It does not surprise me companies are making people go back to the office. Not just in Australia but around the world. There are a lot of people abusing the situation. It sucks but I saw this was going to happen when work from home first started getting rolled out back at the beginning of Covid.
The companies are going to use what ever means and reasoning they need to. But at the end of the day all that matters dollars. If they would have seen more productivity with people working from home and if the company made more money, the people would be allowed to continue to work from home
Also, a lot of them are paying for spaces that aren’t getting utilized to full capacity. I’ve noticed here in the states that many companies are clearing out whole floors and starting to rent them out to smaller companies to even out the cost a bit since they can’t seem to convince anyone that the office is better.