What your employer must actually provide under Victoria's WFH laws

The first question everyone asks about Victoria's work from home laws is the wrong one. It is not "does my employer have to buy me a desk?" It is "what does my employer now have to take seriously that they could wave away before?" Once you frame it that way, the desk conversation gets much easier.

Here is what the law does. From 1 September 2026, eligible employees have a right to request to work from home, and an employer has to weigh that request on fair, business-based grounds rather than personal preference. Woven through it is the idea that employers should meet the reasonable costs of that arrangement. "Reasonable" is the word doing all the work, and it will mean something different at a law firm than at a ten-person startup.

What it does not do is write you a cheque. Nobody is entitled to the most expensive chair in the catalogue on the company card. But there is a floor, and the floor is a safe, functional place to do the job. That is not a new idea either — employers already carry work health and safety duties for people working at home, and a dining chair at a kitchen bench fails that test the moment the work is regular and full-time.

So the reasonable middle is a workstation that lets you do the role properly: a desk at the right height, a chair that supports a full day, and often a share of the things the work genuinely needs. A desk you use every working day sits squarely inside that. A standing-desk-treadmill-under-mood-lighting setup does not, and pretending otherwise only makes the ask easier to refuse.

In practice it lands one of three ways. The company buys the desk outright, most common where a home-office budget already exists. The company splits it, which is the most common outcome overall. Or you buy it and claim the depreciation yourself. None of those requires a fight; they require a specific request with a number attached.

That is the real lever the law hands you. Before 1 September, asking your manager to fund a desk was asking for a favour, and favours are easy to defer. After it, the same request sits inside a framework the company has to engage with. The words barely change. The footing underneath them changes completely.