An application by Banksia Palliative Care (s.240 – Application to deal with a bargaining dispute) will be determined by Commissioner Cribb in the Fair Work Commission 11 Exhibition Street Melbourne at 4.30pm.
February 2, 2017
The Health Services Union and Sunraysia Residential Services have a (s.739 – Application to deal with a dispute in relation to flexible working arrangements) matter before Deputy President Hamilton in the Fair Work Commission 11 Exhibition Street Melbourne at 10.15am.
February 2, 2017
A hospital security guard who turned up to work with a 0.2 per cent blood-alcohol level has lost his bid for more than $450,000 compensation, claiming he was “assaulted” by having to give blood and urine tests. James Pere was working at Gladstone Hospital in central Queensland, when colleagues and nurses noticed his speech was slurred and he smelt of alcohol on August 2, 2012. Another guard took Mr Pere to the hospital’s emergency department, where a nurse took blood and urine samples. She told the District Court in Brisbane that her notes from the night recorded he consented to samples being taken. Tests on the samples which showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.2 per cent and he was told to go home. Mr Pere claimed in court he had never consented to giving the samples, accused medical staff of assaulting him and sought $464,488 in compensation for psychiatric injury and loss of wages. “I find the plaintiff’s credibility so poor that his evidence should not be acted upon where it is in conflict with other credible accounts,” District Court judge Brendan Butler said in his judgment. “With particular reference to the issue of consent, I find the plaintiff’s account that he was penetrated by a needle while he was talking to the doctor and before he realised it was to happen, to be implausible.” In court, Mr Pere also denied being fired from a job as a security guard at a Gladstone hotel for being drunk at work the following year. His boss testified that Mr Pere was found “quite intoxicated” and watching a football game on his phone and had his employment terminated on the spot.
February 2, 2017
A former Tasmanian aged care worker who took photographs of himself with naked residents without their consent has escaped time in jail but will be listed on the sex offenders register. Adam Matthew Pettit was working at the One-Care Barossa Park aged care facility in Glenorchy when he took four pictures of female patients in various states of undress in July 2015. The court heard the 32-year-old took “lewd photographs” of himself next to the residents, while he was striking various poses. He then sent one of the images to a female colleague. She did not report it to management until September after she showed it to her mother, who also worked at the facility. Pettit said he could not explain why he took the photographs. Magistrate Hay sentenced Petit to two months’ jail, wholly suspended on the condition he be of good behaviour for three years, and ordered that he perform 100 hours community service.
February 2, 2017
Community Living Options is facing a (s.394 – Application for unfair dismissal remedy) before Senior Deputy President O’Callaghan in the Fair Work Commission Level 6 Riverside Centre North Terrace Adelaide (Spalding).
February 2, 2017
The rural doctor who treated a West Australian nurse for neck pain before she was discharged from hospital cannot be blamed for her death, a coroner has found. Tamika Patricia Carol Ullrich died suddenly from a rare condition of chronic hydrocephalus, which made her susceptible to instability of her cardio- respiratory system, following a brief admission to the emergency department at Northam Hospital in December 2012. Coroner Barry King found Ms Ullrich died from natural causes.
February 2, 2017
Waikato Hospital patient Robert Williams was woken at 4am when one of his doctors arrived drunk and rambling in his hospital room. Waikato health bosses are refusing to comment on the outcome of an investigation into a doctor who drunkenly abused a patient. Robert Pere Williams made a video and audio recordings of an intoxicated junior doctor who barged into his hospital room about 4am on December 17. The doctor told Williams, 22, he was upset because Waikato Hospital was so understaffed and repeatedly called the 22-year-old “a faggot”. He also threatened to kill himself. Waikato DHB staff declined to be interviewed on the matter but in a statement Greg Peploe, director of people and performance, said the board had concluded its investigation into the incident. Peploe said Williams and the doctor had been interviewed but, due to privacy rights, the board would not comment on the specific outcomes of its investigation. Williams, who has cystic fibrosis, alleged the doctor was drunk and he no longer felt safe in the hospital. He also complained about the behaviour of other hospital staff toward him. Peploe said no other employees had been investigated.
February 1, 2017
A man accused of brutally murdering an aged-care worker and dumping her body in a Windale park has raised a defence of substantial impairment, claiming he couldn’t control himself at the time of the woman’s death. There is no dispute that Graham Anthony George Sloane, now 68, was the man who took Renee Mitchell, 38, from her kitchen while she was cooking dinner for her family on November 11, 2014, Newcastle Supreme Court has heard. There is also no question that Mr Sloane took Ms Mitchell to nearby Bangalay Reserve and stabbed her four times in the chest and once in the neck. And it’s not disputed that those injuries caused her death and that Mr Sloane intended to kill Ms Mitchell. But what a jury will be asked to decide is whether Mr Sloane was suffering from an “abnormality of the mind” at the time of the killing, meaning his capacity to understand events, judge right from wrong or control himself was substantially impaired by mental illness.
