He was never underpaid - so why did the court still order $26,640 in penalties
A South Australian cabin park must pay $26,640 over pay slips and leave records it skipped for a long-serving manager - despite no underpayment.
In a decision handed down on May 26, 2026, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia penalised Cabin Park Port Pirie Pty Ltd, which runs Bentley's Cabin Park in Port Pirie, for two admitted breaches of the Fair Work Act.
The employee at the centre of the case, Fotis Seindanis - known as Fred - worked there from January 2008 until April 2021. The business is run by sole director Hayden Bentley and his wife, Kylie, who has worked at the cabin park for 27 years and is closely involved in its daily operation.
The company admitted breaching section 536 of the Fair Work Act, which requires giving an employee a pay slip within one working day of payment, and section 535, which requires keeping prescribed records for seven years.
The pattern is what makes this one worth a look. The business did issue pay slips - just not to everyone. Casual staff, paid by the hour, received them. Permanent shift managers like Seindanis, paid the same amount each fortnight by bank transfer, did not. When the business shifted to electronic payroll around July 2019, it began bringing most staff onto regular pay slips. But Kylie Bentley kept the old arrangement for Seindanis because he had been there so long. She gave evidence that she now understands every employee should have received pay slips, regardless of tenure or whether their pay stayed flat.
Record-keeping went the same way. The company kept no separate record of Seindanis's leave accruals; leave taken was noted informally in a planner diary at reception. Proper records for shift managers only began in early 2021, after advice from the South Australian Business Chamber and a move to a payroll system called Cashflow Manager.
Then there's a management call HR leaders will recognise. When the business gave written contracts to all staff in February 2021, the Bentleys chose not to give one to Seindanis, concerned it might upset him or prompt him to resign. Judge Liveris said he had "some difficulty in understanding this rationale" and did not accept it. Seindanis's employment ended that April, after a dispute over revoked pre-approved leave and a confrontation between the two men on April 25, 2021.
On penalty, the court refused to treat the breaches as trivial. Citing an earlier ruling, Judge Liveris noted that a single pay-slip failure might look minor, but the requirement is "an essential part of a functioning industrial system" - employees cannot see the employer's records and need to understand how they are paid to raise discrepancies. He found the breaches deprived Seindanis of his "fundamental safeguards against underpayment, overwork and mistreatment."
The judge accepted there was no need for specific deterrence. The business had repaired its systems, expressed contrition, had no history of similar conduct and admitted the contraventions early. But general deterrence carried weight. The penalty, he said, had to be more than "a cost of doing business" and had to deter "like-minded" employers.
Against a maximum of $66,000 per contravention, the court set each penalty at 20% - $13,320 apiece, $26,640 in total - to be paid directly to Seindanis within 28 days. No penalty was sought against Bentley personally.
For HR, the takeaway is blunt. Treating a trusted, long-tenured employee differently on payroll and records was not generosity in the court's view - it was the breach. And being a small family business offered no cover: the court restated that small employers carry the same minimum obligations as the largest ones.
