What if working from home was a legal right?

An Australian state is planning a new hybrid work law despite an angry business outcry.

- Pilita Clark

It is hard to keep up with Australia.

If it isn’t passing some of the toughest anti-vaping laws on the planet, it’s bringing in a world-first ban on social media for kids under the age of 16. Or becoming the first country to prohibit the artificial stone used for kitchen worktops that is linked with lung disease.

Now, Australia’s second most populous state of Victoria is planning another groundbreaking move: a law giving workers in both the private and public sectors the right to work from home for at least two days a week.

In the process, it is shaking the politics of remote working in a way that governments elsewhere may find hard to ignore.

And that is a daunting prospect for the 83 per cent of global chief executives who in 2024 said they expected to see workers back in the office full time within three years.

A similar number of Australian bosses said the same thing, so you can imagine what happened in August, when the Victorian Labor party government announced its plans for the right to work from home.

“This policy will absolutely cost Victorian jobs,” warned Mr Ben Pfisterer, head of Melbourne’s Zeller digital payments group.