Oceania

Working from home two days a week: now a guaranteed right in Melbourne

The Australian state of Victoria (capital Melbourne) is ready to grant people the legal right to work from home two days a week.

4 March 2026

epa12293749 La ruota panoramica Melbourne Star e lo skyline della città di Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 11 agosto 2025. EPA/JAMES ROSS

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

The Australian state of Victoria is ready to grant people the legal right to work from home two days a week.

The law will come into effect on 1 September, Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan said in a statement today, 4 March 2026. The change will be enshrined in the Equal Opportunity Act and will make Victoria the first jurisdiction in Australia to introduce the right to work from home.

"Working from home works for families, because it saves time and money and makes more parents work," said Allan, who will face an election in November in which he will try to lead his centre-left Labour Party to a fourth term in local power.

The policy will apply to all workplaces, although companies with fewer than 15 employees will have a delayed start on 1 July 2027 to allow them to prepare for the change.

The new policy has been criticised by business groups for fear that it will discourage investment in the state's economy.

The Victorian capital, Melbourne, suffered one of the longest blockades in the world during the Covid pandemic and was slow to recover.

"A one-size-fits-all government mandate is the wrong approach," Bran Black, chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, said in a note on Wednesday. "Given weak productivity growth, rising inflation and pressured living standards, this proposal does nothing to address these real changes."

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) is one of the most influential business associations in Australia, bringing together the CEOs (chief executive officers) of more than 130 of the country's largest companies.

The work-from-home policy is likely to be a central element of Allan's electoral proposal.

The Liberal-National opposition coalition's proposal to force civil servants to return to office full-time was seen as one of the main reasons for its crushing defeat in last year's federal elections. This policy was so unpopular that it was abandoned mid-campaign.