Victorian work from home laws face High Court challenge

0:00Only six weeks into the job, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll is already facing a high court challenge over his contentious work from home laws. The bill will give employees the right to work from home two days a week if they reasonably can. But legal advisers say it's unconstitutional, creating a potentially unfair, two-tier system, four workers. The Premier made a number of amendments to the bill overnight, but refuses to scrap it despite growing calls. For more, we're joined by Natasha Hawker, HR Specialist and Managing Director of Employee Madders. Good morning to you. Should it be scrapped, do you think? I don't know whether it should be scrapped, but I think we do need to make sure that we've worked out the legal ambiguity at the moment. The issue that we've got is that there are some lawyers that believe that this legislation that they're trying to push through now is in conflict with the Federal Fair Work Act. There are other lawyers that believe that Act actually has some flexibility around benefits.

1:02That is where the issue is. However, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm going to leave that to the courts and the legal system. However, what I would say is this is causing enormous ambiguity and people are unsure of what that means. And as a business owner, when you're trying to get a business up and running and let's face it in Melbourne, they've had a lot of challenges, this ambiguity is a problem. In your opinion, the idea of a 2-T system where it's potentially unfair for nurses, police, hospitality workers, because they can't work from home. You're absolutely right. And there are certain roles like the police and traities and nurses that cannot work for home. But I don't believe that necessarily that means we should throw it out. There are certain roles that can be done from home very, very well. And it's important to offer that flexibility and I can guarantee you those organisations that do attract the best talent. Those people that come to us for a job, often their first question is, can I work from home? And they will not even put an application in if they can't. Just looking at business leaders are warning that the laws could push jobs and investment

2:05out of the state, potentially and even worse, overseas, what's your take on that? I don't think we're seeing that yet and I don't think that will necessarily be the case. Again, I think that transition to push that overseas takes time and to get back to the same levels of performance that you might necessarily get in Australia would be an issue. OK, thanks for coming in. Thank you.