The recommender said she "didn't know" if the complaints stayed out of her mind
She complained about staffing. Five months later, she was gone.
A registered nurse at a Melbourne aged care facility has won a general protections claim after a federal court found her employer could not prove workplace complaints played no part in her dismissal during probation.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia handed down its decision on October 12, 2026, in Kaur v Trustee for the Willow Wood Cranbourne Aged Services Trust (No 2).
The worker was employed as a Residential Wellness Manager at Willow Wood, one of four Melbourne-based aged care facilities operated by Lifeview. She started in August 2024 on a part-time contract, primarily covering afternoon shifts across two of the home's six neighbourhoods.
Within weeks, she began raising concerns.
Her first email to the residential manager, sent in September 2024 during a gastro outbreak, complained she had been left without a coordinator on three occasions and that the week had been "extremely exhausting." A second email in October flagged a staff member who refused to move between areas, telling the worker she would rather go home than comply. A third, in November, raised issues with a colleague's conduct, night staff arriving late, and concerns about closing incident reports without management input.
By January 2025, she emailed again - this time requesting a review of her pay classification. She said she was caring for 58 beds on her own afternoon shift and believed she should be on a higher grade.
The residential manager did not meaningfully investigate any of those emails. But the court found the residential manager accepted each one was a complaint or grievance and understood the worker expected a response.
Then the complaints about the worker started arriving.
Over late January 2025, a personal care assistant emailed management alleging the worker spoke to staff in "an abrupt and degrading tone" and had attempted to manually lift a resident off the floor without a hoist. A senior nurse raised concerns about the worker discussing a confidential serious incident in front of another employee. An enrolled nurse who had been mentoring the worker sent a detailed email listing alleged performance issues, including limited rounds and poor teamwork.
On January 24, the residential manager recommended dismissal. The employer's executive manager of people and culture agreed four days later, on January 28. That afternoon, the worker was called into a meeting that lasted roughly five minutes and told her employment would not continue. She received two weeks' pay in lieu of notice. No reason was given.
When the worker phoned the executive manager the next day demanding to know why, the executive manager offered to put the reasons in writing - an offer the worker declined. The worker alleged her dismissal was racially motivated. She later abandoned that claim before the court.
Here is where the case turned on a question that matters for every HR team.
The employer argued the executive manager was the sole decision-maker and had never seen the worker's complaint emails. That was true. But under cross-examination, the executive manager conceded she had made "no independent assessment" of the worker's performance. She had relied entirely on what the residential manager told her. She had not spoken to the worker, reviewed any primary material, or verified any of the allegations.
The court described the employer's filed evidence on this point as a "contrivance" designed to distance the dismissal decision from the worker's complaints. It "did not withstand proper judicial questioning."
The judge put it to the executive manager directly: "You sit there, and you receive a recommendation, and you accept what's in the recommendation. Is that right?" The executive manager answered: "Yes, I did, yes."
That made the residential manager's state of mind the real question. Under the Fair Work Act, when an employer fires someone who has made workplace complaints, it falls to the employer to prove the complaints were not a reason for the dismissal. If the employer cannot clear that bar, the law presumes the complaints played a part.
And when the judge asked the residential manager whether the worker's complaints would have been out of her mind when she recommended dismissal, her answer was telling: "I don't know."
The court accepted both employer witnesses as honest. But honesty about a flawed process did not get the employer over the line. The court found the residential manager could not show her recommendation was free of the worker's complaints. Because the executive manager relied entirely on that recommendation, the tainted reasoning flowed straight through to the final decision.
One finding did go the employer's way. The court accepted the executive manager had not personally been influenced by the worker's complaints (other than the pay inquiry, which she knew about). But that was not enough to save the employer, because the recommender's reasoning was the one that counted.
The court declared Lifeview contravened s 340 of the Fair Work Act by dismissing the worker because she exercised workplace rights. Compensation and any penalty will be determined separately, with a case management conference listed for November 6, 2026. The worker's race discrimination claim was abandoned before the decision.
For HR teams, the practical lesson is blunt: when a manager recommends a probationary dismissal and the decision-maker rubber-stamps it without independent verification, the manager's reasons become the employer's reasons - and anything in the manager's mind comes along for the ride.
The decision concerns liability only. Compensation and any pecuniary penalty are yet to be determined.
