Allan’s WFH laws look like genius. They only take us closer to the cliff’s edge

March 5, 2026 — 5:00am

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In an election year, the Victorian parliament is not prone to reflection. The sitting weeks – and there are only nine remaining in the life of this parliament – present less as an opportunity to consider the lives of ordinary people as days to be ticked off towards the one that matters most to people in this place.

Everything said or done is with an eye to November 28, rather than the long-term implications of decisions taken. Within this myopic climate – and those of us who write about state politics are no more farsighted than its practitioners – it can be difficult to separate the dross from stuff that might actually matter.

There are also times when the disconnect between decisions taken today and the future towards which we are hurtling fairly screams at us. This week was one of those times.

Regular readers of The Age – and a heartfelt thanks for your forbearance – will have noted two things from our reporting of Victorian affairs this week.

The first is that the Victorian government, like other state governments in Australia and many around the world, is desperate for big tech to invest more of its billions in data centres here. There are already 33 cavernous, digital warehouses dotted around Melbourne’s north and west, and the government is determined to attract more.

“We are in a race,” says Danny Pearson, the Victorian Minister for Economic Jobs and Growth. “We don’t want to have a situation where billions of dollars go into NSW, and Victorian workers miss out [on] these factories of the 21st century.”

Inside story: Why work from home could return Jacinta Allan to office

The second is that Victoria will soon become the only place in Australia where people have a legislated right to work from home. Premier Jacinta Allan on Wednesday confirmed her government would introduce in July changes to the Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act to make it unlawful for bosses to discriminate against people who refuse to come to the office on two days out of five.

How are these two things connected and what do they say about Victoria’s future?

If you haven’t already, I’d invite you to read what columnist Malcolm Knox and this paper’s most tech-savvy journalist, David Swan, had to say over the weekend about the number and breadth of white-collar jobs being devoured by artificial intelligence. Then, if you don’t mind having the pants scared off you, check out what Matt Shumer, the boss of a global AI company, wrote last month under the comically understated headline, “Something big is happening”. 

That something big, according to Shumer, is a wholesale substitution of people with technology in jobs where we are paid to think. He predicted that employment in law, finance, communications, software engineering and customer service would be dramatically affected.

In Australia, last week’s decision by AI developer WiseTech global to cut its workforce by a third shows that AI, like a funnel web spider, is already starting to eat its creators.

The best way of understanding what is coming, Shumer says, is a simple rule of thumb: If you do your job mostly sitting at a computer screen, AI is coming for it. “AI isn’t replacing one specific skill,” he writes. “It’s a general substitute for cognitive work.”

Let’s consider then, how the Victorian government’s polices fit into this outlook.

Pearson’s factories of the 21st century are very different from the industry-age factories that used to dot Melbourne’s north and west. They are cleaner, safer and are needed to support technology, information and services essential to modern life. They also require far fewer workers to run and, through the AI applications they house, will probably kill more jobs than they create.

Working from home, a slow-burn shift supercharged by COVID-19 lockdowns, is immensely popular among people who can. It has been nothing short of life-changing for parents who, instead of facing a harried commute between their office and childcare or the supermarket, have more time and opportunity to balance work with family life.

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Chip Le GrandState political editor

State political editor

Peter Dutton bravely placed himself between women and the benefits of working from home, and was fairly ripped apart at last year’s federal election. The Victorian government’s idea to legislate work-from-home rights came from picking over Dutton and the Liberal Party’s post-election carcass.

There isn’t much evidence that work-from-home laws are needed in Victoria. The Victorian Public Service already has the entitlement written into its enterprise agreement and about three-quarters of private sector companies have staff who work from home.

Nonetheless, the Allan government sees working from home as vital to its re-election prospects. If you asked the latest GPT model to devise a policy that would be widely popular, cost the budget nothing and wedge the Victorian opposition, it would probably come up with legislated work from home.

The problem is that jobs which can be worked from home are also jobs done almost entirely while sitting at a computer screen. According to Shumer’s rule, these are jobs that AI is coming for.

AI will probably munch these jobs irrespective of whether the people currently doing them are sitting in an office or at their kitchen bench. But whenever you work from home, you are sending a little reminder to your boss and their boss that one day in the not-too-distant future, your job can be replaced by technology.

Between building more data centres and encouraging more people to work from home, the government appears to be doing all it can realise Shumer’s dire predictions for white-collar employment.

It is perhaps best not to dwell on such things, least of all when there is a state election to be won. Rest assured that in the Victorian parliament, there is no sign anyone is.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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