Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026

Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second Reading
10 September 2026

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

I rise to make a contribution on the Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026. The name is on the tin. The bill seeks to amend the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to enact a right to work from home for two days per week where reasonable. I do not need to go into further details of what this bill entails, as this has been very thoroughly covered and articulated by other speakers before me.

I want to say from the outset that Legalise Cannabis Victoria absolutely supports the right of people to work from home where reasonable. That is not conditional. It is a reasonable thing.

Everyone in my office works from home. I work from home. We do it on a weekly basis, and it would be hypocrisy, which people are all too familiar with, for us to say that should not be a right whenever it is practicable. My staff love it and I love it, and we would love to see it available to all workers where practical.

This bill – and I will talk about this more in a minute – will not deliver a right. This bill is a wedge. I gave a second-reading speech yesterday for a private members bill on property development integrity. It calls for truth in advertising for new housing estates. It is a pity that truth in advertising does not apply to legislation, because whatever the government is spruiking, this bill is unlikely to deliver.

It is like a piece of cheese that has been sitting in the fridge mouldering away since the 2025 federal election, when the coalition very quickly scrapped their return-to-office mandate after realising that people actually like flexible workplace arrangements, including working from home. That spectacular coalition own goal was manifestly the inspiration for the government introducing this bill, and to be blunt, it has not aged well. In a way this is the answer to a question that possibly not a lot of people are actually asking.

Of course there are people that would not be accessing working from home that would like to. There are undoubtedly people who want to access working from home who are being denied that, and that is part of the workplace.

I am not saying it makes it acceptable, but whether you look at wages, hours, classifications or any of those things, it has always been thus that there are differences between employers and employees as to what is reasonable, and that is why we have unions. Because we have unions, we have the Labor Party, and because of the Labor Party, we have this bill. Somewhere it has gone a bit wonky.

But anyway, this bill addresses, clearly, a huge unmet demand for working from home at a rhetorical level. But does this bill deliver a remedy? Does it actually provide for a level of confidence that that employee who might well be making a perfectly reasonable request will have that request delivered and that justice shall be done? I think it is really fair to say that is very much a moot point with this legislation.

If an employee applies to their employer to work from home and if that employer denies that request, the bill states that the employee can seek resolution via the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission as the first port of call. Cool.

We have nothing but admiration for VEOHRC – great people doing important work. We have referred a number of things ourselves, and we will later be referring something further to the human rights commission, such is our regard for them. But it is not the Fair Work Commission. It cannot make an order; it can only make a recommendation.

I am sure this will be litigated, but it can probably provide a level of protection to an employee who is seeking relief via the commission. But that will have to be tested, because that will require an extension of the current act, and obviously that is one of the intentions of this bill.

But VEOHRC cannot, and this bill will not give it the right to, make a decision that is enforceable. If the employer decides not to accept the recommendation of VEOHRC, or if the employee is not happy with the decision of VEOHRC or the recommendation from VEOHRC, their only recourse is to apply to VCAT.

I suspect there are probably lots of people here that have made applications to VCAT or been involved in those things. With the greatest respect to the commissioners at VCAT, it is like: ‘Take a number, come back in a year and we’ll have a look at this’ or ‘Come back in six months and it’ll have a mention.’ These are not like timely remedies. I heard a number of the speakers here say, ‘This bill will provide certainty,’ I mean, if you were selling vacuums, you would be in the mags in no time for misrepresentation. This will not provide certainty.

This is at best overselling, and at worst untrue, and that is pretty piss-poor. Pardon my French, but that is the nature of what we are dealing with here. My apology, Acting President Broad, that was a bit of improvisation that was beyond parliamentary good manners.

The government can legislate for work from home, and that will be no doubt popular. But at the end of the day – and I think Mr Bourman and Mr Limbrick before me have alluded to the fact – we do not really have much in the way of industrial relations powers left in this state.

And to my colleagues from the Liberal Party, that is all your own work. I know it precedes you, but in 1996 Jeff Kennett transferred the state’s industrial relations rights to the Commonwealth – no news there – and that is why the government is resorting to very much a secondary option, which is to try and create this head of power through the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.

But of course it immediately then opens its way up to a question of: is this legislation effectively ultra vires? Can it actually be done, or does it contravene the constitution and does it contravene the rights? I am not going to try and get into the explanations. There are a number of opinions floating around.

A number of leading commentators have said that this is a dead bill walking, but such is the nature of the industrial relations powers and the fact that they are vested in the Commonwealth. There is no state version, for all intents and purposes, of the Fair Work Commission that can apply to employees. But of course most Victorian employees are in federal awards now or covered by federal EBAs or safety net awards, and of course there is redress for this in many awards and EBAs. They make specific provision with regard to this, and that is probably more likely to be successful.

The government knows this. It will inevitably be challenged, it will inevitably go to the High Court, and in all likelihood it will die there. If that does not occur, then we will just have a potentially half-arsed scheme that purports to deliver working from home, but we sincerely doubt that it will. We wish that it could – that would be terrific – but we just do not think that this bill is, if I may use the parlance, fit for purpose to deliver that outcome.

Can I also note, in conclusion, that we know this thing has been sitting around for years. It has been bounced around: ‘We’re going to deliver it’ and ‘It’s going to bring certainty’ and ‘Don’t you worry, vote for us and we’re going to do it.’ In that context I just wonder why on earth we would be receiving government amendments at a quarter to 10 last night. In fact we did not even get government amendments; we got a summary of the amendments we are going to get from the government. That is just insanity. They have been on this for so long, and we are getting these at the eleventh hour.

This is at its heart I believe a cynical bill. Mr Bourman talked about the need for clarity, and Legalise Cannabis is very supportive of that. The reality is that I believe, if I may speak colloquially – and I do not want to offend Ms Purcell here – it is a dog’s breakfast. I hope that does not cause concern.

Georgie Purcell interjected.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

Excellent. Thank you. It is a dog’s breakfast.

Georgie Purcell: Dogs should be getting breakfast.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

Yes, they should have breakfast, and they are not going to get much sustenance out of this bill, I can tell you that much.

We should have the right to work from home, of course. Will this bill deliver it? No, it is highly unlikely. But either way, we would like to see this bill referred to a bill review so that all of this stuff that we are getting buried with now – and it is not just the government that has left it until the eleventh hour; there are amendments everywhere. Let us put them all in front of that. Let us take evidence. Let us hear from people who understand these issues and let us allow for a public debate and discussion around this question.

If the government is so committed to it and there are a set of changes made, Parliament can easily be recalled and within the timeframe that is being proposed, for half a day or whatever is required to process that. If that is the government’s commitment, to getting this through in an agreed manner, we would be delighted to support it.

[Council divided on Mr Bourman’s motion to refer to an inquiry]