The businesses “fleeing” Victoria over work from home already let their staff do it

Can a law force businesses to flee Victoria for making them do something most of them already do?

That is the claim on high rotation this week.

With the Allan Government’s work-from-home bill weeks from taking effect, Victoria’s peak business groups have made a last-ditch push to delay it — and the headline warning is that the law will drive jobs and investment interstate.

So we went back and read what that warning is built on.

The bill is narrow.

The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 gives eligible Victorian employees a right to work from home up to two days a week where the role can reasonably be done remotely.

It takes effect on 1 September, with a delayed start of 1 July 2027 for workplaces with fewer than 15 staff.

The bill gives eligible Victorians a right to work from home up to two days a week in roles that can reasonably be done remotely. Photo: The Glass

Two days, where the work already suits it. That is the whole of it.

The Victorian Congress of Employer Associations and the Victorian Chamber want the start pushed back to 1 March 2027, a hard two-day cap, and broader grounds to refuse.

Their evidence: 47 per cent of businesses say they are now more likely to invest outside Victoria because of the law, and 42 per cent more likely to hire interstate.

The Herald Sun rendered that as “half of Victorian businesses may head interstate.”

Here is the problem.

The same groups, in the same argument, state that 77 per cent of Victorian businesses already allow their employees to work from home.

Chamber chief executive Sally Curtain put it plainly: “Businesses are not rejecting flexibility — 77 per cent already allow their employees to work from home.”

Business groups say the law will push companies interstate — but the right follows the Victorian worker, not the head office. Photo: The Glass

A clear majority already offer the thing the law requires. The idea they would move interstate to escape an obligation they have already taken on voluntarily is not something the survey establishes. It is something it asserts.

And it is sentiment, not action. “More likely to invest elsewhere” is a mood, captured in a poll run by the two groups lobbying to delay the bill. Not one business has left. Not one job has gone.

There is also a mechanical hole. The right sits inside the Equal Opportunity Act, which follows the worker, not the head office. If an employee works within Victoria, they are covered wherever the payroll sits. A business cannot move to Sydney and keep those staff in Melbourne.

The groups do have a quieter, fairer case: release the draft regulations, don’t overload the Equal Opportunity Commission, write the two-day cap in. A March start is arguable. But “sort out the regulations” makes no headlines. “Businesses will flee the state” does.

We read the survey the warning is built on. It measures how businesses feel about the bill.

It does not show them leaving.