Employment law rarely stands still at the start of a financial year, but the volume of change landing in July 2026 is significant even by that standard. Alongside the annual wage increase, employers are navigating new restrictions on settlement agreements in Victoria, a proposed statutory right to work from home, and an expanding labour hire licensing net across two states. For practitioners who advise employers, keeping clients across all of this at once, rather than reacting to each change individually, is where the real value of quality programs on CPD for lawyers shows up this year.
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The wage increase
The Fair Work Commission’s 2026 Annual Wage Review lifted the National Minimum Wage by around 6 per cent, taking it to $26.44 an hour or $1,004.90 a week, the first time it has passed the $1,000 mark. Modern award minimum rates increased by 4.75 per cent, affecting roughly 21 per cent of the workforce, or close to 2.8 million award-reliant employees. Both changes apply from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. The Commission also began phasing out the lowest ongoing classification level in some awards, with increases to entry-level rates to preserve relativities.
For employers, the practical task is familiar but not trivial. Enterprise agreement rates need to sit at or above the new award minimums under the Better Off Overall Test, annualised salary arrangements need to confirm they still absorb all award entitlements, and payroll systems need updating from the correct pay period rather than the calendar date. The high income threshold has also risen to $190,100, with the unfair dismissal compensation cap moving to $95,050, both relevant to advice on dismissal risk and contractor arrangements.
Victorian reforms with different statuses
Two Victorian changes are easy to conflate, and the distinction matters for advice given to clients. The first is the Restricting Non-Disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Act 2025, intended to commence this year. It sets preconditions before an employer can enter a workplace NDA relating to sexual harassment, requiring that the complainant requests it, receives a mandatory information statement, and has a review period before signing. Complainants retain the right to make certain disclosures regardless of the agreement, and can terminate an NDA after twelve months. This is settled law, not a proposal, and settlement drafting practices in this area need to change now.
The second is the Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026. If passed, it would create a statutory right for eligible employees to work from home up to two days a week where reasonable, commencing 1 September 2026 for most employers and 1 July 2027 for small businesses. Unlike the NDA reform, this remains a bill before Parliament and may still be amended. Advice given now should flag it as a proposal to monitor, not a confirmed obligation, while encouraging clients to start thinking through which roles could reasonably accommodate the change.
Expanding labour hire licensing
Labour hire regulation continues to tighten outside Victoria’s two headline reforms. Victoria applied stricter licensing standards, including an enhanced fit and proper person test and an express financial viability requirement for labour hire providers. South Australia’s labour hire licensing scheme expands to cover all industries, subject to some exclusions, a significant broadening from its previous sector-specific scope. Clients operating across state lines should not assume a licence held in one jurisdiction satisfies requirements in another, and definitions of labour hire services and labour hire workers are being revised alongside the expansion, which is worth checking against current arrangements rather than assumed.
What practitioners should be prioritising
Given the volume of change, a few things are worth putting in front of clients before the next quarter rather than after something goes wrong. First, a wage audit against the new award rates and thresholds, since this is the change with immediate financial consequences and the shortest runway. Second, a review of any standard settlement or separation templates used in Victoria, to confirm they reflect the new NDA preconditions rather than the boilerplate confidentiality clauses many employers have relied on for years. Third, for clients operating labour hire arrangements in Victoria or South Australia, a check of current licence coverage against the revised definitions, given how quickly the scope of these schemes has moved beyond their original industries. The work from home bill sits differently again, since it is not yet law, but clients with a meaningful Victorian workforce are right to start mapping which roles could reasonably accommodate the proposed right, so they are not caught unprepared if it passes largely as introduced.
With this pace of change likely to continue through the rest of 2026, employment law is shaping up to be one of the more dynamic areas of practice this year. Practitioners who want to stay genuinely current are increasingly turning to available programs on legal CPD online to keep pace between major reforms. Content built for the profession is generally designed to track exactly these kinds of live regulatory shifts, so staying compliant with your own CPD points can double as staying ahead of the changes affecting your clients.