Thursday, 10 September 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:34): I am pleased to rise and speak on the Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026. I will start my contribution with a bit of a reflection about my own experience of working from home. When I started my company in the early 2000s, we did not have much capital. We bootstrapped about £27,000 to buy some basic equipment and lived off that very humble pie for about a year. We all worked from home. Not only was it cheaper, it was cheaper and more efficient. Our first premises that we could afford was a decommissioned RAF hangar outside Oxford – with one light bulb, one power point and one tap, and the toilets were a mile away. In the English winter it was absolutely freezing. But we needed that space because we needed to work together on something, and we had very different roles individually, but they only had value when we came together. But we could only use it for research and testing. We could not use it as an office, so we worked from home. We connected by laptop, by email and by Skype, which was all that was available at the time, and came together in person whenever there was a reason to do so. And it worked. In fact it more than worked; it was incredibly useful. As the employer, I trusted my team to manage their own time and their own productivity. When we needed to be in a room together, we called it for next week or the next day, and because we had to call it, we came together with a purpose.

Flexible working also helped us attract and keep good people we could not have otherwise afforded or attracted. I say this at the top: it was good for home life. We were working 50-, 60-, 70-hour weeks, and yet I could still take my children to school and I could step away from the laptop when they came home and be present and go back and finish afterwards. We could deal with the school, the council and the supplier inside the hours those people actually keep. The flexibility was not a perk for us. My wife also held down a full-time job, and it was an arrangement that made our household work. We did it at a time when it was not normal and it was not common and we were breaking the model, and I am glad that we did. So I come to this bill as an advocate for flexible work, and I can say that with the authority of someone who has done it as an employee and as an employer.

I also say this: working from home is popular, desirable, and where it suits the work, it is plainly good for families and can be, when done right, plainly good for business. It does not suit all work. In some roles clear arrangements are essential for safety and for practicality. You do not want people doing dangerous work tired or unsupported. People in customer-facing roles need to face customers. People in human contact roles cannot deliver that service remotely. Small companies have people fulfilling multiple hybrid roles and functions and as backups to each other, not just on given days but on given hours – for example, in lunchbreaks. Businesses running complex shiftwork arrangements always struggle with availability dynamics. Workplaces, even small ones, are complex and operate differently, even within the same industry. Work arrangements are not just an organisational chart. In some cases they actually form part of the business model itself. In desk-bound, administrative or siloed work, much of the old scaffolding is artificial. The start time, the break time, the end time – those rules were established to provide workers with dignity and predictability in their work lives, and they mostly deliver it. But in part they are arbitrary, and it does not matter when the work starts as long as the role is fulfilled across the day and across the week. These roles need your effort, your intellect, your focus and your attention in business hours to do a job in a practical, predictable and value-adding way. But it does not necessarily require your presence, especially when aided by technology.

I say all this to the house to be clear about where we stand as the Liberals and Nationals, and we will not be opposing the bill. Work from home is, in the modern context, a very valuable component of modern life, and it has changed many lives. The principle is strong, and we endorse it. But there are challenges when it comes to legislating it, because what we are doing is migrating from an extremely flexible – you could say infinitely flexible – arrangement to a more rigid, regulated concept with all the belts and braces and additional regulation that that requires. I think that is where the core of the challenge lies, because the vast majority of employers support work from home where it is possible and of course the vast majority of employees support work from home where it is possible. The challenge is taking that ‘where it is possible’ from being a really nuanced discussion between employer and employee according to the mutual situation of that person and that employer – suddenly half-a-dozen other arms of law and regulation and government and considerations are inserted into that relationship in a completely new way. We swing across that into an arrangement that says it is up to the employer to prove it is not possible, that it has to be a minimum of two days if desired and that it does not matter how big or small your business is.

I am not saying that is impossible – far from it, because I am a good example of this actually working – but it does make it obvious that the quality of the law that implements these needs needs to retain the flexibility and foster the existing goodwill somehow and avoid unintended consequences for either party. What we do not want to set up is a system that takes a cooperative, mutually beneficial exercise and structurally makes it prone to dispute and when in dispute defaults to adversarial solutions rather than reasoned ones.

To that point, we have some amendments standing in my name, and I would ask that those amendments be circulated now. Having circulated them, we will note that the government has at the last minute put through some amendments of their own which overlap with ours, and we will reconsider a couple of those amendments further down the process. We may withdraw a couple of those.

I will start to work through what the bill does. As an eligible employee gives notice, the employer must allow the arrangements set out in the notice unless it is not reasonable. These are the new sections 102K and 102L. If the days do not work, the employer must offer an equivalent period on other days, and if that does not work, the employer must offer whatever lesser period is reasonable. A complete refusal is available only where no period at all does not have an impact. In deciding this, the employer may consider only the matters listed in new section 102L(4) – only those. The employer has 21 days – I understand the amendment is going to make this 28 days – to answer in writing with reasons. The employer must pay any reasonable costs necessary to enable the arrangement, and if the employee disagrees, the matter goes to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission or straight to VCAT.

The importance here is that, as we all understand, we are creating a presumptive entitlement with the onus of justification sitting on the employer, enforced through the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. So far, so good. But where there is doubt is whether the practical consequences of the procedure have been worked through fully, keeping in mind – and I would hope everyone agrees – that we want to ensure this is a win–win for all parties. Importantly, in the bill briefing the government conceded that there were scenarios it had not fully considered, and to be fair in acknowledging them it undertook to come back to the opposition with answers, but it never did, which is unhelpful, and it implies they still are not resolved. But hopefully we can navigate those questions and answers today.

However, it has got even a bit more coloured since then, because in the meantime Premier Ben Carroll has said additional things about the operation of the bill that have added confusion and further questions. He said that there would be a reset with the business community and he said he would work through amendments that businesses had put to him, but as of this morning not one of the business or industry groups we have spoken to had received a copy of the new amendments the government has just issued, let alone had the courtesy of a briefing and opportunity to comment.

I can tell you that the business sector is absolutely ropeable at him over this, and who could possibly blame them? What are Victorians, employees and employers alike, to think? He has given a very strong impression that he is a Premier who cannot be relied on, that the government does not know if it wants to proceed or if it does not want to proceed, does not know what clauses are good or bad and is trying to please everyone 80 days out from an election and barely a month or so from caretaker mode. It has ended up bumbling from one crisis to another with no attention to detail and is much more interested in press releases and distractions from hidden taxes, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office’s Suburban Rail Loop report, the fact that 50 per cent of our roads are officially in poor condition and the inadequate IBAC remit, which has cut out any retrospective powers of investigation.

The Premier has wedged himself in more flip-flops in six weeks than actual decisions. In fact I suggest the reason this bill is before us today is for no other reason than as a distraction to the other problems this government has. If you look back at the history of the bill, every time it was announced – and it has been announced about five times – it was in a week where government performance was in the spotlight. It has been used as a human shield multiple times, and there is no doubt that explains the timing today. It is not about workers, it is not about employers or Victoria’s ability to do business; it is about government stage-managing its reputation.

There are also a range of regulations that are yet to be defined or announced or explained. That is a really poor way to start the life of this legislation. I said earlier that we want to create opportunities, not confusion and conflict. The first one of these challenges was the original start date. I note that the government will be circulating amendments on the start date, which we are glad about. It is certainly something we were fighting for. It was an amendment we ourselves put forward because it is really important to give time, to this or any future government, in which the regulations that this bill relies on can actually be made, because they do not exist at this point. The pro-rata calculation – there are some very high-level figures on that. The prescribed matters are left to regulation. Prescribed classes of employee are left to regulation. None of it is written. So this gives time for guidance to be issued to businesses, for policies to be rewritten and for managers to be trained. This is a very practical matter.

Let me turn to another practical matter, which is the matter of costs, because this is one of the areas where I think the drafting works against the very thing we want it to achieve. New section 102N says the employer must pay any reasonable costs necessary to enable the employee to work from home. It says these costs include essential hardware and software and secure access to the employer’s information systems. Fine – nobody argues with the laptop, and you are probably issuing something similar no matter where you are working from or where the job is done. But to not define what else might need to be included – ‘reasonable’ is not defined anywhere in this part. Our amendment 6 caps that obligation at $1000. It could be said that their amendment will limit costs as ‘reasonable’, but that remains arbitrary and uncertain. Everyone needs clarity. A number is certain; an adjective is not. Ask any three tribunal members what ‘reasonable’ is and you will get three answers. That is not a criticism of tribunal members; it is just that that is what the word does. It is elastic, and businesses cannot budget against an elastic word. They need to budget against a number. This is where I say the drafting works against the bill’s own intentions and can have unintended consequences – that is, inviting maladaptation. What does anyone do when they cannot price an obligation? They get cautious and they get defensive. They start looking for a reason to say no. An uncapped, undefined cost does not make someone confident; it makes them nervous, and a nervous employer is not a confident employer.

My understanding of this bill is that we want to make this, as far as possible, a win–win situation, not an adversarial one. But the best way to destroy goodwill is to leave uncertainty and ambiguity. So this amendment is not a shield for businesses against employees; it is the opposite. Put a number on it, and the employer can say yes with confidence. It is better for employees, not worse. The exposure to the employer is material, because the government has failed to lock in precisely how far it runs. A couple of examples do not provide the clarity required. Laptops can cost anything between $800 and $4000, depending on the spec. What if a desk is approved by some employers but not by others – is that not a dispute waiting to happen?

In the bill briefing the member for Brighton put a scenario to the government: if an employee is significantly injured, what does the employer have to do? The government confirmed the answer: reasonable costs would be extended to fitting out the person’s private home: ramps, rails, accessibility works – a full ergonomic refit of the home office. That is tens of thousands of dollars for one employee, let alone if there are multiple. Then came the questions the government could not answer: what if the employee rents and the landlord says no? What if they live on the fourth floor of a building with no lift? Who wears the cost, and who wears it when the employee moves house? None of this is set out in the bill. The question a small employer in Eltham or Doncaster will be asking their bookkeeper shortly is: what are the costs? There is actually nowhere for them to look up and find the answer. And this scales up.

The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s own research found that 77 per cent of Victorian businesses already allow their people to work from home. Ninety-two per cent, though, are worried this legislation will create additional costs in legal advice, policy development, technology, insurance, cybersecurity and compliance. Employers surveyed by the automotive association put the cost at $3000 to $10,000 per employee, with 87 per cent expecting to be out of pocket. Add those numbers up together, and this aggregates. Seventy-seven per cent already do this voluntarily and willingly, but 92 per cent expect a law about the thing they already do to cost them new money. This is the gap between practice and the statute and is the gap this bill has to close if it is going to work well for all parties and not lead to conflict.

Our second amendment goes to land tax. It provides that in determining land tax under the Land Tax Act 2005 no account is to be taken of an employee exercising their right to work from home. A family home used as a workplace two days a week should not make people’s homes taxable commodities for the Labor government. To be fair, the government has said publicly it has no intention of collecting land tax in this way, and I accept that is what has been said. But we have very good reason to doubt a Labor government’s word on tax. It could easily change its position. Ministers change, governments change and revenue offices interpret and reinterpret. If the government means what it says, this amendment costs nothing at all; it simply writes down an assurance already given and settles the question for every Victorian household. For the avoidance of doubt it should be written into the bill. I will tell you why this is a good thing. It removes uncertainty and reduces the chance of this becoming any kind of artificial barrier to working from home. I hope the house supports this.

Our third amendment, which we are likely to withdraw, addresses the question of working from home locality. The bill as originally drafted did not preclude the possibility that someone could work from home but work from home internationally or from another state or jurisdiction, and that created all sorts of confusion and concern. I am glad to see that the government has taken our amendment and agreed to what we felt should happen and what the employer groups felt should happen and is proposing, rightly, now that the employee should work from home in Victoria as opposed to anywhere else. There may be flexibility about the exact location, but it needs to be within the state of Victoria. I think that is a good thing.

I now come to the part of the bill which many people find concerning because of the confusion. I want to put it carefully, because it is not an objection to working from home; it is again about methodically working through the practicalities of it when you legislate it. These things are being navigated now quite well, but we are legislating it, so we now need to understand the mechanics of that when we create legal obligations. This is around where we are creating a legal duty but simultaneously removing the means of meeting that duty. Section 21 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (OH&S act) requires an employer to provide and maintain a safe working environment. Subsection (2)(e) requires them to monitor the health of employees and conditions of the workplace so far as reasonably practicable. That is the section that business owners and directors get prosecuted under. It is the frontline of safety law in this state, and as a state, we want employers and employees alike to take OH&S very, very seriously, not cut corners, and keep up to date. This is in 99 per cent of cases a very mutual care and concern for employees and employers. Every good company I know operates a bit like a family. There is genuine care and goodwill on all sides. If the Parliament creates a statutory right to perform work at home for two days a week and that home is a place where work is performed, an employer with 10 people exercising this right does not have one workplace, they have 11, 10 of which they did not build, 10 of which they may not have ever seen and 10 of which they have no lawful right to enter.

The problem here is not working from home. It is that OH&S arrangements are simply not anticipated within the bill. It cannot be fixed by telling employers to go in and inspect, because they cannot. A director cannot walk into an employee’s home, and nor should they. It would be even harder to get around multiple homes, 10 or 15 of them, and nor should they. A WorkSafe inspector cannot enter a private residence without consent, and nobody in this chamber is suggesting they should, I would hope. So we are left with a bit of a conundrum over legal responsibility without control. Again, look at what this does to the cooperation this bill depends on. Left unclarified, an employer facing unqualified personal liability for a house they have never seen may have some challenges, and again, that could be a hit to confidence. This is again a matter of basic fairness for everyone.

I would hate to think that this bill in effect dissolves the difference between work premises and homes, but we are unavoidably by this bill determining workplace considerations and how they fit into a home setting. The member for Narracan gave an example of this in the other place, and it has stuck with me, so I will borrow it. Homes have steps. A step up into a house that should be a maximum of 185 millimetres is in reality 210 millimetres. Somebody catches it and breaks their shoulder. Whose step is it? Whose liability is it if it is done on work hours? Two of our amendments go to that, and I want to describe them carefully because I do not want them to be mischaracterised.

Our amendment 4 provides that a director of a company, a director within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001, does not incur personal liability under occupational health and safety legislation for an incident occurring because an employee is working from home. I think everyone can understand that that is fair. That touches on personal liability of directors – only that – and the company’s own duties under the OH&S act are entirely unchanged. Not one obligation on the business is removed. Our amendment 5 provides that such incidents are not taken into account in determining an employer’s contribution or premium under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013. Again, that precisely goes to the premiums. It does not touch a dollar of an injured worker’s entitlement. A worker hurt at home is compensated in exactly the same way as they are today.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.