You have to hand it to Labor in Victoria. When it comes to pulling stunts, Jacinta Allan and her merry band of ministers are top of the pops. I’ve always thought that the outright ban on fracking for natural gas, inserted in Victoria’s constitution, would take the cake for all time.

But along comes the move by Allan to legislate the right to work from home. A minimum of two days per week, but only when it is ‘reasonable’, will be mandated for both public and private sector workers.

Sensing that there could be some practical impediments to implementing this politically appealing stunt, Allan is proposing that her government uses the anti-discrimination legislation to execute the entitlement.

There are question marks over the feasibility of this approach. If the WFH entitlement is to apply across the board, where does discrimination come in? But these days, politicians would regard this issue as a mere detail. Whether the employer groups will have the courage to challenge the directive in court is unclear.

According to the hapless Victoria Treasurer, Jaclyn Symes – incidentally, she is way out of her depth – the move is an economic measure. It will boost participation and productivity, and – pause for laughter here – reduce the gender pay gap. I guess there is always the possibility that it could bring peace in the Middle East.

So, what is the real evidence on the impact of WFH? At the broadest level, it’s not a good look. In the middle of the last decade, the incidence of WFH was extremely low – around two per cent of employees reported regularly working from home on at least one day per week. (Self-employed persons have always been different, including freelance journalists!)

Obviously, the Covid period saw an explosion in the incidence of WFH, but even after all the restrictions have been lifted, around one-third of the workforce now work at least one day from home. The proportion is higher in the public sector – no surprises, there.

Over the period that WFH has basically exploded, however, national productivity has gone backwards. Labor productivity currently is around where it was in 2016. In the last two years, there have been steep declines in output per worker.

Of course, there are several factors that are contributing to these dismal productivity figures. But it’s hard to see through this thicket where the positive benefits of WFH on productivity are playing out. Take note, Jaclyn. (And just staying with Jackie, it is surely more than passing strange that the order by her department’s head for workers to return to the office for a minimum number of days per week is being routinely disregarded by large swaths of the staff. Clearly, being at the office desk is essentially optional for these well-paid public servants.)

Leaving the broad trends aside, what do the studies tell us about the economic impact of WFH? Let’s be clear, most of the studies are complete tosh. They essentially ask workers whether they like the arrangement and include a leading question or two about work/life balance, burnout and flexibility.

Asking managers, particularly in the public sector, isn’t much better, because they will often seek to affirm the entitlement even if their private view is that office attendance is preferred. There are only a few corporate leaders in Australia who are prepared to insist that their workers attend the office and say so publicly. It is more common in the US.

The only decent studies involve control groups and account for the various factors that affect work performance. Nicholas Bloom and his colleagues at Stanford University have undertaken the most reliable studies, but they are based on data from Chinese companies in China. It is not unreasonable to think that Chinese workers are more compliant and cooperative than their Western counterparts; they are less likely to slacken off and take the piss, to put it bluntly.

A group of hybrid workers – those who worked some days of the week from home – were compared with a group of full-time office workers. The hybrid workers were found to have higher job satisfaction and lower quit rates, particularly for non-managers, female workers and those with long commutes. But there was no discernible impact on promotion rates or productivity.

Another study by Bloom, however, showed that ‘people who worked from home full-time were about 10 per cent less productive than their fully in-office peers, due to challenges with communication, mentoring, workplace culture and self-motivation’.  Interestingly, Bloom finds that the productivity impact of WFH is superior only when the managers can choose who gets to work from home.

Of course, there are many jobs that cannot be undertaken from home because they require a contiguity between worker and customer/client/patient, among several reasons.  These workers may feel quite resentful of other workers who are able to hang around in their PJs while doing their work. Evidently, it’s great for the work-life balance for some workers, just not others.

So, what should we make of Jacinta Allan’s latest stunt? The idea that a government should mandate the right to WFH is all about politics; it makes no economic or business sense. It’s a cheap attention-grabbing trick to tell the people of Victoria, particularly the women, that this Labor government cares.

Let’s face it here, the federal opposition under Peter Dutton stuffed up on this issue.  By declaring that a Coalition government would insist that Commonwealth public servants return to the office, several serious errors of judgement were made.

For one thing, the enterprise agreement covering these workers contains an entitlement to work from home and does not expire until 2027. Secondly, the decision to insist on office attendance should be undertaken at an agency/department level, not by some dictate of politicians.

Thirdly and most fatally, Labor was easily able to construe the Coalition policy on WFH as a broader dislike of the entitlement.  Suddenly, WFH was to be banned across the board for all workers. Given its popularity, this was political poison for the Coalition.

Let me finish by relating an anecdote. A Commonwealth government agency based in Melbourne recruited a person who was living in Canada to a highly paid, permanent position. All his expenses to relocate – he had a large family, so they were substantial – were picked up by us, the taxpayers.

When he arrived, he promptly bought a house located two hours from Melbourne and installed himself and his family there.  He announced that he would work from home all the time and would not be attending the office, even if requested. The head of the agency, as well as the chair of the board, attempted to coax this fellow into the office, at least from time to time. But he refused and there was nothing that could be done. According to the enterprise agreement, he was perfectly entitled to work from home or indeed work from Noosa or the Nullarbor. Was he sacked? Not on your nelly: he undertook his tasks adequately and that was all that was required.

Is anyone really surprised that the Australian economy is quickly moving backwards? Surely not.