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Swaab part­ner talks employ­ment taboos

Swaab part­ner Richard Ott­ley appeared on ABC Radio Nation­al on a pan­el dis­cussing work­place taboos. Richard specif­i­cal­ly talked about swear­ing at work and the impli­ca­tions it can have on employ­ees and the work­place. > Lis­ten to the full discussion…

Spouse main­te­nance — fre­quent­ly asked questions

IN BRIEF — What is Spouse Maintenance? Spouse main­te­nance is mon­ey paid by one spouse or de fac­to part­ner to the oth­er spouse or de fac­to part­ner, usu­al­ly on a week­ly or month­ly basis. How can I apply for maintenance? You are not auto­mat­i­cal­ly enti­tled to be paid maintenance. You can ask your…

Divorce — fre­quent­ly asked questions

Am i eli­gi­ble to apply for divorce in australia? If you want to apply for a divorce in Aus­tralia either you or your spouse need to have some con­nec­tion with Aus­tralia. Usu­al­ly this means that at least one of you: regards Aus­tralia as your home and intends to live here indef­i­nite­ly; or is an Aus­tralian…

Employ­ers need to be aware of changes to the Migra­tion Act 1958 (Cth)

In Brief In March of this year the Migra­tion Amend­ment (Reform of Employ­er Sanc­tions) Act 2013 (Cth) (the Amend­ment) was passed. This Amend­ment has intro­duced sev­er­al impor­tant changes to the Migra­tion Act 1958 (Cth) (the Act). These include offences and civ­il con­tra­ven­tions for employ­ers in addi­tion to increased pow­ers for the…

What to avoid when ter­mi­nat­ing employees

In Brief  There are sev­er­al actions which Employ­ers need to be aware can get them into trou­ble regard­ing ter­mi­nat­ing an employ­ee and any sub­se­quent employ­ee claim to the Fair Work Com­mis­sion. Remem­ber a claim for unfair dis­missal is an acces­si­ble and cheap process for many employ­ees which can end up cost­ing employ­ers…

Work­place Poli­cies — What are they good for?

In Brief Employ­ers inter­est­ed in keep­ing the costs of their busi­ness down often view work­place poli­cies as an unnec­es­sary expense. How­ev­er, when things go wrong in a work­place the catch­cry is too often ​“if only we had a pol­i­cy!” There are def­i­nite ben­e­fits to work­places poli­cies, the most impor­tant is that work­place poli­cies…

Work­place Poli­cies: Direc­tives or Con­trac­tu­al Terms

In Brief Most employ­ers have now have imple­ment­ed work­place poli­cies, whether they are address­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, use of com­pa­ny vehi­cles or health and safe­ty. While poli­cies are often treat­ed as pro­vid­ing direc­tions from an employ­er the issue of their sta­tus is a more com­pli­cat­ed one. Work­place poli­cies can actu­al­ly have the force of…

Cor­po­rate gov­er­nance: High Court con­firms its pow­er to cor­rect direc­tors’ inno­cent mistakes

In Brief In a recent case the High Court has acknowl­edged that inno­cent mis­takes can hap­pen in rela­tion to cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and has unan­i­mous­ly con­firmed the breadth of the Court’s pow­er to cor­rect such mistakes. Wein­stock v Beck ([2013] HCA 14) con­cerned a fam­i­ly busi­ness, L W Fur­ni­ture Con­sol­i­dat­ed (Aust) Pty Ltd (LWC), and a share­hold­er appli­ca­tion…

Cel­lar­mas­ter Wines must swal­low a $110,000 penal­ty from ACMA

In Brief ACMA’s most recent­ly pub­li­cised enforce­ment action, against Cel­lar­mas­ter Wines Pty Ltd (part of the Wool­worths group) acts as a time­ly reminder that every busi­ness must take suf­fi­cient care in man­ag­ing its respon­si­bil­i­ties under the Spam Act 2003 (Act). Swaab has observed that ACMA has ramped up enforce­ment action in…

Matthew Hall fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly on ABA IP case

Swaab IP part­ner, Matthew Hall has been fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly com­ment­ing on the legal action brought about by the Aus­tralian Bar Asso­ci­a­tion against bar­ris­ter Derek Minus for alleged pass­ing-off, mis­lead­ing and decep­tive con­duct regard­ing his new bar­ris­ter-list­ing web­site Aus­tralasian Bar­ris­ter Cham­bers and use of the Aust­bar domain name…

Swaab CEO fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly on suc­ces­sion planning

Swaab CEO, Bron­wyn Pott has been fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly dis­cussing the impor­tance of ear­ly action when it comes to suc­ces­sion plan­ning in bou­tique firms. Bron­wyn talks about her own expe­ri­ence at Swaab in man­ag­ing a suc­cess­ful pipeline of tal­ent with­in the firm. Bron­wyn will be par­tak­ing in the Busi­ness Suc­ces­sion Round­table…

Social Media Report 2013

You may recall ear­li­er in the year we released a sur­vey on social media that asked a series of ques­tions around access­ing login details and using social media con­tent. The same sur­vey was run by our Mer­i­tas affil­i­ate firm, Kohrman Jack­son & Krantz and we have now com­piled the results of both sur­veys…

Stop bul­ly­ing orders — work­place bul­ly­ing soon to become a more pub­lic ordeal

In Brief Bul­ly­ing has increas­ing­ly been recog­nised as a seri­ous issue in the work­place, in edu­ca­tion and in the online world. Recent­ly the Vic­to­ria Supreme Court ordered an employ­er pay a bul­lied employ­ee $600,000 fol­low­ing their inac­tion over her bul­ly­ing claims. The case demon­strates the seri­ous­ness of bul­ly­ing and how impor­tant it is…

Fred meet­ing his donor fea­ture arti­cle for Lawyers Weekly

Swaab Chair­man, Fred Swaab recent­ly spoke to Lawyers Week­ly about his jour­ney back to health thanks to the kind­ness of a stranger after being diag­nosed with an aggres­sive form of leukaemia back in 2010 > READ MORE…

Hir­ing a work­er who is not an Aus­tralian cit­i­zen? Your respon­si­bil­i­ties have now increased

In Brief For some busi­ness­es attract­ing and retain­ing employ­ees in low skill or alter­nate­ly high­ly spe­cialised roles is an ongo­ing chal­lenge. To stay com­pet­i­tive and retain con­trol of the labour spend, it can be nec­es­sary to employ work­ers who are not cit­i­zens of Aus­tralia. There has always been an ele­ment of…