I mean, your code is stored in a shared repo, right? So pushing a commit with the government-mandated changes to the shared repo is "informing others". But not pushing it means it'll never get to Prod.

Most places review code commits routinely, so how is a dev supposed to get their government-mandated changes into Prod without anyone seeing them?

If your Australian co-worker stops pushing their commits to the repo and starts trying to make changes to Prod without going through review, it's also a strong signal that something might be going on here...

In fact, if this legislation posed any kind of threat to your business, then your software development processes are broken and you're vulnerable to a ton of other, more likely, threats.

The legislation was written by a shower of technically-incompetent career politicians, with absolutely zero understanding of (or interest in) how software development works. This is the same mob of idiots of pronounced "the laws of mathematics are all very well, but we're in Australia so we obey Australian laws" when discussing their plans to break cryptography.

It's unenforceable, ridiculous, and will get changed before it ever gets used.

But as a startup tech co-founder dealing with encrypted documents, and an Australian citizen, I'm not planning to launch in Australia until it's fixed, and leaving Australia until it's fixed.