Rosemary is a Special Counsel in our Workplace Relations and Safety team, with over 18 years’ experience advising and representing private and public sector organisations in all areas of employment law and industrial relations. She specialises in partnering with State, Federal and Local Government, bringing deep insight into the unique challenges faced by government agencies in managing workplace and industrial relations matters.
Experience
Rosemary’s expertise encompasses a broad range of employment law matters, ensuring compliance, mitigating risks, and resolving complex legal issues efficiently. Drawing on her extensive in-house legal experience at a large NSW government agency, she has deep expertise working with government clients.
Rosemary assists clients with complex issues involving employee and external complaints, discrimination matters, bullying and harassment, unfair dismissal, general protections claims, redundancies, transfer of business considerations, flexible working arrangements, workplace injury management and an employee's return to work, performance management, and investigating potential misconduct, including termination of employment.
Rosemary regularly represents clients before courts and tribunals including the Federal Court of Australia, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, the Fair Work Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Industrial Relations Commission of NSW and Anti-Discrimination NSW.
Career highlights
Rosemary's experience includes acting for:
- a large private sector import company involving an extensive review of applicable awards, interpretation of same, and implementation of correct award entitlements
- a large private sector mining company involving disputes with relevant unions regarding interpretation of awards and underpayment claims
- Federal government agency in relation to interpretation of overtime clause in EA and rectification of underpayments
- Federal government agency in relation to re-organisation and restructure, including review of relevant contracts and calculating entitlements owed to impacted staff
- a large State government agency in successfully defending a gender and carer’s responsibility discrimination claim in AD NSW resulting in the complaint being terminated
- a large State government agency in successfully defending a race and gender discrimination claim in the AHRC resulting in the complaint being terminated
- a large Federal government agency in successfully defending an application for extension of time to file unfair dismissal application in the Fair Work Commission
- a large Federal government agency in successfully defending an unfair dismissal application in the Fair Work Commission where the employee was not dismissed at the initiative of the employer
- a large Federal government agency in successfully defending an application for extension of time to file a general protections application in the Fair Work Commission
- a large State government agency regarding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and successfully defending multiple unfair dismissal claims in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission.