Liberals dare health secretary to ignore minister's calls in 'right to disconnect' debate

Employees will have the right to disconnect from work and ignore calls outside of hours under new government workplace reforms that the Coalition has vowed to overturn, if they win the next election.

Appearing at the Community Affairs committee on Thursday morning, Senator Ruston quizzed the department over whether it had considered the impact of Labor's legislation, including whether Mr Comley felt he could ignore Health Minister Mark Butler outside of working hours.

"I mean you'd be a very brave secretary, I admit," Senator Ruston said.

But Mr Comley surprised the room when he said: "Look, I think actually the answer is yes, I could".

"Okay. Dare you," the senator quipped.

Mr Comley said he "would dare from time to time" to disengage from work outside of hours, but would have a conversation with the minister or his office first.

"... if I really thought it was likely to be critical, I think I'd have a conversation with the minister or the office explaining the context in which that would occur," the Health boss told estimates.

"In fact, I remember from one of my previous lives where I used to play golf - I do on a Saturday morning - and we had a conversation about whether I could be disconnected on the front or the back nine."

Senator Ruston jumped in: "I get very disconnected on the golf course. Mainly 'cos I'm looking for my ball".

While Mr Comley said that he was "half joking", he added that his workplace had agreed he would check on work at the halfway point and see if there was anything urgent that needed to be done, in which case he would leave.

"And otherwise, the expectation is that they would contact other offices within the department during that window. So I think there is a way, even for the most senior people, that we want to actually come to an agreement about what is practical and what works."

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The department has already had to consider how to manage employees' disconnecting outside of working hours, thanks to a similar clause in its new enterprise agreement that commenced this month.

First assistant secretary Rachel Balmanno told senators that, under the agreement, employees and managers are required to agree to working patterns that reflect the "reasonable expectation" they can disconnect from work and aren't required to respond to work matters outside those patterns, but for exceptional circumstances.

"So we are already doing work to make sure that there were the regular conversations happening between managers and employees about patterns of work and therefore about how that will impact," Ms Balmanno said.

"So we don't expect the legislative change itself will have a big impact on top of that clause."