Shock disciplinary meeting sees praised accountant fired

A financial controller who was terminated for an alleged $100,000 payment to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) without authorisation has won $56,000 in compensation for unfair dismissal.

A former financial controller at Health Care Providers Association (HCPA) has won $56,868.53 in compensation – inclusive of superannuation, less taxation – after the Fair Work Commission found that HCPA’s grounds for dismissal were not substantiated and that the misconduct that the worker had engaged was not enough to warrant dismissal.

The worker commenced full-time employment with HCPA on 29 August 2022 as financial controller and was involved in preparing financial reports, oversight, and analysis on behalf of HCPA, reporting directly to the company’s chief executive, Kyle Hunt, and chief operating officer, Brooke Wilson.

In his 16 June 2026 decision, commissioner Scott Connolly found that the worker’s evidence was more credible than Wilson’s, noting that throughout her tenure, the worker was recognised as a dedicated and dependable employee who had not previously been subjected to performance counselling or put on notice,

The worker was also found to be a genuine, competent, and diligent employee, who acknowledged her mistakes and “impressed as a person with capacity to learn from them and improve”.

Payment plan misstep

On instructions from Hunt and Wilson, the worker completed lengthy negotiations with the ATO for a new payment plan for the company’s debt, reaching an agreement for $100,000 in monthly repayments. The worker then informed the executives about the agreements on 5 September 2025.

In an attempt to avoid missing the payment, the worker manually selected a $100,000 prepayment to be taken out of the company’s account at approximately 3am on the due date of the first payment, 15 September 2025, without the explicit approval of Hunt or Wilson.

The worker told the commission that she did not anticipate the ATO would make an automatic overpayment of $100,000 at about 5pm that day.

Later that day, Hunt sent the worker a text message informing her of the duplicate payment made to the ATO.

The worker sent an apology in writing to Hunt and Wilson, accepting her mistake in prescheduling the ATO payment and not seeking explicit authorisation from them before making the $100,000 manual prepayment.

Connolly accepted that the worker’s failure to seek explicit approval from her executives constitutes misconduct, breaching HCPA’s policy in respect of external payments.

HCPA received a refund for the overpayment from the ATO on 9 October 2025, and the worker immediately informed Hunt and Wilson on the company’s messaging platform, to which Wilson responded with words to the effect of “yaaay, good job claud”, the commissioner heard.

Hunt and Wilson thanked the worker for her work securing the ATO overpayment refund, and she continued working “without issue or notice of concerns with her conduct or performance”, the commissioner found.

2 counts of serious misconduct allegations

This all changed when Wilson sent the worker a letter on 24 November 2025, detailing two allegations of serious misconduct, inviting her to attend a formal disciplinary meeting the next day, and, for the first time in her tenure, advising that her employment would be at risk if the allegations were substantiated.

In the first allegation, Wilson alleged that the worker made a $100,000 payment to the ATO without management authorisation on 20 October 2025 that was “not necessary in any way”, and told the worker that “you have been negligent”.

The worker asserted that she had made no such payment on 20 October 2025, but instead did so on 15 September 2025.

As HCPA failed to provide evidence supporting this allegation, the commissioner said that, on this basis, they cannot be satisfied with the substantiation conduct alleged on 20 October, concluding that this allegation was not a valid reason to dismiss her.

“Had the respondent bothered to test its facts or make it explicitly clear what it expected to see in costing reports, on the evidence considered it is plausible to conclude the worker’s employment would not have been ended,” the commissioner said.

The disciplinary meeting

The worker attended the disciplinary meeting with Wilson on 25 November, during which she denied the allegations made against her. She also recorded the meeting without authorisation, which she presented to the proceedings.

“[There] is no contest, the worker’s record of the meeting is an accurate version of what transpired,” the commissioner said.

The worker said that she did not seek consent to record the disciplinary meeting because “she did not just think of it this way, but rather she was concerned her employment may be at risk”, the commissioner found.

The commissioner accepted that recording meetings constitutes misconduct, noting that this placed at risk the trust her employer had in the continuation of her employment relationship. However, the commissioner was not satisfied that it was a ground for serious misconduct, as it is not unlawful, as the worker did not do anything with the recording but relied on it in these proceedings.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Wilson advised the worker that she would provide her with an outcome within 24 hours after considering her response.

‘Borders on negligence’

The worker told her employer that she would be unfit for work from 26 November until 4 December, but informed Wilson that she was happy to receive the outcome of Wilson’s consideration despite not being at work.

On 1 December 2025, with the worker’s consent, Wilson provided the worker with a letter of termination effective the next day on the grounds of the two allegations of serious misconduct.

The termination provided that the worker had allegedly “… responded that you have no comment, and that you accepted that the allegation was fair and true”, in light of the first allegation.

It added that the worker responded “… that the ATO tax liability was definitely not accounted for, and you claimed that you were not aware that tax liabilities needed to be accounted for in your meetings”, in light of the second allegation.

The commissioner heard that the worker had been provided an adequate chance to respond to the allegations; however, she had not been provided adequate notification or a show cause prior to her dismissal. Wilson gave evidence that the reason she had not informed the worker that she would terminate her employment was that the worker was “sick”; and thus decided not to give Wilson the opportunity to “show cause”.

The commissioner found that there was no basis for both of Wilson’s allegations, finding inconsistencies between Wilson and Hunt’s evidence, and finding that the termination letter contradicted the 24 November disciplinary meeting letter.

Wilson accepted that the findings in the termination letter were not consistent with what was said in the 24 November meeting. She explained the “other anomalies”, including repeated assertions that an unauthorised payment was made on 20 October instead of 15 September, were “typographical errors”, as she was busy running the organisation.

“Ms Wilson’s evidence that this was just a simple drafting mistake, made on two occasions, was not persuasive. Mr Hunt’s evidence that as CEO and final decision-maker, he simply left these matters to Ms Wilson and did not make any enquiries of his own prior to confirming the decision to terminate the worker for conduct that there was no evidence to support, borders on negligence,” the commissioner said.

No valid reason for dismissal

The termination letter issued on 1 December affected the worker’s dismissal starting 2 December, and she was paid four weeks’ pay in lieu of notice on termination. The commissioner found that although she had made efforts to mitigate her loss, she had not been able to secure comparable alternative employment at the time of the hearing.

The commissioner found that it was “also undisputed that the worker has been able to earn some income from other ventures since being dismissed, but has not secured a comparable alternative income since her termination, despite attempts”.

The only findings of misconduct that the commissioner accepted as substantiated were the unauthorised recording and the failure to follow policy in seeking explicit approval prior to making the manual $100,000 payment to the ATO on 15 September; however, the commissioner did not consider this conduct to warrant termination of her employment for serious misconduct.

In noting that these are not the reasons that HCPA relies upon for its jurisdictional objection, the commissioner rejected HCPA’s allegations of misconduct as valid.

Despite the worker saying that she would have continued in her employment as long as possible, HCPA said her employment would have ended shortly after her dismissal, as they had lost trust and confidence in her capacity to perform her job because of her misconduct.

The commissioner found that, as the worker had not engaged in the two allegations of misconduct that HCPA had asserted, he was unable to conclude that her employment would have ended shortly after her dismissal due to a loss of trust and confidence – ruling that the worker’s employment would have remained with HCPA for at least a further six months.

In consideration of all evidence, the commissioner accepted the worker’s unfair dismissal application, ruling that the termination was unfair, ordering HCPA to pay the worker $56,868.53 in compensation, inclusive of superannuation, less taxation.

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Carlos Tse

Carlos Tse is a graduate journalist writing for Accountants Daily, HR Leader, Lawyers Weekly.