Premier, prove this is a partnership. Drop the Work-From-Home Bill

Ben Carroll got something right in his first week as Premier.

"Victoria's economy is a partnership between business, government and working people," he told reporters. A government he leads, he promised, "will respect that partnership."

These are lovely words, however on his desk sits the Work from Home Bill that shreds them. That is why a new coalition has signed an open letter asking him to do something rare in politics: to bin a mistake that wasn’t his.

Our open letter gives him six reasons to do exactly that.

First, under this Bill, everything is the employer’s problem. The employer pays the “reasonable costs” of the home office: laptops, software and secure access.

Every employer, regardless of whether it employs thousands of people or six, must answer every request in writing, provide statutory reasons and do so within 21 days and prove that any refusal is reasonable.

They remain responsible for the safety of a workplace they cannot inspect, control or, in many cases legally enter.

Second, this is legislation in search of a problem. The federal Fair Work Act has allowed eligible employees to request flexible work for years.

The Commonwealth’s own review concluded that flexible work was “not an area of significant disputation”. Meanwhile, about 36 per cent of Australian workers and 60 per cent of professionals already work from home.

That transformation required no new legal right. It happened the way adults have always solved workplace issues: by talking to one another.

Where the market saw a solved problem, Labor saw an election. Far better to announce, with the gravity of the moon landing, that you've secured a freedom Victorians were busy enjoying anyway.

Third, the legislation overturns one of the oldest fundamentals of employment: that an employer pays a wage, and an employee performs the work under lawful and reasonable direction, inclusive of directions about where work is done.

This Bill flips that arrangement.

A management decision becomes a legal defence brief, every roster becomes evidence and every team meeting becomes an exhibit.

Fourth, look where they hid it. This is an industrial relations law stuffed into the Equal Opportunity Act, a statute that protects people for who they are based on their age, race, sex, disability, religion, caring responsibilities. Working from home is none of these.

Confusingly, the Bill excludes the very people with a genuine claim to flexibility, carers, parents, people with a disability, people affected by family violence and workers over 55, and sends them to the federal system.

The Victorian Government has produced the only discrimination law in the country whose first act is to discriminate against the people such laws exist for. All in a state that handed its industrial powers to Canberra in 1996, inviting a constitutional challenge it may well lose, after business has paid to comply.

Fifth, the government is proposing a direct pathway to VCAT for disputes and more specifically to a division of the tribunal that is wholly underprepared to decide.

The Human Rights List of VCAT, which they propose should oversee complaints, opened about 300 Equal Opportunity Act matters last year, carries a backlog larger than its annual output and takes about 34 weeks to finalise each matter, up from 23 weeks the year before.

Where this becomes satire is to consider that in their annual report last year, this division admitted they are still digitising a paper-based filing system.

Into this nimble machine the government proposes to put the disputes of a workforce of millions of people.

Sixth, Victorian businesses already carry the heaviest tax burden in the country. Our debt is $175.5 billion, productivity is going backwards, employers are battling rising costs, demand is weak and there is constant and ever-expanding regulatory burden.

And yet the government’s answer is to require a cafe owner to draft a legally compliant essay explaining why the barista cannot work from home.

Every hour spent filling out forms is an hour not spent serving customers, training staff or creating jobs.

Our letter is blunt because the situation requires bluntness. This Bill cannot be fixed with a few amendments, a longer transition period or another consultation round.

Its problems are not cosmetic; they are structural.

The Premier has named his own test: partnership. The first exam question is on his desk, accompanied by an open letter signed by these organisations.

And for once in politics, the right answer is also the easy one.

Drop the Bill, Premier. We have given you all the reasons why in writing.

James Mathias is the Executive Director of HR Nicholls.

The Open Letter is signed by HR Nicholls, Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association, Australian Restaurant and Café Association, Australian Automotive Dealers Association and Fix Victoria.