Victoria’s WFH bill effectively delayed until after state election
Benita Kolovos
Australian-first laws that guarantee the right to work from home two days a week are unlikely to pass Victorian parliament before the November state election, with the Coalition and crossbench teaming up to refer the bill to an inquiry.
The laws were first announced in 2025 by the then premier Jacinta Allan in a bid to capitalise on the backlash to the federal Coalition’s plan to force public servants back into the office full-time, which contributed to their election loss.
The Victorian Coalition, though, had said it would support the bill and expected it would pass parliament on Thursday.
But in a shock development, the Coalition has joined with crossbench MPs, including Legalise Cannabis, David Limbrick from the Libertarians, former Liberal MP Moira Deeming and One Nation’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell to refer the bill to an inquiry that effectively stalls it until after the election.
The inquiry was put forward by Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman and passed 18 votes to 17.
Key events
VIC Property Council welcomes delays to the WFH Bill
The Property Council has welcomed delays the Victoria’s national-leading work from home bill after the Coalition and crossbenchers decided to refer it to an inquiry, effectively stalling it until after the election.
The organisation said the draft legislation requires “further scrutiny given the complexity and legal challenges it presents to all Victorians.”
In a statement, Victorian Executive Director Cath Evans said the decision was the only correct choice.
The Victorian Parliament has seen sense. Instead of forcing rushed legislation through Parliament, it has made the right call by sending the Bill to a Committee to properly examine its operation, implications and legal validity.
Referring the Bill to a Committee gives the Parliament the opportunity to methodically examine all of the legal and economic issues associated with the Bill.
This decision should be the clearest signal: the Victorian Government needs to be focused on the things that will actually drive growth – building more homes, creating jobs, attracting investment and restoring confidence in the state.
We hope this is the beginning of a more constructive approach to addressing the economic issues facing Victoria, and a government that listens to business and recognises that employers and employees are best placed to agree on arrangements that work for them.”
Boats seized, mud crabs freed in seafood sting
Boats have been seized and mud crabs freed in a crackdown on black market seafood trafficking, AAP reports.
Three boats will be destroyed after successful prosecutions involving illegal seafood trafficking in Moreton Bay, the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Two offenders were caught by Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol officers selling seafood outside the state’s commercial fishing system.
A Russell Island man was fined $10,000 for black market sales of mud crabs, king threadfin salmon and mulloway. Officers also located 139 protected bivalve molluscs and an undersized mud crab in his possession.
The man was ordered to forfeit the vessel and associated equipment.
It follows two other successful prosecutions of illegal seafood harvesting in southeast Queensland, with all three forfeited vessels to be crushed. Officers executed a search warrant and seized his vessel, trailer, outboard motor and marine electronics.
Deputy Director-General Fisheries and Forestry Pauline Jacob said the offenders weren’t simply catching a few extra fish for dinner. She said:
They were profiting from Queensland’s fisheries resources through ongoing illegal seafood sales that undermine honest commercial fishers and legitimate seafood businesses.
She said licensed commercial fishers invest heavily to meet strict licensing, sustainability and food safety requirements.
Black market operators avoid those costs while undercutting businesses that do the right thing.
Queenslanders deserve confidence that the seafood they buy has been legally harvested, responsibly managed and supplied through legitimate businesses.
RSL Australia says calling a veteran a traitor is a ‘slur’
Sarah Basford Canales
Australia’s largest veteran support group has warned calling veterans traitors is a “slur” and an attack on every veteran’s service.
It follows a bitter rift between the Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie and the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, after the latter refused to apologise for a cartoon her party published that labelled Hastie a “traitor”.
In a statement this afternoon, the Returned & Services League of Australia, better known as RSL Australia, said using the word sends a “corrosive message to the wider veteran community” that “your service can be recast as betrayal the moment it’s politically convenient”.
The statement said:
The recent comments from Senator Hanson towards Andrew Hastie MP go beyond political disagreement.
This may have begun as a political dispute between Senator Hanson and Mr Hastie, however, when a person’s military service is used as the punchline, when the word ‘traitor’ is thrown at someone who has worn the uniform and deployed on operations, that stops being politics and starts being an attack on every veteran’s service.
Veterans don’t stop being accountable to their oath once they leave the ADF. Branding a former soldier a ‘traitor’ sends a corrosive message to the wider veteran community: that your service can be recast as betrayal the moment it’s politically convenient.
RSL Australia asks all sides of politics to keep that distinction. Calling a veteran a traitor is a slur, and it deserves to be treated as one regardless of who it’s aimed at or how it’s dressed up.”
Read more:
High court refuses Giggle’s appeal over women-only app discrimination
Josh Taylor
The high court has refused with costs an appeal by women-only app Giggle against a full federal court ruling in May that upheld a landmark decision that the app and its founder, Sall Grover unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle after the transgender woman was denied access to the platform.
The full court had upheld the lower court’s decision that Giggle and Grover had indirectly discriminated against Tickle when she was barred from the platform because they thought she was a man.
The full court doubled the initial amount of damages awarded to Tickle to $20,000.
Grover’s team had argued the app – designed as a “women-only safe space” – constituted a “special measure” under the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA), which allows discrimination with the aim of redressing historical disadvantage between men and women.
The high court said there was “no reason to doubt” the full court’s construction of the relevant sections of the Sex Discrimination Act, and any appeal on these provisions “has insufficient prospects of success” to warrant granting a special leave to appeal the case to the high court.
It brings to an end the long-running legal saga, which commenced in 2022.
The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said in May in a video posted to social media featuring Grover, that the Coalition was committed to “amending the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure protections for single-sex spaces are based on biological sex,” if elected.
Victoria’s WFH bill effectively delayed until after state election
Benita Kolovos
Australian-first laws that guarantee the right to work from home two days a week are unlikely to pass Victorian parliament before the November state election, with the Coalition and crossbench teaming up to refer the bill to an inquiry.
The laws were first announced in 2025 by the then premier Jacinta Allan in a bid to capitalise on the backlash to the federal Coalition’s plan to force public servants back into the office full-time, which contributed to their election loss.
The Victorian Coalition, though, had said it would support the bill and expected it would pass parliament on Thursday.
But in a shock development, the Coalition has joined with crossbench MPs, including Legalise Cannabis, David Limbrick from the Libertarians, former Liberal MP Moira Deeming and One Nation’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell to refer the bill to an inquiry that effectively stalls it until after the election.
The inquiry was put forward by Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman and passed 18 votes to 17.
Krishani Dhanji
Thank you all so much for joining me on the politics blog this week!
I’ll leave you with the fabulous Achol Arok and see you here bright and early Monday.
Tl;dr here’s what happened in question time
Josh Taylor
Department denies dereliction of duties over alleged AI hallucinations in submission on social media ban
Last month, the federal infrastructure department was quizzed in a Senate inquiry over claims made in a submission to the social media ban amendment bill that alleged citation errors identified in the age assurance technology trial report were AI hallucinations.
It was aired just before we published our story identifying several errors in the report.
At the time, officials relayed the claims by ACCS – the age verification organisation that undertook the trial – that the errors were due to links breaking in the intervening time between the report publication and the hearing.
Senator Fatima Payman queried in her dissenting report of the inquiry whether officials had been derelict in their duty in not independently verifying the advice provided by ACCS at the time.
The department’s secretary, Jim Betts, said in a letter to the committee chair, tabled this week, that officials are not failing in their duties if they give evidence “based on advice provided to them that, at face value, can be accepted as accurate”.
Betts said:
The representations made by officials were based on information available to them at the time and were honestly and reasonably held.
Betts said the department had continued to investigate since then. The department said ACCS had since provided new citations to replace the erroneous ones and would correct the report online.
ACCS has denied the citation errors were AI hallucinations.
The department declined to answer further questions on the report.
That’s time on question time
After a final question to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese calls time on QT for the week.
Coalition tries to pin Albanese on golf club membership
Take two – Anthony Albanese is asked again how the Daily Telegraph knew about his honorary membership in 2019 but he didn’t, and asks if it’s just “another case of you falling off a stage?”
The inference there is that Albanese is lying about the membership and doesn’t want to own up to it (like when he tried to deny that he fell off a stage during the last election campaign).
Albanese once again does his absolute best to totally avoid the question.
He says the article was related to a 2019 campaign to save the golf course from future development, and does a little copy and paste from a previous answer where he said that of the Coalition’s 2025 election promises, not one was for Sydney’s inner west.
I certainly supported it as did people throughout the area of the inner west either side of the Cooks River, because this is an absolutely vital and precious piece of the inner west, of Sydney.
The manager of opposition business, Dan Tehan, tries to table the article to parliament, but leader of the House, Tony Burke rejects the attempt, and says it’s already online.
Richard Marles offers no further insight on position over Israeli settlements
The independent MP Helen Haines asks: what will it take for Australia to join our allies in imposing trade bans on Israeli settlements in the West Bank?
This time the deputy PM Richard Marles takes the question and sheds no further light on the issue than when Anthony Albanese was asked about it a short time ago.
Multiple nations, including the UK, have announced they’ll implement bans on trade from illegal settlements.
Marles says the Australian government supports a two-state solution, and illegal settlements are hindering that, but that targeted sanctions on individuals and entities are still the answer.
Because of the positions that we have taken, we have put in place sanctions and bans in respect of those that have been participating in the settler – settlements – in the territories, and that has included Israeli ministers themselves. We will continue to look at further targeted measures, working collaboratively with our allies and partners around the world in respect of this issue.
Albanese dodges question on 2019 report of honorary membership in golf club
The opposition has come with receipts, asking how a Daily Telegraph article from 2019 reported that Anthony Albanese was an honorary member of the Marrickville golf club but the prime minister himself didn’t know until now.
A Coalition MP shouts asking if Toto is a member too, to which Albanese replies, smiling: “Don’t attack Toto, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”
The prime minister doesn’t really answer the question.
He goes off on a bit of a tangent, saying that the golf club wasn’t even in his electorate in 2019, and that he has the second-smallest electorate in the country.
There is very little green space in my electorate, and I defends every inch of it. In 2019, the Marrickville golf course was not in my electorate. It was actually in the electorate of Barton.
PM on the defensive over Marrickville golf club grant
The prime minister is again on the back foot, defending a $6m grant given to the Marrickville golf club, which he was an honorary member of.
Yesterday Anthony Albanese said the money was to stop sewerage from the club ending up in the Cooks River. Liberal frontbencher Tony Pasin asks if the PM mislead parliament because $1m was used on stormwater works, but $4.55m was spent on a clubhouse precinct.
Albanese provides a pretty short answer, and doesn’t address the substance of the question, but basically does confirm that part of the funding, not all of it, was for the sewerage works.
There were three commitments in my electorate. One for a women’s health centre, the one for a St Vincent de Paul facility, a refuge, for women and children escaping domestic violence, and one for the upgrade of the inner west council–owned Marrickville golf club. Included in that was funding to fix the sewerage because it goes into the river and causes a problem when it floods.
Albanese defends not declaring golf club membership
Liberal frontbencher Angie Bell is next and asks the prime minister why he hasn’t declared his honorary membership of the Marrickville golf club when he did declare honorary membership of the Royal Sydney golf club.
The former received $6m under an invite-only grants program that gave the majority of funding to safe, marginal or target Labor seats.
Spoiler alert: the opposition intervenes three times because they’re not happy with the answer.
Anthony Albanese says it’s because he knew about one (Royal Sydney) but didn’t know about the other, and doesn’t even have a card for the Marrickville club.
Albanese then tries to turn the attention back to the Coalition, and says he took a look at all the opposition’s 2025 election funding promises (which some staff member would have spent many hours trying to pour through).
I looked through the list of Coalition election commitments from 2025 and there were over 1,000 projects worth $1.2bn. I looked for anything in Grayndler and of the thousand projects, there wasn’t a single one in the inner west, not one.