“I want to hold them captive all day long,” Ellison said during a financial presentation on Thursday. “I don’t want them leaving the building … I don’t want them walking down the road for a cup of coffee. We kind of figured out a few years ago how much that cost.”

Ellison, who was paid A$6m (£3.1m) last year, criticised other businesses that allowed their staff to work from home. His ASX-listed company, which is worth about A$8bn and employs about 5,600 people, formally banned the practice last year, despite the widespread trend of more remote working since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I have a no-work-from-home policy,” Ellison said. “I wish everyone else would get on board with that – the sooner the better. The industry can’t afford it.”

He also suggested that the trend towards more lenient working hours was misguided. “We’ve now got the industry all heading out there going ‘why don’t we do a four-day week, we got used to it over Covid’,” Ellison added. “We can’t have people working three days, and picking up five days a week pay, or [even] four days.”

Ok, this guy just jumped to the front of the queue for the sharp end of many pitchforks.