed directly to the property interests who lobbied for the mandate in the first place to solve a problem that did not exist. Taxpayers were asked to subsidise the yields of commercial landlords by paying workers to commute into buildings that were not even big enough for them.

The implementation was chaos. The reaction from unions was swift and fierce. Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey said workers were stunned and predicted the Government would face "all manner of industrial and legal challenges". And it did. A stand-out was in mid-2025 when the Public Service Association took a dispute to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission [IRC] over staff at the Department of Communities and Justice who work on helplines, including the DCJ helpline and the Domestic Violence Line, both critical on‑call services that had been operating in hybrid or location-agnostic arrangements. When the IRC asked DCJ for the specific operational grounds for forcing them back, DCJ could not produce any. The Government was disrupting a domestic violence helpline and could not even say why. That is the calibre of thinking behind this mandate.

Working mothers have structured their lives around flexible work, child care, transport and where they chose to live. This Premier pulled the rug out from under them during a cost-of-living crisis. Victoria has openly poached New South Wales public servants. Child protection was running 20 per cent vacancy rates. The mandate made every one of those problems worse. For a Labor Premier, mandating a policy that disproportionately burdens working women will remain as just one of many permanent red marks against his record. All those very clear and obvious arguments against this policy were true in 2024 and 2025. But now, in March 2026, there is a new and overwhelming reason to end the policy immediately: Australia is in the grip of its worst fuel security crisis in half a century.

The Premier himself has called the current situation a national fuel crisis. Over 107 fuel stations across New South Wales have run out of diesel. Petrol prices are soaring with a lack of available and well-distributed supply. Australia holds just 37 days of petrol and 30 days or less of diesel, the lowest stockpiles of any IEA member nation, against an average of 141 days. We burn through 44 million litres of petrol and 92 million litres of diesel every single day. In the middle of this, the New South Wales Government is still forcing hundreds of thousands of public servants onto the roads to do work they were doing perfectly well from home. It is beyond stupid. Remote work is the simplest, cheapest, most immediately available demand reduction measure the Government has at its disposal. No infrastructure, no legislation and no emergency powers are required. Just stop forcing people onto the roads.

The New South Wales Government is the largest employer in the Southern Hemisphere. If it directed its workforce to increase working from home, that alone would make a material difference to fuel consumption, and it would send an unmistakable signal to the private sector to do the same. Instead, the Government is actively sabotaging its own crisis response because a Premier made a captain's call two years ago. The mandate was set with a review date of 5 August 2026. Given everything that has happened—the desk shortages, the union challenges, the IRC proceedings, the inconsistent agency rollout, and now a genuine national fuel crisis—there is no rational case for not suspending or scrapping it ahead of that review. Let's get over the ridiculous culture war nonsense and get rid of this stupid Premier's captain's call.

After a short debate between Members, Abigail responded:

In reply: It started off as a little bit funny, watching Government members trying to work out a way to defend what is an indefensible captain's call, and I think they know it full well. Then it became a little bit sad. I sometimes worry about the members of the Government who are given pieces of paper to read out in this place. Let us have a look at the facts. The Treasurer talked about the "work at home mandate". That was how he described it. Then about two paragraphs later he said, "It is also not a mandate," which tells members everything they need to know. Also mentioned was the figure that 85 per cent of public sector workers cannot work from home, which is just not true. I would love to know where that came from, because in my figures that is at most 60 per cent. Then we heard the ridiculous idea that there are nurses, doctors and staff that we have to make work from a place, because otherwise they would work from home. This was issued in August 2024, way after COVID. It was not directed at the nurses, doctors or teachers who were in their workplaces doing their work. It was directed at office workers because the Property Council wanted people to get back into office buildings in the city. That is what this was about, as I said in my original contribution. No‑one has addressed that.

The Hon. Jeremy Buckingham said The Greens do not understand business. We have been the party of small business for a very long time because we actually understand. For example, when I work from home in Terrigal, I get my local coffee and lunch from businesses in Terrigal. I understand that those businesses suffer when I am made to go to the city and buy those things there. I am buying them, just in a different place, but small businesses in Terrigal like it when I work from home. The idea that suddenly it is for small businesses, not for the Property Council and the letting of big buildings in the city, just shows how little some people understand about business.

Then there was the idea that we should be clear with the community. I will be clear with the community. We are in a war. Australia is involved in a war, and that will have significant impacts. One of those significant impacts is that we will suffer a fuel shortage. We are already feeling that. That will then flow to a food shortage and shortages of all sorts. Members can say, "The Greens are doomsayers." We are looking at the evidence and listening to experts, who tell us we are in a war and will suffer fuel shortages.

Read the full debate in Hansard here.

25 March 2026