Practice Expertise

  • Employment
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Areas of Practice

  • Employment
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WSG Practice Industries

Profile

Whether handling legal issues related to individual employees or the workforce as a whole, I am committed to helping clients achieve the best possible outcome for their organisation. In recent years, this has involved a particular focus on advising clients in relation to strategically significant matters such as enterprise bargaining, industrial disputes and the implementation of organisational change.

I am also an expert litigator, with extensive experience in successfully defending (or otherwise resolving) high-profile litigation against organisations and their senior executives.

 Career highlights

  • Acting for the Victorian Government in relation to the transfer of employees as part of the highly successful lease of the Port of Melbourne to the private sector
  • Assisting various employers with the implementation of significant restructures and/or workplace change, as well as managing the employment related components of share and asset sales
  • Advising a broad range of public and private sector clients – including the Department of Defence (Cth); Australian Tax Office; Department of Education and Training (Victoria); EnergyAustralia; Patties Foods; VicForests; WorkSafe Victoria; Yarra Valley Water and Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network – on legal and strategic issues related to enterprise agreement negotiations with highly unionised workforces, including managing protected and unprotected industrial action
  • Advising EnergyAustralia on its successful defence (both at first instance and on appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia) in Kate Shea v EnergyAustralia Services Pty Ltd, one of the most high-profile employment claims in recent years 

Education
LLB (HONS) (UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, 2007); BA (UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, 2007); POST GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN LEGAL PRACTICE, SKILLS AND ETHICS (MONASH UNIVERSITY, 2008)

Areas of Practice

  • Employment

Professional Career



Articles

  • High Court clarifies scope of adverse action protections

    Qantas' outsourcing decision breached adverse action protections, which the High Court clarified extend to protecting future workplace rights.

  • Full Bench overturns finding that Deliveroo rider was an employee

    In the most significant decision regarding the characterisation of workers in the gig economy since the High Court's decisions in Personnel Contracting and Jamsek earlier this year, a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) yesterday overturned an earlier decision that a Deliveroo rider was an employee and instead concluded that he was correctly characterised as an independent contractor. This article highlights the key conclusions of the Full Bench in relation to how various contractual obligations will weigh in favour of workers being either employees or contractors, together with the implications of these conclusions for the engagement of workers both in the gig economy and more broadly.

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