Melbourne cafe owner Michael Hannah looks over the half-empty lunchtime tables and frets how much worse things will be when the state government enshrines a world-first right to work-from-home later this year.
¡°Not only us as a cafe gets affected; you have a gym that had 3,000 members shut down, it affects the 7-Eleven, it affects the chemist, it affects anything you can see here,¡± Hannah said. ¡°You look at this now and you think, are we in the city?¡±
Australia¡¯s second-most populous city endured some of the world¡¯s longest and strictest lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been slow to recover as employees accustomed to working from home defy attempts to get them back to CBD offices. The city, home to miners BHP Group?and Rio Tinto and lenders National Australia Bank?and ANZ Group Holdings, has the highest office vacancy rate among the nation¡¯s capital cities.
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