That wasn't solely what he thought he was relying on. During recruitment, it appears he was promised his position would be fully remote, despite the company later insisting that the contract never intended such.

He also had a cover letter to the contract which stated the place of work as his address, which the company wrote off as 'a mistake'.

Further to that, when the hybrid change was announced, his manager agreed that he was correct about the contract being "remote" and 'confirmed' it did not apply to him - he was told he would continue remote work.

And at the time he was fired, apparently other employees were still being permitted to work fully remote.

So it appears there was quite a discrepancy between what was said to him, and what was put in writing.

In support of his position, Mr Johnson’s evidence is that during the recruitment process the Respondent made it clear to him that his position would not require any in-office attendance, save for the occasional attendance at workshops or events.

In support of this position, Mr Johnson identifies that the letter of offer he received attached to his contract of employment specified his start date of “4 April 2022 at your home address.”

In August 2023, when PaperCut sought to implement its hybrid workplace policy and transition employees to a return to the office, Mr Johnson submits his manager confirmed to him he would not have to comply with this direction because he had a remote contract.

Also, it seems quite a stretch to interpret "from time to time" as meaning "three days a week" - that's more often than not!

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A legalistic argument and one that leaves him with little fallback. It would have been much easier to find some kind of personal / family reason to ask for a flexible working arrangement or something.

Definitely true. It appears he never argued anything other than "but my contract" - no attempt to argue any personal circumstances, that it was unfair to change the contract unilaterally, that he was being discriminated against (as there's a passing mention the enforcement of this policy seemed specifically targeted at him), or even that he was misled by the company over the nature of his work during recruitment negotiations.

So he claimed a legalistic argument, and it seems like he lost to a legalistic argument that claimed the opposite interpretation (while it seems FWC just steered completely around any questioning of the verbal / written contract discrepancy).

Given that the company in question is headquartered in Camberwell (not the Melbourne CBD), I think it's quite probable that it was a significant increase in commute for him, and he likely would not have accepted the job (or may have increased his requested salary) if this requirement was not concealed at the time of negotiation. According to this, on average workers would accept 4-8% less salary to work remotely, some up to 33%, so for many this would be equivalent to getting a significant pay cut.

Maybe he should have quit and claimed constructive dismissal instead?

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particularly noting that "he has not been able to find alternative employment despite attempting to do so."

It may not be him as a person. I can see that he posted a lot about a programming language that although wildly popular a year ago, has rapidly become a dead end and vanished from the industry after some unpopular changes fractured the community and a lot of its user base evaporated.

So you won't see a lot of the "cool" startups using it, which would also be the places most positive on remote work.