Victoria is on the cusp of a transformative moment for workplace safety and gender justice. The introduction of the Restricting Non‑disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Bill 2025 marks a bold and necessary shift in how sexual harassment is addressed across the State.
This is not just another reform, it is a fundamental reimagining of how power, silence, and accountability operate in our workplaces.
For decades, non‑disclosure agreements (NDAs) have been used not as tools of resolution, but as instruments of concealment. In cases of workplace sexual harassment, NDAs have routinely silenced victims, shielded perpetrators, and protected employer reputations at the expense of justice.
A national survey of legal practitioners in 2024 revealed that approximately 75 per cent of sexual harassment settlements included an NDA. For women, this has meant being pressured into silence, stripped of the ability to speak about their experiences, and left to carry the burden of harm alone.
Victoria is now leading the nation in challenging this status quo.
Following extensive consultation in 2024, including 81 submissions from unions, employers, academics, legal experts and survivors, the government is proposing a suite of reforms that place survivor autonomy and transparency at the centre. Among these are provisions to prohibit NDAs unless specifically requested by the complainant, to ensure access to independent legal advice (funded by the employer), to introduce a cooling-off period before finalising agreements, and to allow victims to disclose the existence of an NDA to health professionals, police, or lawyers. Crucially, the Bill also reframes workplace sexual harassment as an occupational health and safety (OHS) issue, recognising the systemic nature of the harm, the psychosocial hazard and unsafe environment it creates.
These reforms are not happening in isolation. They reflect key recommendations from the 2022 Victorian Ministerial Taskforce on Workplace Sexual Harassment and align with the broader goals of Victoria’s Gender Equality Strategy – Our Equal State, which calls for structural changes to dismantle the gendered power imbalances that underpin workplace harm. Restricting NDAs is a direct action toward that goal as it ensures that redress mechanisms do not perpetuate silence, but instead foster accountability and cultural change.
Why does this matter? Because every time an NDA is used to silence a victim-survivor, the consequences ripple outward. Offenders may go unchallenged, patterns of abuse remain hidden, and workplaces become complicit in a culture of concealment. Other workers receive a chilling message: speak out, and you may be silenced too. It reinforces the unequal power dynamics that exist in workplaces shaped by gender, hierarchy, and intersecting forms of disadvantage.
For employers, this Bill signals a cultural reckoning. NDAs can no longer be the default mechanism for managing risk. Instead, organisations must confront the reality that resolving a sexual harassment complaint is not just about settling an individual case, it is about transforming the workplace itself and removing the ‘hazard’ to create and maintain a safe environment. That means developing policies, training and cultures that centre worker voices and dignity, not organisational protection.
For women who have experienced harassment or fear they might, this reform offers something long overdue. It offers the possibility of speaking truth and a pathway to justice that does not require silence as the price of resolution. It affirms that the workplace should be a space of safety, not fear. And for anyone who has ever thought, “I should have said something, but I was scared of what would happen,” this Bill sends a powerful message: you do not have to be silent anymore.
But legislation alone is not enough. This moment demands mobilisation. Women’s movements, unions, legal advocates and workers must remain vigilant to ensure the Bill is strong, enforceable and intersectional. Protections must account for how race, disability, class and immigration status amplify vulnerability.
Survivors must have access to legal advice and support services. And workplaces must be held to account, not just in law, but in culture. Workplaces can and must be a vehicle for structural change.
Victorian women and workers have waited long enough. The tools meant to protect them have too often been used to conceal harm. This Bill is a chance to change that, shift power, restore voices, and build workplaces where silence is no longer the norm.