Industrial relations lawyer RICHARD CALVER sees a bumpy road ahead for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s policy of getting public servants back to the office, and there’s more… 

I’m sitting in a Barton café having lunch with a mate who is a newly minted public servant after having worked for years in the private sector including as a colleague last decade.

The patterns of work, he says, are determined by an enterprise agreement that allows working from home with many of his team taking that option.

His preference is for a clear separation of home and work life and he’s in the office every day. 

He says: “Today it was a lonely experience being at work. Most of my team were working from home again. 

“But, you know, getting to know the people you are working with and understanding the personality dynamics is important. 

“Our enterprise agreement though gives them the right to work from home. It makes the Dutton policy of getting everyone back in the office a bit problematic.”

“Yes,” I say. “Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would have to pass a statute that overrides the provisions in a heck of a lot of workplace agreements. 

“There’s also the issue of employer liability that has been brought home, excuse my pun, by a South Australian case decided in October: employers are liable for worker’s compensation where an employee is injured at home, even when its their fault.”

“Really?” he says.

“Yes, the case is a bit bizarre too as the council employee tripped over a temporary pet fence that she had herself erected so that a friend’s dog that she was minding wouldn’t go after her pet rabbit.

“The scenario is like a joke waiting for a punchline. But it was no joke, not at all hare-larious.”

“Anyway, while she was taking her coffee break she walked from the sunroom, where she normally worked, to her kitchen. She must have forgotten about the pet fence because she tripped over it and injured her knee and shoulder. 

“The council argued that the main cause of the fall was the unusual and clear hazard of the employee erecting a pet fence. No one at the council instructed or directed the employee to put up the fence. 

“On that basis the council wanted the tribunal to rule that employment was not a significant contributing cause, merely the occasion of the injury.

“One of the tribunal’s findings (the hearing was in the SA Employment Tribunal) was that the employee did not receive any direction from the council about what activities were or were not permitted during her permitted breaks.

“The other important factors were authorised use of her home as an authorised place of employment and the autonomy she had when taking a short break as well as in managing her own health and safety at home.

“Even though she created the workplace hazard that led to her injury, that didn’t mean she was excluded from compensation. The tribunal said that the idea that a hazard created by a worker means they can’t get compensation had not been a feature of the SA worker’s comp scheme since 1994. So she won.”

Looking around the café as we are leaving my mate says: “Well if Dutton brings them back to the office this place will have more patrons.”