Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026; Open letter
Dear Premier
We write as the chief executives of peak bodies representing employers across Victoria and Australia. Our members are the businesses that keep Victoria working; the cafes, builders, manufacturers, retailers, and family businesses that carry the state's economy and employ its people.
We support flexible work. Many of our members offer it because it works for their staff and their businesses. This letter is not an argument against working from home, it is an objection to a bill that would impose real costs, legal risk and administrative burden on Victorian employers without first proving that the problem it claims to solve actually exists.
For that reason, we ask you to withdraw the Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 (the Bill).
Our concerns are not minor technical objections. They go to the character of the Bill, the jurisdiction in which it has been placed, the evidence relied upon to justify it, and the practical effect it would have on employers already operating in difficult conditions.
In summary:
The cost, risk and administration of the new entitlement fall almost entirely on employers
The existing federal flexible-work system is already operating and has not produced significant disputation
The Bill reverses a basic feature of the employment relationship by shifting the default control of where work is performed
The Bill is, in substance, a workplace-relations law placed inside discrimination legislation
The proposed dispute pathway through the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) is not built for the volume or character of these claims
The timing is deeply damaging for Victorian businesses already facing high tax, weak productivity and a heavy regulatory burden
1. This Bill loads the entire costs onto employers
If there were a problem to solve, this Bill would be the wrong answer because rather than creating a shared obligation, you are seeking to transfer the costs and risk in one direction, onto employers and giving them almost nothing in return but exposure:
Employers pay the bill. Where work from home is allowed, the employer must pay the "reasonable costs" of enabling it (s102N), expressly including hardware, software and secure system access. You give the entitlement; they pay the invoice.
Employers carry the onus. The employer "must allow" the arrangement the employee nominates unless it can prove the refusal is not reasonable (s102L(1)), against a statutory checklist, with a binding decision available only through VCAT. This reverses a default that was previously the manager's to make.
Employers carry the safety liability without the control. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic), an employer's duty can follow work into the employee's home. Yet the Bill gives employers no practical power to inspect, approve or control that home workspace. A safety inspector cannot simply enter a private residence without consent. The employer is left responsible for a workplace it may not be able to see.
Employers carry the 21-day administrative load. Every notice must receive a written response within 21 days (s102M), with reasons assessed against the statutory grounds. For larger employers this will become another compliance function. For smaller businesses it will be another administrative obligation added to already thin management capacity.
Small businesses receive no exemption. Small employers receive only a deferred start date, not an exemption, and the under-15 headcount is inflated by counting associated entities. A small family business will carry the same reverse onus, the same cost shifting and the same tribunal exposure as a major corporate.
These are not incidental matters. They are the practical operation of the Bill. The additional costs have not been properly quantified, the compliance burden has not been properly tested, and the risk falls most heavily on the businesses least able to absorb it.
2. This is a solution in search of a problem
Under sections 65 and 65A of the FWA, the right to request flexible work arrangements, including working from home, have existed for eligible employees for years. This proposed Bill again borrows some of the machinery that exists under these sections of the FWA: a 21-day written response, refusal only on reasonable business grounds, a duty to discuss and offer alternatives, and arbitration in a tribunal.
The Commonwealth's own figures show this system of allowing for flexible work arrangements is working through negotiation between an employee and employer, rather than litigation. In 2024–25, there were 306 flexible-work dispute applications under the FWA nationwide, together with a further 63 applications arising under an award or agreement dispute term.¹
The Commonwealth's statutory review of these provisions of the FWA found that requests were "generally granted and often were granted in full," and that the requirement to explain refusals had led to "further discussions" and compromise outcomes. It states that flexible work was "not an area of significant disputation."²
The market tells the same story. Around 36 per cent of total employed people and within this, 60 per cent of professionals, already work from home. This is up from roughly 5 per cent before the pandemic, and this is notable as it was achieved without the legislative mechanisms you propose.
The Productivity Commission reached a similar conclusion in its submission to the federal inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Right to Work from Home) Bill 2025, titled Working from home can work itself out:
"Many Australian employers and workers have found a hybrid 'sweet spot' when it comes to working from home. The need for a legislated right to request to work from home is therefore not clear. Employers already have the ability to allow workers to work from home where it benefits them, and many already offer hybrid work arrangements."
"In addition, a legislated right to request working from home arrangements has the potential to impede employers and employees from arriving at mutually beneficial arrangements — although the realisation of this outcome depends on how the grounds for employers refusing requests are interpreted and applied in practice."³
Further, the presentation of the working-from-home survey, published by your government and which is used to compel the need for this Bill, relies heavily on figures such as refusal rates and perceived unfairness. However, these statistics are interpreted in ways that extend beyond what the given data can legitimately support. In fact, crucial sample data remains missing, and the present data fails to justify the policy proposal of a legal right for employees to work from home twice a week.
The key issue is that the survey is not a general labour market study. It is drawn from a self-selected group of respondents, heavily incentivising disgruntled or otherwise motivated white-collar and hybrid-eligible roles. This means it excludes a large share of the workforce for whom work from home is not realistically applicable. As a result, the findings describe a specific subset of employees in work-from-home-capable jobs, not workers in general.
The headline 83 per cent employer-refusal figure is particularly misleading if presented as though it describes the workforce generally. It is calculated only from employees in work-from-home-capable roles who actively requested it. That is a narrow behavioural sample, not a representative measure of the labour market. If the full sample is used as the denominator, the incidence falls to roughly 5.6 per cent.
Similarly, the cited figure of 97 per cent being dissatisfied with their workplace response reflects mere perception, rather than an objective assessment. It captures whether employees felt their employer's decisions were unreasonable, not whether those decisions were justified. For instance, employees sometimes don't have a sufficient picture of workplace constraints, law, or operational requirements for that business.
None of this proves a systemic failure in workplace flexibility. It certainly does not justify creating a new state-based industrial entitlement through discrimination law, and it opens this Bill up to a perception of political populism over genuine legislative reform.
3. The Bill overturns the basic structure of the employment relationship
The employment relationship has always rested on a simple contract: a wage is paid in exchange for work performed under the lawful and reasonable direction of the employer. That direction includes how, when and where the work is done, subject of course to the National Employment Standards, work health and safety law, anti-discrimination law and other statutory protections.
This Bill goes further than any existing limit by reversing the default on the most fundamental operational question of all — where the work happens. It then hands the final say, should disagreements arise, to a tribunal applying a statutory checklist and without the knowledge of the employer's judgement on how best to run their enterprise.
How to supervise, train, team-build and serve customers is converted from a managerial responsibility into something the employer must defend, item by item, that could be met with a penalty of a binding order.
4. This is a workplace-relations law disguised as a discrimination law
A right regulating how, when and where work is performed is an industrial entitlement which you have inserted into the Equal Opportunity Act 2010, a statute designed for something completely different.
The Equal Opportunity Act protects people from discrimination because of who they are: their age, race, sex, disability, religion or carer responsibilities. These are all personal attributes a person carries through every part of their life.
The objectives of the Act are:
(a) to eliminate discrimination, sexual harassment, victimisation and vilification, to the greatest possible extent;
(b) to further promote and protect the right to equality set out in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities;
(c) to encourage the identification and elimination of systemic causes of discrimination, sexual harassment, victimisation and vilification;
Working from home is none of these attributes — it is a working arrangement. It exists only inside an employment relationship and disappears the moment that ends.
Far from protecting a vulnerable attribute, the new section 102H excludes the very employees with a genuine attribute-based claim (carers, parents, people with a disability, people affected by family violence, and those aged 55 and over) and sends them to the federal system. What is left is a generic entitlement available to all employees regardless of any personal characteristic.
A discrimination law that excludes the very people it exists to protect is not a discrimination law — it is an industrial relations law masquerading as one.
The refusal test validates the point. Proposed section 102L(4) sets out the grounds on which an employer may refuse a work-from-home request: productivity and efficiency, supervision and training, client relationships, customer service, confidentiality and data protection, excessive cost, and the impracticality of rehiring.
These are not discrimination concepts. They are operational workplace matters which closely resemble the "reasonable business grounds" test in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FWA) — an industrial relations act.
This matters because Victoria referred its industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth in 1996. The State cannot avoid that referral merely by placing an industrial entitlement in a different statute. A court will look at what the Bill does, not the title of the Act into which it has been inserted.
For that reason there is a real risk that the Bill would be challenged under section 109 of the Constitution, which invalidates a state law to the extent of inconsistency with federal law.
Proposed section 120I, which purports to sit the new state entitlement on top of the federal scheme, awards and enterprise agreements, heightens that exposure rather than curing it.
There is a real risk this Bill will be struck down, which, if it ultimately happens, means employers will have spent time and money complying with a law that should never have been enacted. That is not a minor drafting risk. It is a serious policy risk being shifted directly onto business.
5. The disputes resolution mechanism cannot cope
The Bill funnels disputes through VEOHRC and VCAT. Neither can absorb the disputes from a workforce of millions in the way you propose.
A fundamental issue is that VEOHRC does not investigate or decide. It is a body that offers voluntary conciliation that can be bypassed immediately should an employee elect to go straight through VCAT in any event (s122).
The VCAT section where these disputes will land is its Human Rights List, which initiated only around 300 Equal Opportunity Act matters in all of 2024–25, is already carrying a backlog larger than its annual output, and has seen median time to finalisation increase from 23 to 34 weeks.⁴
VCAT's own most recent annual report underscores how ill-prepared the relevant list is. It records that the division responsible for these matters was still working to digitise what it described as a "completely paper-based filing system," a change the tribunal itself called "both urgent and overdue."⁵
Into that small, slowing and still part-paper-based list, the Bill proposes to direct disputes drawn from a workforce of millions. Even a fraction of one per cent of eligible employees contesting a refusal would overwhelm it many times over. Worse, the tribunal members (chosen and trained to decide discrimination cases) would be required to make operational business judgements about productivity, supervision and customer service. This decision-making is better suited to the industrial expertise of the FWC.
For Victorian employers, your government is proposing to have refused-work-from-home disputes hanging unresolved for nearly a year or more, with the employer bearing all the cost and uncertainty.
6. The timing could not be worse for Victorian businesses
Victorian businesses are operating in the most difficult conditions in a generation. State net debt stands at around $175.5 billion and is forecast to approach $200 billion by 2030. Businesses are facing a growing stack of state taxes, levies, charges and regulatory obligations.
The economic indicators that matter most are moving in the wrong direction. Victoria's Gross State Product per capita fell 0.8 per cent in 2024–25, worse than the national decline of 0.3 per cent. Victoria's productivity growth has been the weakest of the large states for two decades.
As the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned, "Victoria's businesses are carrying some of the heaviest tax and compliance burdens in the country."⁶ That cumulative burden is now a barrier to investment and growth in the State.
Into this, the Bill introduces yet another regulatory obligation, compliance process, and direct cost to be borne entirely by employers. It is exactly the kind of uncosted impost that makes Victoria a harder place to invest, employ and grow.
A government serious about the State's competitiveness would be removing such burdens, not manufacturing new ones.
Every dollar and every hour a Victorian business must now spend administering, defending and funding work-from-home notices is a dollar and hour not spent employing people. That is the real-world consequence of this Bill, and it proves yet another reason why it should not proceed.
Our request
We support flexible work rights. They already exist and are already successfully being used by millions of working Australians.
Premier, as it stands, this Bill is redundant for vulnerable employees with the strongest claim (whom it excludes), and an overreach for everyone else, for whom the Commonwealth made a deliberate decision not to create a universal entitlement and where evidence does not show a serious problem.
Where genuine reform of an industrial right is being considered, it should be pursued in the federal Parliament as the correct forum, where none of the constitutional problems with this Bill arise.
We therefore ask two things very clearly:
Withdraw the Bill. It is constitutionally exposed, conceptually confused, operationally unworkable, duplicative of a federal scheme that already works, and an avoidable cost on Victorian business at the worst possible time. The problem is not a clause here or a definition there. The problem is the foundation of the Bill itself.
Direct genuine reform to the Commonwealth, which is the proper jurisdiction for workplace-relations laws and the place where work-from-home rights already operate.
Victoria cannot tax, borrow and regulate its way back to prosperity. A stronger Victorian economy runs through backing businesses that employ Victorians.
We make this request in good faith, and in the shared interest of Victorian workers and the Victorian businesses that employ them.
Yours sincerely
FRANK PARRY KC — President, HR Nicholls
JAMES MATHIAS — Executive Director, HR Nicholls
STEVE KNOTT AM — Chief Executive, Australian Resources & Energy Employers Association
WES LAMBERT CPA, FGIA, CAE, AAiP, MAICD — Chief Executive Officer, Australian Restaurant and Café Association Ltd
DEBORAH HENDERSON OAM — Chairman, Fix Victoria Incorporated
JAMES VOORTMAN — Chief Executive Officer, Australian Automotive Dealers Association
¹ Fair Work Commission, Annual Report 2024-25, Appendix C, Table C1, pp.71 and 81.
² General Manager's report into the operation of the provisions of the National Employment Standards relating to requests for flexible working arrangements and requests for extensions of unpaid parental leave under section 653 of the Fair Work Act 2009.
³ Working from home can work itself out, Productivity Commission, January 2026 (pp.3).
⁴ VCAT Annual Report 2024-25 (pp. 78).
⁵ Ibid (pp. 76).
⁶ Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Media Release, Victorian businesses call for lower taxes, less red tape and stronger fiscal discipline – 16 June 2026
