The work from home bill Ben Carroll inherited from Jacinta Allan doesn't say where home is. Nothing in it requires a Victorian worker's home to be in Victoria, and the employer groups fighting the bill say the practical result will be work moving to other states the law can't reach.
The bill would let eligible Victorian employees give their employer written notice that they intend to work from home for up to 2 days a week. The employer would then have 21 days to reply in writing, and could only say no for one of the reasons the bill lists. If an employer got that wrong, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal could order them to allow it.
What the bill never does is say where that home has to be.
Section 102H defines home as including "a place determined by agreement between the employee and their employer". No suburb, state or country appears anywhere in the clause, and an employee's own residence doesn't need the employer's agreement at all.
The Equal Opportunity Act 2010, which this bill amends, sits in the portfolio of Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny, and it doesn't set out where it applies. Its opening part runs to five sections covering the purposes of the Act, when it started, its objectives, its definitions and the fact that it binds the Crown, and not one of them draws a border.
The same Act does reach past the state line when parliament wants it to. Its vilification provisions say the conduct "may occur in or outside Victoria", and the new work from home part carries nothing like it.
Liberal MP James Newbury moved an amendment on 29 July that would force the place to be in Victoria where the employee's primary place of employment is in Victoria, unless the two sides agree otherwise. The government hasn't accepted it, and he wouldn't have needed to move it if the bill already said so.
Employer groups say the work will leave the state
The Business Council of Australia, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group asked the government to scrap the bill rather than delay it, warning that it risks pushing jobs interstate. Those same groups had already put a ten point plan to the government through the Victorian Congress of Employer Associations, which said the bill as drafted "risks creating a costly, complex and unworkable regime for employers".
Carroll gave them the timing and none of the other nine items, as we reported when he announced the delay.
Because the clause names no country, nothing in the bill stops an employer agreeing that a worker's home is somewhere outside Australia. An Australian company has always been free to employ people overseas, and this bill doesn't change that in either direction. What it does change is that a desk in Victoria now carries a cost, a written process and a tribunal that can make orders, while a desk anywhere else in Australia carries none of it.
One Nation warned a year ago that the jobs would go offshore
One Nation made the same argument a year before the bill reached parliament. In a statement published on 6 August 2025, when Labor first announced the policy, the party's Lee Hanson called the two day requirement "blatant government overreach". She warned it would drive businesses to relocate interstate and lead to companies offshoring jobs to countries where remote workforces come at a cheaper rate.
Video: One Nation, via YouTube. One Nation's warning that the policy would cost Victorian jobs, published in August 2025.
One Nation holds one of the crossbench votes Labor needs to get the bill through the Legislative Council. One News has asked its only Victorian MP, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, whether she will support or oppose it, and this article will be updated with her response. The Council debate that would have required her to declare a position was pulled before it ran.
A federal tribunal has had a national version reserved since February
While the Victorian bill has been stuck, the Fair Work Commission has been building a national one, and it started the case itself on 29 August 2024 using a power that lets it vary an award on its own initiative.
The award in question is the Clerks Private Sector Award, which covers office and administrative staff across the country. In its founding statement the bench said the term it develops "may serve as a model for incorporation in other modern awards, with or without adaptation", and invited any interested party to take part instead of limiting the case to those covered by that one award.
The clause the Australian Services Union and the ACTU want would give workers a right to request working from home with a presumption that the request is approved, allow an employer to refuse only on reasonable business grounds, and require the employer to supply the equipment. Employer representatives argued the call belongs to the business, with Business NSW telling the Commission it "should naturally lie with the employer".
Fair Work Commission president Justice Adam Hatcher heard the case in Sydney over two days and reserved the decision on 11 February, meaning the bench has heard the arguments and gone away to write its ruling. No deadline applies to it and it still hasn't been handed down, so it could be published on any morning without warning.
If the bench does write a working from home term into the award, it applies to everyone that award covers, in every state. There's no bill, no upper house and no crossbench involved, because a tribunal varies an award by its own decision. The Victorian result in November can't undo it either.
Parents, carers and older workers are cut out of the new right
The bill's definition of an eligible employee leaves out anyone who can already ask for flexible work under the federal Fair Work Act because of their circumstances. That covers employees who are pregnant, who have a child of school age or younger, who care for someone, who have a disability, who are 55 or older, or who are experiencing family violence.
Those workers keep the federal right instead, which is a request an employer can refuse on reasonable business grounds rather than a notice the employer has to act on. This is how the bill would land on each group.
| Type of Worker | What they can do now | What the bill would change |
|---|---|---|
| Full time employees, 38 hours a week or more | No legal right, so working from home depends entirely on the employer's policy. | Written notice for up to 2 days a week, which the employer must allow unless it isn't reasonable. |
| Part time staff and regular casuals | Nothing in law, so it comes down to the employer's policy. | A pro rata share of the 2 days, although the bill doesn't say how that share is worked out. |
| Parents of a child of school age or younger, and carers | Can request flexible work under the federal Fair Work Act, which an employer can refuse on reasonable business grounds. | Nothing changes, because they're excluded from the new right and left with the federal request. |
| People with disability, employees aged 55 or over, pregnant employees, and people experiencing family violence | The same federal request, which an employer can refuse on reasonable business grounds. | They're excluded on the same basis, so nothing changes for them either. |
| Employees on probation, apprentices, trainees, interns and graduate program staff | No entitlement either way, so it depends on what the employer offers. | The bill excludes them by name, so they get nothing new. |
| Casuals not employed on a regular and systematic basis | Nothing in law, so it depends on what the employer offers. | Excluded by name as well, so nothing new here either. |
| Staff at businesses with fewer than 15 employees | No legal right, so it comes down to the employer's policy. | The same right as everyone else, but not until 1 July 2027. |
The home becomes a workplace the employer can't inspect
An employer's duty to provide a safe workplace doesn't stop at the front door, and the bill gives employers no right to inspect a home, ask for proof that it's safe, or direct a worker to fix a hazard they can't see.
Newbury also moved amendments to keep incidents at home out of WorkCover premium calculations, and to shield company directors from personal liability under safety law for those incidents. A third would stop the Fair Work Act's union right of entry applying to a home while someone is working in it. None of the three have been agreed to.
The bill still says 1 September
Carroll announced on 11 August that the laws wouldn't start until 1 July 2027, seven months after Victorians vote. Clause 2 of the bill still reads 1 September 2026, and the government hasn't filed the amendment that would change it.
That July 2027 date was already written into the bill for small business, meaning employers with fewer than 15 staff, who were given the extra time to prepare.
The legislation sits in the Legislative Council, where Labor needs 21 votes and can't get there without the crossbench. Victorians go to the polls on 28 November, and a law that hasn't commenced can be repealed by the next parliament without a single worker having used it.
