It's interesting how the article is all about struggling retail businesses in the CBD and how this is about that. The closest the announcement comes to being about productivity is: "The more our experience of work is shared, the more united we become. This means being physically present in our organisations".

The case hasn't been made that experience of work is improved by being in the office, however.

This is all very fascinating, sitting in WA. We never really had the months of lockdowns you all had, and we never had the normalisation of everyone working from home. A bit of it, yes - but 100% remote work is relatively rare compared to other places on this side of the country.

For the record, the pandemic also devastated loads of businesses over here also. Some previously vibrant places like the cappuccino strip in Fremantle are sad shadows of what they once were. I don't know that this is going to be a magic bullet to somehow save retail.