Uber makes last-ditch plea for retrospective law change on driver rights

Monday, 25 August 2025

Rally outside Uber employment case at Supreme Court

Representatives from Uber have made a rare appearance in front of MPs, renewing a call for a retrospective law change that would prevent Uber drivers from claiming the same rights as employees for past work.

The appeal to Parliament’s Education and Workforce select committee came as the Supreme Court readies a ruling that should otherwise settle whether Uber drivers could potentially be entitled to backdated sick pay, holiday pay and the minimum wage going back as far as six years.

The select committee is currently hearing submissions on the Government’s Employment Relations Amendment Bill, one goal of which is to come to the aid of the gig economy.

The bill would confirm workers would in future be classed as contractors, rather than employees, if that is what they had agreed in writing, and so long as a business met some conditions.

These are that the business didn’t prevent those people working elsewhere, didn’t dictate their hours or — if they did — allowed them to subcontract their work, and didn’t terminate their contract if they turned down a “gig”.

Uber has appeared to accept the fact it risks extensive litigation without a retrospective law change.

Cameron Loughlin — Uber’s legal director for Australia and New Zealand — said that because of Uber’s “facilitation model” the law change would need to be reworded to have its intended effect for Uber’s business, in terms of drivers’ future status.

The Government is expected to attempt to accommodate that request.

But Loughlin also called on the committee to apply the changes Uber was seeking retrospectively, a move the Government has so far resisted.

If Parliament didn’t apply the law change retrospectively, it would create an “uneven playing field for new entrants to the market” and the upshot could be extensive litigation that could burden both businesses and the legal system, he suggested.

“The Government has the ability to make any law apply retrospectively where it's required to provide clarification or certainty,” he said.

“This is one of the rare situations envisaged by the Legislation Design and Advisory committee where backwards-looking legal clarification is appropriate.”