A "project" label and shaky funding could not keep this long-serving worker on rolling contracts
A Queensland tribunal has ruled that shaky funding and a "project" label are not enough to keep a busy worker on temporary contracts indefinitely.
That was the outcome on June 29, 2026, when the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission handed down its reasons in a public sector conversion appeal, overturning a department's refusal to make a long-serving employee permanent. The orders had been issued four days earlier, on June 25.
The worker had been employed on successive fixed-term contracts since August 2023 - more than two and a half years - in a senior dispute resolution role within the Department of Justice. He asked to be made permanent. The department said no, and he appealed.
Queensland's Public Sector Act 2022 makes permanent employment the default. An agency can keep someone on a temporary footing only where doing so is "not viable or appropriate," and it must review long-serving temporary staff for conversion. The department's refusal rested on funding: the role was tied to a time-limited "Reform and Demand Pressures Project," the money was set to run out on June 26, 2026, future funding was unapproved, and, it said, there was "no funded substantive position beyond" that date.
The Commission found the refusal was not fair and reasonable.
The tribunal accepted the demand was real and rising. The department's own internal emails, quoted in the decision, described applications climbing year on year and staff being "bombarded with more work." That, the tribunal found, pointed to a genuine, continuing need for someone in the worker's role.
The reasoning turns on a distinction HR teams should note: the difference between a role and a position. Conversion under the Act depends on whether there is an ongoing need for the role - not on whether a permanent, funded vacancy already exists on the books. The tribunal said the department had been "hindered in its search" by an "unnecessary preoccupation" with permanent designation and a budgeted vacancy, neither of which the Act demands. A budgeted vacancy, it said, is not required, and creating a new permanent position "is to be expected in such circumstances."
The refusal also failed on its reasons. The applicable directive required the written decision to set out findings on the material facts and the evidence behind them. Instead, the tribunal found, the department never properly defined what a "substantially the same" role would be, never analysed the capability requirements of the worker's job, and relied on a broad claim that all options had been considered. That fell short.
The "project" argument did not survive either. The worker was doing core operational work in a stretched team, not a discrete project with a fixed end date, and the funding source did not change that character. Funding uncertainty on its own, the Commission held, was not a genuine operational requirement weighty enough to justify continued temporary status where the need for the work was constant and substantial.
The appeal was allowed, and the worker's employment was converted to permanent, full-time. His existing reasonable-adjustment working hours were left in place.
The lesson for HR and workforce planners is plain. Under the law, when the same person keeps doing the same essential work for years on rolling extensions, a "temporary" label gets fragile. Funding uncertainty and the lack of a ready-made permanent slot will rarely carry a refusal on their own - and a short, conclusory refusal letter can sink the decision by itself.
