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The Victorian Labor government seems determined to cement that state’s unenviable reputation as the least business-friendly in the country. Unless that business is a criminal bikie gang, of course. Otherwise, while the government is showering tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on literal criminals, legitimate businesses are being driven by the wall by one government policy after another.
Soft-on-crime policies have turned Victoria into a violent hell-hole where machete attacks and rampages are weekly occurrences and several major retailers are considering quitting the state altogether due to the sheer cost of dealing with rampant theft. To add insult to injury, the government is piling more and more onerous taxes and regulations on every business, big and small, in the state.
The latest is the blatant vote-buying exercise aimed squarely at the work-shy public service (about the only growing industry in Victoria) and the middle-class ‘Karen’ vote.
Victorian businesses have criticised Jacinta Allan’s work-from-home plan, with one warning the controversial policy was another government-imposed burden that would make it “tough for everyone”.
The Premier this week announced the government would move to amend the state’s Equal Opportunity Act to enshrine in law a right for employees who can work from home to do so at least two days a week from September.
Emily Lylak, general manager at Mornington Peninsula-based civil construction company Maw Civil, said the rule would place yet another burden on the business, which was already being hit hard by red tape.
This is on top of ruinous increases in land taxes, to try and pay for the hundreds-of-billion-dollar state budget blowout, from previous vote-buying promises. Most especially the ‘Big Build’, which has been a river of gold for criminal gangs linked to Labor’s union puppet-masters.
“They just burden and burden and burden,” Ms Lylak said of the Victorian government, citing as an example a 187 per cent increase in Maw Civil’s land tax bill in just four years across the seven properties it uses for the business – from $66,682 in 2023 to $191,516 in February 2026.
Ms Lylak said every time the government imposed a new rule, it made it more difficult for Victorian businesses and incentivised both businesses and employees to move elsewhere.
“If the businesses aren’t making money, employees can’t be remunerated as much … there’s a high cost of living as well at the moment, so I think it’s making it tough for everyone,” she said.
But think of the hordes of middle-class women who are some of Labor’s most reliable voters, and their ‘right’ to sit around in their pyjamas at home, pretending to work.
Ms Lylak said Maw Civil – which employs 40 people – allowed and saw the benefits in flexible work for its office-based staff where it met the needs of the business and the employee.
But she said such arrangements were best left between employees and employers, who could determine what was fit for purpose, rather than mandated by a government rule.
“I’m a mum, I work from home one day a week. If my kids are sick, I might work the whole week from home,” Ms Lylak said.
“But there’s a benefit of being in the office, because you catch the cross-office conversations and you understand what’s going on in the business.
“You just don’t pick that up from being at home, you can’t be a team to the same extent. You don’t hear things, you sit in a silo.”
Labor’s new laws will apply to all businesses, no matter how small. The only tiny relief for small businesses is that they’ve got until next year to comply. How nice of Labor.
Bob Nixon owns Nixon Financial Services, which has eight Australian-based employees and provides financial advice and support to people throughout their retirement years.
He warned the government’s WFH rule could cause the identity and dynamics of a business such as his – which encourages its clients to come in to see advisers as needed – to fall apart.
“We’re in the business of caring for people and you do that best when you’re sitting with people,” Mr Nixon said.
While the proposed law has received strong opposition from business groups including the Business Council of Australia and the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, who warn it could drive business out of the state, the government argues working from home benefits the economy as well as families.
“It increases workforce participation, it boosts productivity, it puts more money back into household budgets, which has overall flow-on benefits for the economy,” Ms Allan said this week.
Does it, though?
Anecdotally, managers say that some employees are clearly working side hustles when supposedly working from home. Zoom meetings can be a clear giveaway, when employees either have video turned off, or background suggests they’re not at home at all. Data seems to depend very much on who you ask. Workers tend to self-report that they’re ‘more productive’, while management are much less convinced. Research from Microsoft found that 85 per cent of leaders say hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence in employees’ productivity.
