Federal court greenlights claim alleging conflict of interest in termination decision
A government worker who complained about bullying says the people he accused sat on the panel that ended his job three weeks later.
Graeme David Simmons worked as a risk management officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency from January 15, 2024. On February 27, 2025, he made a formal complaint alleging bullying by two senior employees. Less than three weeks later, on March 19, 2025, his employment ended.
The sequence of events that followed has now landed the agency in Federal Circuit and Family Court, with a judge on February 9, 2026 allowing Simmons to proceed with his case despite missing a filing deadline.
According to court documents, Simmons alleges that the very people named in his bullying complaint were on the selection panel that determined he had not secured a role in the agency's new organizational structure. When he raised concerns about the fairness of this process, he says his system access was removed and his employment termination was finalized earlier than originally planned, all without a proper investigation into his complaint.
The case centers on section 340 of the Fair Work Act, which protects employees from adverse action when they exercise workplace rights. Making a complaint about bullying counts as exercising such a right. If an employer takes adverse action like dismissal because of that complaint, it can face civil penalties.
Simmons had initially applied to the Fair Work Commission on April 6, 2025 to resolve the dispute through conciliation. When that failed, the commission issued a certificate on May 27, 2025, giving him 14 days to file a court application. He registered for the court's electronic filing system on the fourteenth day, June 10, 2025, but technical delays meant his application wasn't actually lodged until June 30, 2025.
The agency's lawyers questioned whether Simmons should be allowed to proceed given the delay and what they characterized as inconsistencies in his account. But Judge Doust found the explanation acceptable, particularly given the registry's own delays in processing the application.
More significantly for workplace relations teams, the judge examined the substance of Simmons' allegations. The court heard that Simmons "articulates a claim which engages the relevant elements" of a general protections case. He alleges he exercised a workplace right by complaining about bullying, that his employment was terminated shortly afterward, and that the decision was made by the people he had complained about.
Judge Doust noted this outlined "an hypothesis consistent with the adverse action having been taken against him because of his exercise of a workplace right." The judge found the case "not manifestly or obviously deficient or lacking in merit" and observed that "a dismissal in contravention of the protection in s 340 of the FW Act is conduct that may attract the imposition of a civil penalty."
The agency conceded it would suffer no prejudice from allowing the case to proceed. The respondent has filed opposition to the application but has not yet addressed the merits of the underlying allegations.
The matter is now listed for directions on February 20, 2026, meaning the substantive hearing on whether the agency actually contravened the Fair Work Act remains ahead.
What stands out in this case is the alleged conflict of interest in how the restructure was managed. The timeline between complaint and termination, combined with the composition of the selection panel, creates the kind of optics that workplace relations professionals typically work hard to avoid. The fact that this involves a government agency, expected to model best practice in employment procedures, adds another dimension to the scrutiny the case will likely attract as it progresses through the courts.
