No place like home

Australia is having a moment when it comes to socially progressive policy. Its ban on social media for under-16s has achieved international prominence – and considerable envy from British parents battling with our children’s smartphone habits. But Australia isn’t just ahead in creating safer tech. The Labor premier of Victoria, Jacinta Allan, has announced that she will create aright to work from home two days a week for any worker whose job can reasonably be done from home. Allan said: “Enshrining work from home in law means this lifechanging practice isn’t something you or your loved ones have to politely ask for. It’s aright you’ll be entitled to.”

Allan has said that this is popular with parents; reduces commuting costs, putting money back into people’s pockets; and reduces congestion.

Voters like it a lot – and Labor voters really like it. Polls in August 2025 showed up to 64 per cent of voters backed the move, and some think it has contributed to a 10-pointrise in support for the Victorian government since the start of the year. It is a major wedge issue for Allan in her battle against the Liberals in the 2026 state elections.

Australian businesses have responded with predictable negativity, with many stating they won’t establish businesses based in Melbourne, or that they will flee the state. Yet Victoria has a service-based economy, and large numbers of workers already have hybrid working arrangements. In the UK, full-time, university educated workers already work an average of 1.8 days per week from home. Here, however, there have been ‘return to work’ mandates on either a full time or part time basis by several major companies in the last two years. Boots, Goldman Sachs, Morrisons and Amazon are all now requiring full-time office presence.

Women with caring responsibilities are the group who most value the ability to work from home. Researchers at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found that women and parents were most likely to resist strict return mandates, with 55 per cent of women saying they would seek a new job if required to return to the office full-time.

Requiring women with children or those with disabilities to return to the office fulltime might well be a breach of some of the UK’s more complex discrimination laws. Employers are ignoring the legal position, and do not seem bothered by the obvious gendered impact on their senior management pipeline.

Australian law is better for families and workers in other ways, too. The Australian government requires all employees to have a compulsory pension provision, and the employer contribution is a mandatory 12 percent, versus 3 per cent in the UK. Working parents can share 24 weeks of parental leave pay at the national minimum wage, paid for by the government, and they get their pension contributions for the period as well. Both parents can share the pay and can take-up to 12 months each of unpaid leave, or up to 24 months with employer agreement. In the UK, parental leave is paid for slightly longer, and initially at a higher rate (90 per cent of pay for six weeks), but after that, at only about 40 per cent of the minimum wage. A recent petition about raising the rate of statutory maternity and paternity leave in the UK to the level of the minimum wage received over 100k signatures and was debated in parliament. This, and the declining birth rate, show what people think of statutory maternity/parental leave pay of £187 per week.

The speed of proposed change in Australia is impressive. Jacinta Allan opened a consultation on the details of the hybrid working measures for less than two months from August 2025, and promised legislation in 2026. Our government must be envious of the pace that can be achieved if you do not need to get legislation past an obdurate, Tory-dominated House of Lords.

There is currently an open public consultation on making it harder to dismiss pregnant women and those on maternity leave – much needed, given that approximately 74,000 women a year lose their jobs when pregnant or on maternity leave. The government has also opened an 18 month consultation on improving paternity and maternity leave pay and entitlements.

The new Victorian law could help move workplaces out of the Victorian age. Not by requiring a revolution, but by creating a floor that most good employers with a consciousness of gendered outcomes already adhere to. Australian Labor is showing what government can do for families in an Anglophone country –popularly, and at pace.

Image credit: ken tomita via pexels