Her parents came to argue the point. It didn't help
An electorate officer who was told she was being let go because she was "just not the right fit" has lost her third legal challenge, after a court found she could not keep refighting the same dispute on different grounds.
The worker had been employed in the electorate office of NSW Member of Parliament Kylie Wilkinson, the Member for East Hills, under the Members of Parliament Staff Act 2013 (NSW). Her primary role was to be the initial point of contact for constituents.
On November 22, 2024, Wilkinson told the worker her employment was coming to an end that day, but that she would be paid two weeks' pay in lieu of notice. The worker was not given reasons beyond being told she was "just not the right fit" and that "the office isn't the right place for you."
What happened next was unusual. According to the judgment, the worker returned to Wilkinson's office with her parents. Her mother insisted she could not be sacked without formal written notice and reasons. Wilkinson refused to discuss it further.
The worker was never told what specifically drove the decision.
What followed was a legal fight that moved through three forums over nearly two years.
In December 2024, the worker went to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, seeking reinstatement. She claimed she had been victimised - terminated because of her union membership, her own political activity, her family's political connections, the fact she was close to accruing long service leave, and workplace complaints she had made about bullying by another staff member.
The jurisdictional question went to the IRC's Full Bench, which initially sided with the worker and found it did have jurisdiction to hear her claim. The State appealed, and the Court of Appeal overturned that decision. It found that the worker's employment had not been terminated by any act of the State - rather, it ended automatically by operation of the statute the moment Wilkinson dispensed with the worker's services.
That distinction mattered. Under the Members of Parliament Staff Act, when a Member decides to dispense with a staffer's services, the employment terminates immediately by force of the legislation itself - not by the Member's decision, and not by anything the State does. A separate provision, s 26, shields both the decision and the resulting termination from legal challenge.
Here is where the case turned. In her IRC application, the worker had accepted that her employment was over. She was seeking reinstatement - which only makes sense if you accept you have been dismissed. In her own application, she had written that she "was terminated by Ms Wilkinson on 22 November 2024" and that she had "plainly suffered a detriment by being terminated."
But in her Supreme Court application, she argued the opposite: that Wilkinson's decision was invalid because the worker had not been given a hearing beforehand, and therefore her employment had never actually ended. She sought a declaration that the termination was invalid, $112,232.28 in unpaid wages, and damages.
The court, in a judgment delivered on November 5, 2026, dismissed the application.
On the threshold question, the court found this was an abuse of process - a legal concept that prevents a party from relitigating a dispute on a contradictory basis when the earlier proceedings have already resolved the issue. The worker could not now claim her employment remained on foot after previously pursuing and losing proceedings on the basis that it had been terminated. Permitting that, the court held, would "bring the administration of justice into disrepute."
On the substantive question - whether the Act required a Member to give a staffer notice and a hearing before dispensing with their services - the court also found against the worker.
The worker's argument rested on a well-established legal principle: that when a statute gives someone the power to make a decision that affects another person's rights, the decision-maker must generally give that person a fair hearing first. That presumption can be displaced, but only by clear legislative intent.
The court found the intent was clear enough. The phrase "dispense with services" has a long legal history in NSW, tracing back to the 1890s, and has consistently been understood as preserving the Crown's power to end employment at will. The parliamentary debates when the Act was introduced in 2013 - and again when it was amended in 2017 - both acknowledged that electorate staff were employed and dispensed with at will.
The contrast with another part of the same Act reinforced this. Section 20A, introduced in 2017, expressly requires procedural fairness when a Presiding Officer terminates a staffer for misconduct. That Parliament imposed a hearing requirement in one provision and not the other was telling.
The court also noted the practical reality of how the statutory scheme works. A Member's decision to dispense with a staffer's services takes immediate effect. There is no mechanism for a Presiding Officer to keep the employment alive, no right of challenge under the Industrial Relations Act, and s 26 blocks proceedings for judicial review-style orders in respect of the decision. All of that pointed to a legislative design that left the prerogative intact.
On damages, the worker had not established an entitlement. Wilkinson was not cross-examined about her reasons, and there was no evidence that a hearing would have changed the outcome. The worker had also accepted the termination payments she received - a position inconsistent with her argument that the employment never ended.
The application was dismissed with costs.
For HR professionals in the public sector, the case is a practical reminder that procedural fairness obligations depend entirely on the specific statutory framework governing the employment - and that some frameworks deliberately carve them out.
The court's findings in this case are final. The worker also has separate proceedings on foot in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW), which remain unresolved.
