On 15 May 2026, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle [2026] FCAFC 64, dismissing the appeal from Giggle for Girls and upholding the finding that Giggle for Girls had unlawfully discriminated against Ms Roxanne Tickle. The Court also allowed Ms Tickle’s cross-appeal and increased the award of damages to $20,000. In doing so, this case provides clarity about how the protections against discrimination based on gender identity apply in practice. Importantly, this case also demonstrates that single sex spaces must not take an exclusionary approach to people of diverse gender identities seeking to access their services.
Giggle for Girls is an online app designed for women. Ms Tickle, a transgender woman, was blocked from accessing the Giggle app on the basis that Giggle’s CEO, Sally Grover, did not consider her selfie was that of a woman. In August 2024, a judge of the Federal Court found that the appellants had engaged in indirect discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (SD Act), in excluding Ms Tickle from the Giggle App because they had imposed a condition on access to the App that operated to disadvantage transgender women. The Court awarded Ms Tickle $10,000 in damages. You can read our earlier alerts on the original decision here and here.
In the present case, the full Federal Court dismissed the appeal from Giggle for Girls and allowed Ms Tickle’s cross-appeal. In allowing Ms Tickle’s cross-appeal, the Court found that instead of engaging in indirect discrimination, Giggle for Girls had engaged in two instances of direct discrimination on the basis of Ms Tickle’s gender identity; first, by excluding her from the app and the subsequent decision to refuse to readmit her. The Court awarded Ms Tickle an increased amount of $20,000 in damages.
The Court did not consider whether the Giggle for Girls app could be a special measure for the purposes of achieving substantive equality for women under the SD Act. However, the Court noted that to the extent that it could be a special measure, it did not permit organisations to discriminate on the basis of other protected attributes in granting access in accordance with that special measure, in this case, only providing the service to cisgender women or women who fit a certain appearance standard.
Beyond its discrimination findings, this case tackles a growing issue: the use of artificial intelligence in decision-making. Giggle for Girls relied on third-party facial recognition software said to detect gender with 94% accuracy, alongside human moderation. Here, it was the human moderation that led to Ms Tickle’s removal. The Court made it clear that AI is no shield: organisations remain legally responsible for decisions made with or by their systems.
Critically, the Court found that Ms Tickle’s removal was not a neutral outcome of AI screening, but a human decision shaped by subjective assumptions about what a woman “looks like”. The Full Court made clear that the use of AI systems does not absolve the humans or organisations behind them of legal responsibility for the decisions those AI models make.
Our Safeguarding and Discrimination teams routinely support organisations to navigate the nuanced legal issues arising from inclusion of individuals of diverse sexuality and gender identity, as well as understanding circumstances where discrimination is lawful. Our Privacy team can also support your organisation to embed AI into your operations in a way that minimises the risk of inadvertent discrimination.
Please contact us for more detailed and tailored help.
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Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and is not intended to constitute legal advice. You should seek legal advice regarding the application of the law to you or your organisation.
Contracts are the foundation of commercial relationships, but they are also a main cause of strife for organisations when they breakdown. Maybe the contractual relationship with your supplier has deteriorated or maybe a services contract is no longer competitive or suitable for the business’ needs and you want ‘out’. You may be a new executive reviewing the suite of commercial service agreements only to discover your organisation is ‘locked in’ to unfavourable or unreasonable terms.
Organisations are often faced with difficult decisions when a contract stops working. The next steps can have significant legal and commercial consequences. For organisations, it is important to spot the red flags early, maintain negotiating leverage, and minimise business disruption.
This article provides practical guidance for what to do when a commercial agreement is no longer working.
Missed delivery deadlines, breach of service standards or KPIs going unaddressed, non-payment, disputed obligations, and breakdowns in communication are some more obvious red flags of when a contract might no longer be working. A more discrete but common red flag we see is silence and lack of contract management from both parties. Has the contract been tucked away in a folder and not looked at since it was signed? Has a term(s) rolled over without an internal decision of whether the contract is still meeting your commercial needs?
Another warning sign is the scope of work drifting without any formal variation occurring. Often, our clients will have a growing sense of ‘this isn’t what we signed up for’. The earlier you can identify the breakdown and seek advice, the more options you will have to resolve.
Even if a contract is no longer working, you will need to carefully consider what rights and options you have available before terminating. Not every breach leads to a right to terminate the contract, neither does unsatisfactory performance. You may have rights to withhold payment or suspend services. But taking steps that are inconsistent with your obligations under a contract could amount to repudiation. Likewise – terminating without a valid legal basis. Wrongful termination can expose an organisation to potential damages – even in circumstances where you are the party that has been ‘hard done by’.
Alternatively, continuing to accept poor performance or breaches of terms from another party without reservation could inadvertently waive your rights to enforce a breach of contract later on. Documenting breaches contemporaneously, issuing proper notices and following the contractual notice periods is key. A mistake or oversight in the process can switch you from the wronged party to the party in breach.
One of the first steps you can take in enforcing your contractual rights is to give notice of your concerns / breaches and direct the other party to remedy the breaches. It could be via a formal notice of breach. The terms of the contract may set out the requirements of such notices. There may be other contract specific remedies available to you, such as liquidated damages, suspension rights or rights to withhold payment. Depending on the breach and the terms of the contract, you may have the right to terminate with notice. A contract may set out the dispute resolution steps that are pre-requisites to any formal litigation. Litigation is often a last resort due to the cost and its inherent uncertainty.
When dealing with a contractual dispute, maintaining your leverage is important – both legal and commercial. For legal leverage, don’t waive your rights by overlooking breaches or continuing with performance without reservation. Maintain contemporaneous records, both of correspondence and of any breaches or performance data. When corresponding with the other party, try to avoid any statements that could be read as accepting a breach or varying the contract.
For commercial leverage, it can be helpful to assess the value of the contract – are they reliant on your contract? Is there a value to other party in continuing the relationship beyond one contract? Consider the timing, for example, when does the contract come to an end or up for renewal. To prepare for a potential termination, you will also need to consider whether alternative suppliers or providers are available.
Terminating too quickly, continuing to accept the poor performance and stopping payments without a valid basis can all reduce your leverage. Seeking early legal advice can help to understand all the legal and non-legal options available and maintain the strength of your position.
The Disputes team at Moores can assist where contracts are strained or no longer working. We offer contract health checks and risk assessments and can also help with drafting and issuing breach or termination notices, ensuring you don’t fall foul of the contract provisions. We are experts in tailored advice for businesses, the education sector, NFPs, and social housing providers.
A more detailed article by us on this issue will be published by LexisNexis in the Employment Law Bulletin at the end-of-June 2026, which we will also re-publish here on our firm’s website.
The position on sleepovers under the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award (SCHADS Award) has now been settled. What has emerged, however, is not a simple clarification but a more structured and demanding framework that requires employers to revisit how overnight services are designed, costed and governed.
This shift reflects two developments that must be understood together, but analysed separately. The Full Federal Court in Fair Work Ombudsman v Jats Joint Pty Ltd1 clarified how the SCHADS Award operated historically. The Fair Work Commission (Commission) has subsequently varied the SCHADS Award to prescribe how it will operate going forward from the first full pay period on or after 1 June 2026.
For employers, the consequence is a dual lens. One governs historical exposure. The other dictates future compliance. The tension between those positions is where both risk and opportunity now sit.
Under the SCHADS Award, a sleepover occurs where an employee is required to remain overnight at the workplace, be available to respond if required, and is not engaged in active duties for the entire period.2 A sleepover should not be confused with a night shift, where work is actively performed during night hours, or with a broken shift or extended duty arrangement, which are regulated differently under the SCHADS Award.
The central question considered by the Full Court of the Federal Court (Federal Court) was whether a sleepover forms part of a shift or sits between two distinct periods of work. The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) had long treated work performed before and after a sleepover as a single continuous shift, an approach that influenced how many employers structured payroll settings and applied penalties.
The Federal Court rejected that interpretation. It concluded that, under the pre-variation SCHADS Award, a sleepover did not form part of a shift. Work undertaken on either side could therefore be treated as separate shifts for the purposes of overtime and penalty calculations. That position, confirmed on appeal, now provides the authoritative framework for assessing historical compliance.
The practical implication is that employers need to reassess historical practices through the Federal Court’s construction, rather than through inherited approaches or regulatory assumptions. For some organisations, this may expose underpayment risk. For others, it may reveal that payments made on a precautionary basis exceeded what was strictly required.
While the litigation in the Jats Joint case was progressing, the FWC considered several applications to vary the SCHADS Award, including to clarify sleepover entitlements. The FWC has taken a different approach for the future. Rather than adopt the Federal Court’s construction, it has introduced a new framework that removes ambiguity but imposes more defined constraints.
From June 2026, where work is performed before and after a sleepover, those periods are treated as part of a single continuous shift. That shift can include up to 12 ordinary hours by agreement, with no more than eight hours worked on either side. Overtime applies once active work exceeds the 12-hour threshold.
At the same time, penalties are no longer calculated across the span of the shift as a single block. They must now be assessed separately for each period of active work. The sleepover itself does not extend a loading across the engagement.
This combination represents a substantive change. The legal characterisation of the shift has shifted to a single engagement, while the financial treatment requires a segmented and far more precise approach.
The immediate instinct for many employers is to determine whether these changes will increase or decrease labour costs. In practice, the answer depends on how services are currently structured.
Employers who have applied penalties across the full span of an overnight engagement may see reduced exposure under the new segmented approach. Conversely, organisations operating extended or flexible overnight models may see increased overtime costs as a result of the 12-hour ordinary hours constraint.
What is consistent across the sector is that the outcome is no longer intuitive. It is driven by the interaction between rostering design, payroll configuration and the way active work is distinguished from sleepover time. The principal risk is not misunderstanding the headline change, but continuing to operate systems designed for a different framework.
For most organisations, the most complex work will not sit in legal interpretation, but in implementation.
The varied framework requires payroll systems to differentiate clearly between the sleepover period, active work before the sleepover, and active work after it. Penalties must be applied based on when each period of active work occurs, rather than being triggered by the overall duration of the engagement.
Systems must also track cumulative active hours to ensure that overtime is correctly applied once the 12-hour threshold is exceeded, and that any extended ordinary hours are supported by a valid agreement.
For many providers, this exposes a structural issue. Payroll systems and rostering practices have often evolved around simplified assumptions, including treating overnight engagements as a single block or relying on manual adjustments to achieve compliance. Those approaches are unlikely to produce consistent or defensible outcomes under the new framework.
A further challenge arises from the need to manage historical and future compliance in parallel.
Historical exposure must be assessed under the Award as interpreted by the Court. Future compliance must align with the varied Award from June 2026. These frameworks are not aligned, which means organisations need a deliberate strategy to reconcile past practices with future operating models.
There is also a contractual dimension that requires careful attention. Where sleepover arrangements are embedded within employment contracts or enterprise agreements, changes to how those arrangements are structured and paid may trigger consultation obligations or require renegotiation. This can affect both timing and implementation risk if not addressed early.
These changes should not be treated as a technical Award update. They go directly to cost, service delivery and organisational risk.
For providers delivering overnight or residential services, sleepovers sit at the core of operational models. Changes to how those engagements are treated will influence workforce planning, pricing assumptions and the sustainability of particular service configurations.
Boards and executive teams should be seeking clear visibility over where risk sits, how cost profiles may shift, and whether the organisation’s systems and governance processes provide an accurate and defensible view of wage compliance.
A structured and proactive approach is essential. Organisations should prioritise:
The common gap across the sector is not awareness of the changes. It is the translation of those changes into operational practice.
The ambiguity that sat around sleepovers for many years has now been removed. In its place is a more prescriptive regime that reduces interpretive uncertainty but increases the expectation that employers will apply the rules with precision.
For many organisations, this is not an incremental update. It is a point of reset. Those that approach it as such, with a focus on systems, governance and implementation discipline, will be better placed to manage both compliance risk and cost in the period ahead.
Our Workplace Relations team works with many employers covered by the SCHADS Award and can help you understand the decision and its implications for your workforce.
Commercial disputes can be disruptive, expensive, and time-consuming. Few organisations or individuals want to spend months or years tied up in costly litigation when a practical commercial resolution might be available much earlier. Disputes also place strain on valuable business or personal relationships.
Alternative dispute resolution methods such as mediation offer a strategic alternative to courtroom proceedings, providing an opportunity to resolve a dispute efficiently, confidentially, and with greater commercial control.
At Moores, we advise our clients on the timing and strategy to achieve a negotiated outcome. In many disputes, an early discussion – even on an informal basis – can create the opportunity for resolution before positions become entrenched.
1. Mediation is cost-effectiveLitigation can be expensive. Mediation is generally far more cost-effective because it can be done before proceedings are commenced or at the early stages of the process. Mediation focuses the parties’ attention on trying to reach a commercial resolution quickly rather than prolonging the dispute through the court process. Many matters can be resolved within a single day of mediation or shortly afterwards.
For both businesses and even individuals, mediation provides practical and commercially workable outcomes with less disruption and lower legal spend.
2. Mediation can deliver faster outcomes
With the current economic trends showing an increase in litigation in 2026, this will likely burden the already overloaded court systems and lead to further delays in a court proceeding from start to finish. The process often takes years, not months.
Mediation offers a much faster alternative. Sessions can usually be arranged within weeks, allowing parties to resolve disputes and move forward sooner. That speed matters. Organisations can refocus on operations and growth instead of ongoing legal battles, while for individuals, that can reduce the stress and uncertainty that unresolved disputes often create.
3. Mediation is confidential
Unlike court proceedings, mediation is confidential. This encourages parties to be more open and transparent in their discussions without worrying about jeopardising any court process if a resolution cannot be achieved. It enables parties to keep the focus on commercial outcomes rather than just their legal positions.
4. Mediation has greater control and flexibility
In court, a judge decides the outcome. In mediation, the parties remain in control of both the process and the resolution.
This flexibility often leads to more creative and practical compromises – even solutions that could not be achieved with a court order. Parties can negotiate outcomes tailored to their specific circumstances, including revised business arrangements, payment plans, confidentiality terms, or future working relationships.
Because the outcome is mutually agreed, parties are generally more willing to comply with the settlement terms.
5. Mediation can preserve relationships
Many disputes arise between people or organisations that may need to continue working together after the dispute ends. This may include business partners, suppliers, customers, property tenants or family members.
Litigation risks damaging these relationships because the process is inherently adversarial. Mediation, by contrast, encourages communication and collaborative problem-solving.
A skilled mediator and the parties’ legal representatives can help clients focus less on “winning” and more on finding a workable solution. Even where relationships cannot be fully restored, mediation often reduces hostility and creates a more constructive path forward.
Our Disputes Team regularly advises clients on resolving disputes through mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. We work with clients both before litigation commences and during active proceedings to identify strategic opportunities for early resolution, while remaining prepared to protect our clients’ interests through to final hearing where necessary. Our focus is always on achieving practical, commercially sound outcomes as efficiently as possible.
If you are involved in a dispute or would like advice on whether mediation may assist avoiding a dispute, our team would be happy to discuss your options.
Transferring property between spouses or partners can be a practical step when considering relationship changes or financial planning. The good news is that in certain circumstances, you may be eligible to obtain a duty exemption on these types of transfers, potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars.
There are certain requirements however that must be met if you do not want to incur duty and understanding these requirements upfront can help you avoid costly mistakes.
In Victoria, a duty exemption may apply when property is transferred between spouses or domestic partners under section 43 of the Duties Act 2000. The State Revenue Office (SRO) designed this exemption to recognise that such transfers are often part of shared ownership arrangements, rather than commercial transactions.
To qualify for this duty exemption, several conditions must be met including:
Compliance with SRO and legislative guidelines is crucial, including any period after the date of the transfer with such transactions regularly being audited by the SRO. Before proceeding with a spouse or partner transfer, we recommend seeking legal advice to confirm your eligibility and for peace of mind.
Moores’ Residential Property team advises clients on property transfers, stamp duty exemptions and ownership arrangements. Our team can assist with assessing eligibility for duty exemptions, preparing transfer documentation and ensuring compliance with SRO requirements.
Discretionary trusts are a common structure in Australia for investment and business operations and provide a number of benefits including tax flexibility and asset protection.
A discretionary testamentary trust (a discretionary trust created by a Will) has similar benefits, but currently with the additional tax benefit of allowing income distributions to children at adult tax rates (including the tax-free threshold of $18,200). This makes this structure extremely tax effective in the right scenario.
Current income distributions from a discretionary trust would have an effective tax rate of less than 30% where the beneficiary’s total income is less than $45,000 per annum.
It has now been announced that:
Relevantly for estate planning purposes, it does not appear that future testamentary trusts will be excluded from the 30% minimum tax rate.
Testamentary trusts are included in Wills for a range of reasons including protecting assets from creditors, protecting from relationship breakdown, managing funds for beneficiaries with disabilities or addiction, managing succession issues between blended families and tax minimisation.
The exact form of testamentary trust used can vary depending on the objectives of the Willmaker. The style of trust could include a discretionary testamentary trust, a protective trust, a life interest or a special disability trust, among others. Each can have differing rules around entitlements to income. It is not yet clear whether trusts that do not clearly fall squarely within the discretionary trust model will be captured by these budget measures, save that special disability trusts have been specifically excluded. We will wait for the detail to assess the application of these measures to the various forms of testamentary trust that can be included in a Will.
Where a discretionary testamentary trust is created purely for tax minimisation purposes, then these measures may reduce the tax effectiveness of the trust, particularly where the family group includes children or other individuals who have minimal personally earned income. However, it is not necessarily the case that tax benefits will be completely removed, with the top marginal rate of 45% leaving a potential 15% saving in the right circumstances.
The measures reinforce the value in our preferred strategy of having flexible options within Wills in relation to the use of testamentary trusts and their exact form.
At Moores, our experienced Private Clients team can assist with reviewing existing estate plans and advising on flexible testamentary trust structures in light of the proposed reforms. We work with individuals and families to develop practical estate planning strategies that balance tax, asset protection and succession considerations.
High inflation and rising interest rates are increasing pressure on borrowers. At Moores, we have been seeing an increase in distressed loan enforcement matters including banks and private lenders actively pursuing borrowers and guarantors where commercial loans are distressed or in default.
While distressed loans may appear to be an intractable situation, particularly where a mortgagee is in possession, there can be options to stave off the secured lender and/or pursue recovery action against third parties. Of course, for guarantors their personal assets can be at risk.
In this article we discuss solicitors’ obligations when providing a certificate of independent legal advice. We have successfully pursued practitioners or joined them to lenders’ enforcement proceedings.
A solicitor’s certificate confirms that independent legal advice has been given before a loan, mortgage or guarantee is signed. Lenders generally want assurance that borrowers and guarantors have understood their obligations to minimise risks if the loan falls into default.
Solicitors’ Rules govern the form of solicitors’ certificates. If the solicitor takes shortcuts in giving advice though, the lawyer who gave the advice might be liable for financial losses.
There is a common misconception that a lawyer just needs to read through the legal fine print and witness a signature to provide a solicitors certificate but courts can expect more.
A solicitors’ obligations turn on the scope of the retainer and that can extend to explaining the practical consequences of the legal obligations arising from the arrangements. Where legal and practical consequences of entering into a transaction may be significant, but can’t be assessed without further financial information, the solicitor may be obliged to counsel about risks of proceeding – including risking the loss of substantial assets.
While a solicitors certificate follows, the advice given can require not only advising about the law but can extend to advising against a proposed transaction where the full legal ramifications or risks can’t be properly understood by a client.
Borrowers and guarantors should not ignore a default or assume that no options are available to them. Urgent legal advice should be sought including on any potential injunctive relief, depending on the circumstances of the loan/guarantee being signed, as well as any claims for professional negligence. Where we have successfully pursued professional negligence claims against solicitors or joined the practitioner to loan enforcement proceedings, we have seen some of the below shortfalls giving rise to solicitor’s liability:
Notices of default or enforcement action by a lender is not necessarily the end of the road for distressed borrowers or guarantors being pursued. If your client receives a demand, start to gather documents relating to the guarantee or loan, advise your client not to immediately comply and seek an urgent referral to a specialist lawyer.
Our Disputes Team can provide early advice on distressed loans to enable borrowers or guarantors to decide whether to consider alternative courses of action including pursuing professional negligence claims where poor legal advice has cost your clients. There are not always other options and we give frank and pragmatic advice if further action is simply throwing good money after bad. We assist clients to make informed decisions whatever the circumstances.
Please reach out to our team for a discussion about how we can help your clients manage and defend lenders’ enforcement action.
Workplace investigations rarely unfold in ideal conditions. They are often urgent, emotionally charged and conducted under scrutiny from employees, regulators and, increasingly, the Fair Work Commission (Commission).
Over the past two years, that scrutiny has intensified significantly. Unfair dismissal and dismissal-related claims before the Commission have increased at a pace that is placing significant pressure on the system, with the Commission itself noting that current workload levels are becoming unsustainable. In the 2024–25 financial year alone, the Commission received 16,500 unfair dismissal applications, up from 14,772 the year before. Total lodgements reached 44,075, representing a 10 per cent increase year on year and a level well above historical averages.
Unfair dismissal claims now account for more than one third of the Commission’s workload, making them the single most common type of application.
This is not simply a statistical shift in volume. It reflects a workplace environment in which employees are increasingly willing, and increasingly able, to challenge dismissal decisions.
In that environment, procedural fairness is not a theoretical concept. It is a frontline discipline that determines whether your investigation stands up or unravels under it.
At its core, procedural fairness is concerned with the fairness of the process, not the outcome itself. A decision may ultimately be defensible, but if the process by which it was reached is flawed, it remains exposed to challenge.
Those principles are not controversial. Where risk arises is in how they are operationalised.
Most leaders are familiar with the underlying principles. The individual must know the case against them, have an opportunity to respond, and the decision maker must be impartial.
Where organisations are exposed is rarely in understanding these principles, but in how they are applied in practice.1
In a workplace investigation context, procedural fairness typically requires you to:
These elements will be familiar. They are not, however, a checklist.
Recent decisions bring this into sharper focus. In Peter Jones v Exclusive Contracting (WA) Pty Ltd [2026] FWC 253, the Commission accepted that the employee’s conduct was serious misconduct. However, the dismissal was still found to be unfair because the employee was not told the case against him or given an opportunity to respond before termination.
The message for employers is clear. Even obvious misconduct does not relieve an employer of the obligation to follow a fair process.
Procedural fairness is relatively straightforward when facts are clear and uncontested. The complexity arises when:
It is in these moments that process is most likely to be compressed, and most likely to be compromised.
The Commission has consistently emphasised that an opportunity to respond must be meaningful and must occur before conclusions are reached.
In Gardner v Piacentini & Son [2024] FWC 211, the employee was not given a meaningful opportunity to respond until after the employer had effectively substantiated the allegations. That sequencing was a key factor in the Commission’s criticism of the process.
Similarly, in Mullins v KAB Seating Pty Ltd [2025] FWC 371, allegations were framed in a way that did not allow the employee to properly understand or respond to them. This lack of clarity contributed to a finding that the dismissal was harsh, unjust and unreasonable.
Taken together, these cases reflect a recurring issue. Procedural fairness is often undermined not by the absence of process, but by the way it is executed. It requires a meaningful, properly informed opportunity to engage with the case before findings are made.
In our experience, organisations that manage investigations tend to apply discipline at a few critical points.
1. Invest in the quality of allegations
Poorly particularised allegations remain one of the most common sources of procedural risk. As Mullins demonstrates, if an employee cannot understand the case against them, the process is unlikely to withstand scrutiny.
2. Treat the response as a critical input, not a procedural step
The Commission will examine whether the response was capable of influencing the outcome. A process that moves quickly to determination, or appears to have reached a conclusion in advance, is inherently vulnerable.
3. Be precise about what material is put to the respondent
Material that is credible, relevant and significant to the findings should be put to the individual for response. This requires careful judgment, particularly where confidentiality issues arise.
4. Maintain discipline around impartiality
Investigation quality continues to feature prominently in recent decisions. Where key witnesses are not interviewed, evidence is not fully tested, or investigators appear aligned with a particular outcome, the Commission is willing to characterise the entire process as deficient.
5. Document reasoning, not just outcomes
A defensible process is one that can be explained. Clear records of how evidence was assessed and why conclusions were reached are critical, especially where an organisation chooses to waive privilege over an investigation report by disclosing more than the findings.
Despite best intentions, several patterns continue to drive risk.
Procedural fairness is often framed as a legal requirement. In practice, it is also a reflection of organisational culture.
A process that is fair reinforces trust and can mitigate psychosocial safety risks, even where outcomes are contested. A process that is perceived as unfair does the opposite, regardless of the result In a heightened psychosocial safety regulatory environment, an unfair or deficient process creates psychosocial risk which organisations are obliged to eliminate or control.
Recent Fair Work Commission decisions reinforce these expectations. The Commission is not asking whether employers intended to be fair. It is asking whether fairness is evident in the way decisions are made.
For boards and executives, that is the critical insight.
Procedural fairness is not simply a legal safeguard. It is a marker of organisational integrity, organisational safety and a critical component of defensible decision making.
For many organisations, the challenge is not understanding procedural fairness. It is applying it consistently and confidently in complex, high stakes situations.
Moores works alongside boards, executives and HR leaders to:
We are often engaged not because something has gone wrong, but because the stakes are too high to leave the process exposed.
A well-run investigation will not always produce an easy outcome. But it should always be one that can be explained, defended and trusted.
Most people assume that if a person loses cognitive capacity to make a will, it is simply too late to protect their legacy. Without a valid will, their estate would typically fall under “intestacy” laws, which follow a rigid, one-size-fits-all formula for distributing assets among next-of-kin. You can find a guide to the Victorian’s intestacy laws here.
However, under the Wills Act 1997 (Vic), the Supreme Court has the authority to “step into the shoes” of a person without capacity and authorise a will on their behalf. This legal mechanism ensures that a person’s likely wishes are honoured, even when they can no longer prepare a will for them themselves.
A statutory will is a document authorised by the Court for a person who lacks testamentary capacity. Unlike a traditional will, which is signed by the testator, a statutory will is signed by the Registrar of Probates and sealed by the Court. It is typically sought by family members, carers, or guardians who believe that the existing state of affairs (which may include no will or an out of date will) would lead to an outcome that the person would not have intended.
To authorise such a will, the Court must be satisfied that:
There are many circumstances where a statutory will may be appropriate, as illustrated by the following cases:
Losing capacity does not have to mean losing control over how a person’s estate is ultimately distributed. Statutory wills provide a vital safeguard against the rigid outcomes of intestacy, allowing the Court to uphold what a person’s wishes were likely to have been, rather than defaulting to a formula that may produce unjust or unintended results.
Moores has extensive experience in successfully applying for and defending statutory wills. Our Wills, Estate Planning & Structuring team can assist you in ensuring that your loved one’s estate does not end up somewhere that was unintended.
In late April 2026, the VRQA released updated guidelines to the minimum standards for school registration.
Generally, the new guidelines aim to:
It is most important for schools to take note of the following significant proposed changes:
Following consultation, the guidelines will be available to all school in Term 3, and apply to registered schools from 1 January 2027.
Make sure to keep an eye out, as the VRQA will continue to consult further on the new guidelines.
Moores’ Education and Training team has a wealth of experience in navigating the complex landscape of independent school regulation and assisting clients to meet their compliance requirements. Please contact our expert Education and Training team for tailored advice on how you can ensure your school is staying up to date with the relevant guidelines.