Latest news with #VictorianLabor
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Working from home is already happening. So why are people in Victoria so mad?
It is suddenly very important to certain Victorians that their laptops have playdates. Every day, the laptops will travel to a communal location, where they will do parallel play for eight hours before returning home again. This is crucial to the survival of traditional values as we know them. The Victorian Labor party has pushed back on this essential social ceremony. At the party's state conference last weekend, Jacinta Allan announced a plan to protect Victorians' right to flexible work, 'if reasonable'. Essentially, that means people who use computers instead of hammers and Bunsen burners. Allan isn't suggesting we all hang out in our PJs every day (sadly). If enacted, the proposal would give Victorians the right to spend three days in the office and two days at home (or somewhere else, as long as they have a Teams background that looks like a home). Sign up: AU Breaking News email This has upset certain people. After all, a lot can happen in two days. Chicken can go bad. A parcel can be delivered. Workers can defy their employment contracts and watch several seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Pushback has been quick and fierce. Most of the criticism reasonably centres on Allan's ability to implement it: various lawyers are quoted as saying it's unenforceable. The AFR has said it's a 'plan built on hypocrisy', while Sky News' commentator called it a 'stunt'. Most are – rightly – calling it an obvious election ploy (it would only be implemented in 2026, if Labor is re-elected). Less boringly, The Age referred to 'the cynical artistry of legislating to protect something not at risk'. The suggestion is that Allan is campaigning to protect Victorians' right to keep doing what they're already doing. Which is wrong, but not in the obvious way. In 2019, before working from home was invented, as many as 30% of Australians worked from home. Almost a third of us understood the specific joy of rolling out of bed and down the hallway instead of spending 65 minutes going somewhere else. It wasn't perfect. The Office People found it deeply suspicious: surely grown adults couldn't be trusted to do any work unless a manager could see them. What if they went shopping? Played with their dog? Or simply napped all day? Despite a total lack of evidence, certain people pushed a narrative that autonomous working was a scam invented by Peter Alexander. The pandemic amplified both the technology and the distrust. Our primary function became video calling. We learnt to dress for work from the waist up. Time trackers went mainstream – and so did mouse jigglers. We invited ourselves to fake meetings so no one would see our Teams 'away' status and think we'd skived off to a pub lunch instead of emailing. For the existing 30%, a lot of this was welcome progress. It was no longer weird to see someone's pet/child/sentient trash pile in the background. The washing finally got done. Children saw their parents before bedtime. And way, way, way less time was wasted on commutes. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion But as the acute Covid threat eased, the Office People got nervous. What if no one ever came back to the office? What if they liked this new life? What if – lord mayor protect us – they never again had to choose between catching the train and not smelling like a toilet? For these and other – secret – reasons, they began to insist people return to the office full-time. Whatever their reasoning, they are – as ever – fighting an imaginary enemy. Remote working increased during peak Covid but it's still pretty darn close to the 2019 numbers: 36% of Australians usually worked from home in 2024 (compared with 40% in 2021). Almost everyone still leaves their house to teach, build, cook, save lives, drive buses, grow food, sell mobile phone plans and, yes, type. A plan – however cynical – to protect flexible working doesn't enshrine what Covid produced. We can never go back to what we were already doing (being the weird guys who knew how to use the company VPN) and the thing I want to keep doing is quietly typing without being surveilled. This week's criticism has merely revealed that classic conservative trope: it was already happening. You just didn't care until you felt personally attacked.
The Age
02-08-2025
- Automotive
- The Age
On Labor's pitch for working from home, Allan finds her cause
In the nearly two years since she became Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan has never been entirely in sync with the Labor machine. Where Dan Andrews was both a central cog and its chief engineer, it has taken a while for Allan and the other moving parts on Victorian Labor's election-winning assembly line to fully understand each other and how best to roll the finished product into the November 2026 state poll. At Moonee Valley Racecourse on Saturday, the venue for this year's ALP state conference, we saw the pieces coming together. The premier walked in and left the conference main hall to a standing ovation, the room having been primed by a slick campaign video marrying Allan's voice and image with the 'On your side' slogan the party will use in the lead-up to the election. When the video started playing before Allan's putative rival, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, had finished his speech, it was further evidence that Labor gods are now smiling on a state leader who, only a few months ago, was put in deep freeze by her own party during the federal campaign. The change in Allan and Victorian Labor from the dog days of late summer, when senior party figures were reeling from the results of a Resolve poll published by this masthead showing only one-fifth of voters intended to vote for the party at the next state election, goes beyond the atmospherics on the conference floor. The centrepiece of Allan's speech was a promise to legislate the right of people to work from home two days a week in jobs where this is possible. This is very much Allan's policy, developed by her advisers and approved by a cabinet subcommittee of senior ministers she chairs, rather that going to full cabinet or caucus for debate.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-08-2025
- Automotive
- Sydney Morning Herald
On Labor's pitch for working from home, Allan finds her cause
In the nearly two years since she became Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan has never been entirely in sync with the Labor machine. Where Dan Andrews was both a central cog and its chief engineer, it has taken a while for Allan and the other moving parts on Victorian Labor's election-winning assembly line to fully understand each other and how best to roll the finished product into the November 2026 state poll. At Moonee Valley Racecourse on Saturday, the venue for this year's ALP state conference, we saw the pieces coming together. The premier walked in and left the conference main hall to a standing ovation, the room having been primed by a slick campaign video marrying Allan's voice and image with the 'On your side' slogan the party will use in the lead-up to the election. When the video started playing before Allan's putative rival, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, had finished his speech, it was further evidence that Labor gods are now smiling on a state leader who, only a few months ago, was put in deep freeze by her own party during the federal campaign. The change in Allan and Victorian Labor from the dog days of late summer, when senior party figures were reeling from the results of a Resolve poll published by this masthead showing only one-fifth of voters intended to vote for the party at the next state election, goes beyond the atmospherics on the conference floor. The centrepiece of Allan's speech was a promise to legislate the right of people to work from home two days a week in jobs where this is possible. This is very much Allan's policy, developed by her advisers and approved by a cabinet subcommittee of senior ministers she chairs, rather that going to full cabinet or caucus for debate.
SBS Australia
28-07-2025
- Health
- SBS Australia
NITV Radio News - 28/07/2025
NITV Radio brings the latest in the News, sport and weather. The federal government is being urged to increase its funding for global health research to better anticipate and prepare for climate-related health issues, antimicrobial resistance and future pandemics. A new report has found one in five Australian households are struggling to pay their energy bills, with renters more heavily affected. Victorian Labor members plan to use this weekend's state conference to demand the federal government move to immediately recognise a Palestinian state. That and more in the program for NITV Radio.
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Eight storeys beneath Melbourne: first look inside the city's new metro stations
Melbourne's Metro Tunnel is expected to open in late 2025. Described as the most significant overhaul of the city's transport network since the City Loop opened in the 1980s, the tunnel has been taking shape beneath the city for the past eight years – with the bill ballooning to $14bn. With an eye on the 2026 state election, the long-serving Victorian Labor government – with its soaring debt of nearly $200bn – is banking on the project to turn its fortunes around. Guardian Australia's Victoria state correspondent, Benita Kolovos, gets a look at the city's newest train stations
