Hiring abroad is lawful for an Australian business when the person is genuinely employed where they live, on that country's terms, by an entity that carries the employment. Founders who ask is offshore staffing compliant with Australian law are usually asking something narrower: whether work can lawfully happen anywhere but the office they already pay for. Victoria spent this month showing how unsettled that question has become at home.
Most Melbourne employers with fifteen or more staff think a work from home law has applied to them since September. A fair few rewrote a policy on that basis. Outstaffer sells the machinery for employing people abroad, so read this as disclosure rather than pitch: Employer of Record exists because the location question keeps generating paperwork.
Victoria said the law started on 1 September. It did not.
The Victorian Government announced on 4 March 2026 that work from home would be protected in law from 1 September, giving two days a week to anyone whose role can reasonably be done remotely, and a delayed start of 1 July 2027 for workplaces under fifteen employees.
The Bill has not passed. The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 cleared the Legislative Assembly on 30 July. On 10 September the Legislative Council agreed to a reasoned amendment referring it to a select committee, not due to report until 20 October 2026. The Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which would conciliate disputes, still describes the Bill as before Parliament.
Sixteen days past the date the government named, there is no right and no obligation.
Your fifteenth employee moves the date by ten months
Here is the arithmetic the press release skipped. Below fifteen employees, the start date is 1 July 2027. At fifteen, it was meant to be 1 September 2026. One hire, made on an ordinary Tuesday for ordinary reasons, drags that obligation forward ten months and routes your refusals into conciliation, with VCAT behind it.
The state has also published what it thinks the entitlement is worth: $110 a week, or $5,308 a year in AUD, for a worker who stops commuting. Outstaffer publishes Employer of Record pricing from USD $195 per employee per month, which is USD $2,340 a year with the compliance inside it. Victoria has convened a committee to decide whether a desk may be at home. Putting a desk anywhere at all was priced and solved years ago.
Does the stall mean employers can ignore it?
No. A committee reporting on 20 October is a delay, not a defeat, and the Assembly has already passed the Bill. What the stall removes is the excuse for having no answer.
What Australian law tests is the relationship, not the postcode
An Australian business can employ people in other countries lawfully. What it cannot do is run an Australian employment relationship, call it something else, and lean on the label. Same question underneath the five-question test applied to contractors, and it does not shift because a parliament is arguing about commutes.
So is offshore staffing compliant with Australian law?
Yes, where the employment is real in the country the person lives in. This is general information, so get advice on your own arrangement before restructuring anything.
Related reading
Decide where the work happens before somebody decides for you
The honest counter is that this is a fight about symbolism. Most decent employers already allow two days at home, the Bill will likely pass in some form, and a committee is a speed bump rather than a reversal. Fair enough. The direction is not in doubt.
It still leaves you treating location as a permission you grant, against a rule that keeps moving. The businesses that stopped thinking that way are not waiting for 20 October. They worked out which tasks need a room, then hired the rest where the people were. Our breakdown of the real all-in monthly cost of an employee abroad is that decision with the numbers attached.
If you want the honest version of what your setup costs, sign up and run one role through it and compare that against the policy you are about to rewrite for the third time.
So: which of your roles truly requires a Melbourne postcode, and could you defend that answer in a conciliation room?
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