Five FWC decisions every Australian employer should read
Last verified:
Full summaries live in the case tracker. This is the executive version: what each decision rewarded, what it punished, and the clause it should send you back to.
Gauci v DP World Brisbane [2024] FWC 2351
Rewarded: a decade-old policy that honestly set cut-off limits and required disclosure. Punished: concealment of the prescription. Your takeaway: a clearly drafted detection standard defeats impairment arguments — but only if the drafting says what the enforcement does.
Mills v Glamorgan Spring Bay Council [2025] FWC 116
Rewarded: an employer that obtained independent medical evidence and considered whether the role could be performed safely before dismissing. Punished: partial disclosure — cannabis declared, THC content not. Your takeaway: your disclosure clause must demand the detail that matters, and your process must genuinely weigh alternatives before termination.
Haigh v Platinum Blasting Services [2023] FWC 2465
Rewarded: a policy framing disclosure as continuous. Punished: resuming prescription use without re-disclosing, in explosives work. Your takeaway: write the ongoing duty explicitly — changed scripts, resumed use, new products all re-trigger it.
Sharp v BCS Infrastructure Support (Full Bench)
Rewarded: strict enforcement in safety-sensitive aviation activities. Punished: a reading far above the cut-off, prescription or not. Your takeaway: where an industry regime sits above your policy, say so in the policy — it anchors the reasonableness of hard rules.
The 2025 mining testing dispute (WorkPac/Batchfire matter)
At issue: unsealed kits, results read outside validity windows, and self-test kits on the 2006 standard’s 25 ng/mL cut-off against formal testing at 2019’s 15 ng/mL. Your takeaway: testing procedure is evidence. Every shortcut on site becomes a paragraph in the applicant’s submissions. (Summary being finalised against the decision text — see the tracker.)
The pattern across all five: tribunals enforce clear policies fairly applied, and dismantle everything else. Clarity and process are cheaper than either kind of loss — the Policy Pack exists to make them cheap.