Budget 2022 shows Coalition has rebooted decentralisation with a post-pandemic twist

One of the most attentive students of the mass working from home experiment during COVID may well have been the Nationals, judging from the budget.

It detailed $15 million in spending to create up to four regional hubs letting public servants work in country towns. The hubs will be multi-agency workplaces, meaning people from different agencies and departments will work in the same building.

Their locations are yet to be revealed, but the hubs would grow the Australian Public Service's presence in regional Australia. The government calls it "regionalisation", a word that could mean many things. A more accurate description for the policy is decentralisation, given the hubs would build public service staffing outside cities like Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne.

The Nationals appear to have extracted much in the way of government promises to the regions in this re-election budget pitch. Regional APS hubs appear to be one.

This is a different kind of decentralisation program to the one that bewildered the public service when Barnaby Joyce plucked the pesticides and veterinary medicine regulator from the national capital for his home electorate. It also appears a couple of steps removed from what followed those decisions in 2016, when the Coalition formalised and added some semblance of process and order to their decentralisation policy.

The government's plans to create regional hubs is a decentralisation policy apparently shaped by the lessons of the pandemic for workplaces.

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If public servants can work from anywhere, the government has decided, then they can work from regional areas. Its hubs will give them the technology and office space to do it.

Budget papers said the policy responds to labour market demands and is intended to keep the bureaucracy competitive in attracting and keeping staff. It suggests the hubs are a response to the movement of workers to regional towns in the pandemic, and to increasing post-pandemic expectations of workplace flexibility.

The budget papers suggest no apparent motives to move entire agencies, as Mr Joyce did with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Until more is known about the size and locations of these hubs, how they will operate, and how they will fill seats, the nature of the decentralisation policy isn't fully known.

Those public servants burnt by the Nationals' previous pushes to relocate public servants will understandably regard it with caution.

One budget paper said the hubs would lead to better targeted policies and services for regional areas, and would diversify the public service's recruitment pool.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said in the budget papers the move to "regionalise" the public service will be good for agencies, locating staff closer to communities, breaking down siloes and broadening the perspectives of public servants.

"Growing the APS footprint, particularly in regional areas, will build stronger linkages with local communities and facilitate closer engagement across arms of government, supporting better policies and services for Australians," he said.

That may be true. But then, if the government wants to embrace flexibility in this way, it raises questions about consistency. Many public servants have their requests to work from home knocked back by inflexible managers who insist on them coming into workplaces. The Coalition itself wants public servants back in office buildings, to help businesses in CBDs. Decisions on working from home are left to be worked out between managers and staff, in conversations that aren't guaranteed to work out fairly for employees. It's probably part of the reason why the Community and Public Sector Union will push for working from home to be protected in workplace agreements.

Handled the right way, regional hubs could be good for both the public service and regional towns.

They might also end up serving the causes of staff pushing for more flexibility about where they work.

Put the government's pandemic lesson another way: If public servants can work from regional towns, they can work from home.

Regional APS hubs make it harder to argue against that.

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times Public Service newsletter. Subscribe here.