According to Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke, these laws give workers the power to stop employers from taking advantage of them by infringing upon their personal time with constant work requests and demands.

However, as with the anti-bullying laws, which at times can be used as a sword against managers rather than a shield, the new laws will be misused by some employees. Lazy workers wanting to push the limits might misuse these laws by refusing to take a call from a boss about a critical business issue in the evening; for example when a cyber risk has been identified, but an IT officer won’t answer a call from the chief executive at 10pm.

These new rights will, of course, be a fair remedy for many genuinely hard-working employees who spend significant personal time doing unpaid work. But my concern with these laws is that they will give new protections to the workers who are already idle. After all, to “disconnect” means “to become detached or withdrawn”, attributes rarely sought by employers.

Think I am being unfair? Well, laziness is an increasing trend in the cases I defend for employers. Putting aside pandemic lockdowns where all sorts of things other than work were going on in people’s homes during virtual business hours, more recently I have been involved in matters where employees were surreptitiously sleeping on the job; forging time sheets with fabricated work hours; using fake medical certificates to take sickies; or watching Netflix while claiming to be working from home.

An employer’s power to give work-related orders and expect them to be obeyed is a fundamental feature of the employment relationship, but lazy employees have been around for a long time. In a famous English case from 1969, an employee was hired as a gardener at a manor house. Over a period of three months his work deteriorated and he became lazy and inefficient.

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On the day of his dismissal, he was directed by the owner of the house to put some plants in the garden, which he refused to do, retorting: “I couldn’t care less about your bloody greenhouse and your sodding garden!” He was dismissed with the English Court of Appeal finding his wilful laziness was disobedience of a lawful and reasonable direction.

Get ready for more complaints from employees wanting to exercise their rights to do less work. Employers seeking to recruit staff with an old-fashioned work ethic might need to ensure job advertisements include the warning “Lazy Girls and Lazy Boys need not apply”.

Paul O’Halloran is an employment law partner at law firm Dentons Australia.