Australia

The Federal Court of Australia has applied the common law course of conduct principle (where contraventions committed by the same person arose from a single course of conduct can result in a single penalty) to multiple contraventions by the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, in both organising and being involved in industrial action in two separate locations (different Australian States), on the basis that it was one concerted industrial campaign against a shipping terminal operator’s proposed redundancies, and therefore should not involve “double punishment”

Australian residents are not required to pay tax on the first $18,200 of their income (a “tax free threshold”). Under provisions colloquially known as the “Backpacker Tax”, those on a working holiday visa were taxed on all their income, including the first $18,200. The Federal Court of Australia has found that a British backpacker who was in Australia on a working holiday visa, was a “resident” under the relevant tax legislation and that the “Backpacker Tax” was discriminatory in contravention of the international double tax agreement between the UK and Australia because it attempted to tax foreign workers in the same circumstances as an Australian resident at a higher tax rate

The Federal Court of Australia has upheld an appeal from the Industrial Magistrates Court of Western Australia, finding that an employer had failed to disprove underpayment allegations made by a pair of former visa workers that it had employed

The majority of the Full Federal Court of Australia has held for the purposes of section 96(1) of the Fair Work Act (Cth), that a “day” of paid personal/carers leave refers to a day of ordinary hours worked and not a notional day of 7.6 hours

The Fair Work Commission has reduced to zero the compensation payable to a solicitor, found to have been unfairly dismissed from a criminal law firm, following revelations that the solicitor had misused the firm’s confidential information during and subsequent to his employment

The Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission has quashed a Commissioner’s ruling that an employer’s installation of CCTV devices failed to comply with the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW) and that the CCTV footage it had obtained had been illegally or improperly obtained.  The Full Bench held that the recording was authorised by the Act and the evidence so obtained should not have been automatically excluded

The Federal Court of Australia has ordered that an employer and its two managing directors pay a former employee, who had been working on a temporary visa, a total of $249,000 in compensation and pecuniary penalties, for contraventions of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)