Regulation · 1 August 2026
Victoria has restricted NDAs in sexual harassment settlements. The profession writes those settlements
Confidentiality will only be available where the victim-survivor asks for it. The reform's success depends on lawyers abandoning a default they have relied on for decades.
The Profession Press · Editorial
The Restricting Non-Disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Act 2025 (Vic) limits the use of confidentiality clauses in workplace sexual harassment settlements. Secrecy provisions may only be included where the victim-survivor requests them. Commencement is by proclamation, expected around 1 July 2026 — practitioners should confirm the operative date before advising.
The reform is aimed at a practice the legal profession invented, refined and routinely deploys. Confidentiality has been the default term in harassment settlements for so long that many practitioners no longer experience it as a choice. It appears in the precedent. It goes in the draft. Nobody asks the complainant whether she wants it, because the question has never been part of the process.
The reform's weakest point
Legal commentators have already warned that entrenched settlement practice could hollow the Act out. If confidentiality remains the opening position, and the complainant must actively decline it against the advice of a respondent's insurer and the momentum of a mediation running past six o'clock, then a statutory reversal of the default becomes a formality rather than a protection.
Which raises an uncomfortable professional question. The Act does not merely regulate employers. It regulates what lawyers may draft, and it does so because Parliament concluded that lawyers left to their own precedents would keep drafting the same clause.
Practical consequences
Settlement precedents containing standard confidentiality clauses need to be reviewed and, in Victoria, rebuilt.
Advice to respondents must now address the possibility that a matter resolves without secrecy, and price that risk honestly rather than assume it away.
Practitioners in other jurisdictions should expect the model to travel. Victoria has form as a first mover on workplace reform, and the other states are watching the implementation rather than the principle.
A reform that depends on the profession changing its habits will be tested by the profession's habits.
Read it here: https://www.vic.gov.au/restricting-non-disclosure-agreements-sexual-harassment-work-act-2025