The Attorney-General's Department has moved to speedily appoint a new general manager to the FWC, while signalling that a key part of the role is to oversee "significant transformation" of the tribunal's "digital capabilities".
John (Thommo) Thompson, who recently retired from the Queensland IRC after more than 20 years on the bench, says the tribunal has fared better than some its counterparts because of successive state governments' willingness to expand the matters within its ambit.
Information Commissioner Angelene Falk has ordered the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to release email communications between its then secretary and former Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd about matters including the APS workplace bargaining policy.
Financial services giant AMP Limited's handling of a s-xual harassment complaint has today brought about the resignation of its chair David Murray, while the senior executive at the centre of the allegations has been demoted.
Mourners at today's live-streamed funeral service for John Kovacic heard that the otherwise mild-mannered man who joined the nation's industrial umpire in 2013 became a different character when he attended a rugby league match featuring his beloved Wests Tigers, when referees making adverse rulings were "blind", or "stupid".
FWC Deputy President Gerard Boyce removed "inappropriate" female figurines from his Sydney chambers after senior colleagues and others raised concerns about them, while the presence of a "life-size cardboard cut-out" of President Donald Trump was at least "unwise", the tribunal's general manager told a Senate Estimates hearing today.
