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
If I ran a company right now, I would be poaching so many good people with work from home. So much production is lost with the commute back and forth, and employee work/life balance immediately is impacted. Hopefully, you Aussies win this case.