A reminder that internal grievance talks don't pause the statutory clock
A tribunal has ruled that a teacher's key pregnancy discrimination allegations can't proceed, finding she raised them too late.
In a decision delivered on June 22, 2026, the South Australian Employment Tribunal reviewed - and upheld - the Commissioner for Equal Opportunity's refusal to accept most of her complaint. The Commissioner is the gatekeeper for equal opportunity complaints in the state, and had ruled the alleged conduct fell outside the 12-month window set by the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (SA), with no good reason to extend it.
The worker alleged that her former employer, the Department for Education, discriminated against her over her pregnancy and caring responsibilities. According to her evidence, the trouble started in 2019. While on yard duty, she told a deputy principal she might be pregnant and asked whether she would get another contract. She said the reply was "no," with the deputy principal explaining that "it would not be fair to the kids to not provide continuity" if she took maternity leave mid-year. An expected contract for 2021, which she said rested on a verbal assurance, never eventuated.
A second, later chapter unfolded in 2023, when she discovered that a gap in her service had wiped out her long-service-leave entitlements. A drawn-out dispute with the Department followed. Her leave was eventually reinstated, and she received the payout in February 2025.
She lodged her complaint on April 23, 2025. The Commissioner ruled the school events were out of time and declined to extend the deadline. She asked the Tribunal to review that call.
The case turned on two issues. First, were the 2019-2021 school events and the later leave dispute one continuous "series of acts"? If so, the whole complaint would have landed within time. The Tribunal said they were not. The two sets of events were "factually different and temporally remote," carried out by different people and engaging different parts of the Act.
That left the school allegations outside the limit, making the second question decisive: was there a good reason for the delay, and would an extension be just and equitable? The Tribunal accepted her reasons were understandable - she wanted to stay amicable, hoped to be rehired, and was managing her health and a young child. But it drew a sharp line between an understandable reason and a "good reason" in law, finding she had made repeated "deliberate" choices not to lodge, even after the Commissioner's office set out the time limit for her in June 2024.
For HR leaders, the takeaways are blunt. Internal resolution efforts do not stop the statutory clock, and neither does waiting for a related issue to settle. The Tribunal saw only a fine distinction between warning the Department that a complaint might follow and actually lodging one - and once the warning failed to move things along, it found nothing had stopped her from filing.
The decision also flagged a familiar risk. Delay had likely prejudiced the Department's ability to respond - memories fade, and the deputy principal at the centre of the early account had since retired. That is a direct argument for documenting recruitment, contract and leave decisions as they are made.
In weighing whether an extension would be fair, the Tribunal observed that the underlying complaint appeared to have merit on its face. But that was not enough to revive it. Importantly, the ruling did not decide whether discrimination occurred - the allegations were never tested. It dealt only with the out-of-time school allegations; the within-time long-service-leave matters are the subject of separate proceedings. The Commissioner's decision was affirmed.
