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In the end, the Labor Party has exactly what it wanted out of its promise to give people a legislated right to work from home two days a week.
The laws, in all likelihood, will never come into existence. On Thursday, they were condemned to a form of legislative purgatory – an upper house select committee for inquiry.
There, it will dwell in darkness until this parliament is prorogued and the bill expires along with all the other unloved, forgotten and forsaken legislation of the past four years.
This was never really about changing the law. All along, the main game for Labor was to draw the Liberal Party into a stoush about working from home.
Remember, this, along with promising nuclear power, are the two greatest reasons the federal Liberal Party is currently in opposition.
It is an embarrassing outcome for the government – for perhaps a day or two.
Beyond that, it is an electoral gift to Premier Ben Carroll, who despite mouthing support for people’s right to work from home since he replaced Jacinta Allan, was never enamoured with her pet policy.
We should all be thankful for the Victorian opposition for being guileless enough to make all this possible.
Working from home is wildly popular, but the one thing missing from the debate was compelling evidence that it needs to be protected by law.
Thanks to the depth and duration of our COVID lockdowns, Melbourne remains one of the world’s most liveable cities for workers who prefer to clock on from the comfort of their homes and elastic-waisted trousers.
Employers have embraced, by necessity, WFH accommodations. When disputes arise, there is a growing body of Fair Work Commission case law to help resolve them.
This is not something that should concern Victoria’s lawmakers, who 30 years ago ceded to the Commonwealth their right to regulate employment conditions. The Victorian government’s plan to somehow bolt a right to work from home onto our anti-discrimination regime always seemed too clever by half.
Had the government scrounged a couple more votes in the upper house and passed these laws, it would have faced an almost certain High Court challenge. It is difficult to imagine a greater waste of the court’s time.
Instead, with the Jess Wilson-led opposition now a firm favourite among the pollsters and bookies to win the November election, WFH can reclaim its central purpose – a wedge for her.
Carroll feigned disappointment at what took place in the parliament’s Legislative Council, where Jeff Bourman from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party – a political species on the endangered list – enlisted the help of the Coalition and some crossbench pals to delay the bill beyond this parliament’s final sitting day.
Privately, he couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.
From here until November 28, he will pin on the Liberals a debacle entirely of Labor’s making.
Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.From our partners
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