Or even a reason? I mean, unless the backdoor has a hard-coded URL like `www.ThisIsAGovernmentBackdoor.gov.au`, then a backdoor wouldn't seem to automatically implicate the government. Then an employer might well assume that the employee is just doing their own hacking. And presumably the employee can't say otherwise, right?
Or does the law say that employees can refuse if they fear discovery? And if so, couldn't employees always just refuse on that basis?
If their purpose is to hack company X, are informed that the way they intend to do it will be discovered and expose the tool they were going to use, then I expect they would refrain from doing that and try to find some other way. If they do not refrain then their purpose must not be to hack company X but really just to expose the tool for some reason.
However if they just say I will likely be discovered because of this reason, the police will probably just say "that's a risk we're willing to take!" and go for it.
1. you take job at place with code review.
2. Australian police say place a backdoor.
3. You say we have code review the backdoor will be caught.
Now at this point the following might happen.
4a. make sure your code is reviewed by X. 4b. ok I guess it won't work. 4c. here is the code to put in, it has a very hard to catch bug that we can exploit.
in no way would I expect them to say 4d. well we're going to take you to court because you took a job that makes entering backdoors difficult.
on edit: improved formatting on 2nd edit: I removed the leading No but, because I can't remember why I started off with that.