NEWS-HR

Civic Disability Services Limited is up against a s.394 (Application for unfair dismissal remedy) in front of Deputy President Bull in Hearing Room 14.1 – Level 14 in Sydney (Girgis).

A s.185 (Enterprise agreement) application by HammondCare T/A HammondCare for its HammondCare Residential Care and and HammondCare at Home Enterprise Agreement 2018 has been approved by Fair Work Deputy President Cross in Sydney on 30 May 2019.

A s.185 (Enterprise agreement) application from Ardrossan Community Hospital Inc for the Ardrossan Community Hospital Inc & ANMF (Private Sector) Nursing Employees Enterprise Agreement 2019 has been approved by Fair Work Commissioner Bissett in Melbourne on May 2019.

The Health Services Union and Supported Tenancy Accommodation and Respite Tasmania have a s.739 (Application to deal with a dispute) on foot at 9.30am this morning before Fair Work Commissioner Lee in Court 2 – Level 6 in both Hobart and Melbourne

Video has surfaced of a 92-year-old mother confessing to shooting her 72-year-old son dead after he threatened to put her in a nursing home. Anna Mae Blessing was arrested last year for shooting her son Thomas dead. Blessing, who dies in November in hospice care while awaiting trial, says in a video interview with police that she had two guns stashed inside her dressing gown. She told police that as Thomas came towards her she fired multiple rounds at her only son. “I can’t remember the calibre, it was a good size one,” she said. “I backed up and I pulled the trigger, and it broke the mirror and I don’t know what I did. Then Tom was going to come at me again so I pulled the trigger … I’m sure the second round hit him.”

A Petone man who decapitated his elderly neighbour believed he was responsible for his being evicted. Eugene Baker has admitted murdering 71-year-old Francis Tyson in November last year. Both men dealt synthetic drugs from their Jackson Street Housing New Zealand flats. In the days leading up to the killing, Baker had a number of arguments with Tyson around dealing. He believed the pensioner was an informant for Housing New Zealand and was to blame for his eviction notice. The 42-year-old will be sentenced in June.

An elderly man charged with murdering his partner at a Raumati Beach retirement village has been found unfit to stand trial. The finding was made at the High Court in Wellington on Friday, about Edmund Alan Jenkins, 75, who had cognitive impairment due to dementia, and was not going to improve. Edith Roderique, 70, of Ōtaki, died on March 4 or 5. Roderique and Jenkins had been in a relationship for about three years and she often visited him at the retirement village where he lived, and sometimes stayed the night, a court decision said. In her judgment Justice Rebecca Ellis said after spending the night together Jenkins woke to the alarm at 7.30am on March 5. He got out of bed and found a knife that had not been put away, went back to the bed and stabbed Roderique repeatedly in the chest. A medical alarm was set off and Jenkins showed the body to the first staff member to attend. Jenkins had blood on him and told the first person, and others, “I did it, I did it, I did it”. Later Jenkins told police he just meant to scare her with the knife as a joke but she jumped at him and screamed. He was said to have a hazy recollection of what happened after that, but acknowledged he stabbed her, a police summary of witness accounts said. The judge said Jenkins was unfit to stand trial and made him a special patient. Name suppression was lifted. He sat in the dock with a nurse while lawyer Janine Bonifant represented him during the court hearing. At the end of the hearing the judge asked the nurse if Jenkins had understood what had happened at the hearing on Friday. “As well as he can,” the nurse replied. Two psychiatrists gave evidence that Jenkins probably had frontal lobe dementia, and his thinking and language were impaired.

A Victorian surgeon charged with raping a doctor, after allegedly removing a condom during sex without his permission, is allowed to keep practising, a tribunal says. The male surgeon was charged with rape and sexual assault in September last year over the alleged incident with the male doctor in mid-2017. The incident unfolded after the pair went out for dinner, then had sex in the doctor’s home. The surgeon assured him he would use a condom, but the doctor discovered he had removed it during intercourse and became “very upset”. When he asked the surgeon why, he replied it “feels better”, the tribunal was told. The doctor alleged that the surgeon reassured him his health was not at risk, even though he had unprotected sex with other men as recently as six weeks earlier. The surgeon had also admitted earlier during dinner he was taking medicine to lower his chance of HIV infection, to which the doctor replied it he saw it as an added safety net and would always use a condom. Feeling “very distressed and concerned” after the unprotected sex, the doctor reported the matter to police. The surgeon informed the Medical Board of Australia of the charges and said he would fight them. The board then suspended him from practising in November 2018, describing the alleged conduct as “egregious” and said it would undermine confidence in the medical profession if the public was aware of the circumstances claimed. However, the surgeon successfully overturned the suspension at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal which ruled by majority the immediate action was not in the public interest. The tribunal said while the allegations are “grave”, they are yet to be tested in court and it could be at least a year before the charges are dealt with. It also said there’s no evidence justifying an immediate suspension, on the basis the surgeon poses a serious risk to others. The Medical Board is fighting the VCAT ruling, with a trial set for the Supreme Court in July.