Nurse complained about her treatment, then was sacked

Wei Han, known at work as Casey, had been a registered nurse at St Basil’s aged care home in Lakemba, Sydney, for over nine years. She is Chinese. From mid-2019 her workload rose by about 40%, and, she said, she began complaining that she was overworked, unsupported and treated differently from a group of Filipino co-workers.

In August 2019 she called a colleague “a bitch” in what she said was a joke that misfired, and in September she was given a first and final warning. The court later found the warning did not breach the Fair Work Act. Ms Han kept raising concerns, including formal complaints in December 2019 that a colleague was targeting her and that others had refused to help her with residents.

Instead of investigating those complaints, the court found, the general manager turned them against her. Ms Han was called to an “outcomes meeting” with no clue what it was about, and on 23 January 2020 she was dismissed, accused of poor clinical care and of asking an unqualified team leader to give a resident oxygen. The home also complained about her to the nursing regulator, which closed the matter with no further action.

Ms Han ran the trial herself. Under the Fair Work Act’s reverse onus (s 361), St Basil’s had to prove its reasons were innocent. Justice Rares found it could not. There was no rule stopping team leaders giving oxygen, there was no objective basis for the concerns about her care, and the general manager’s “investigation” was, in his words, “a trumped up attack”. The dismissal was found to be because of Ms Han’s complaints and her race.

In May 2025 a second judge ordered St Basil’s to pay $175,000 for past lost earnings, $61,559.62 for future loss, $75,000 in general damages and $10,000 for future treatment, plus penalties of $60,000 paid to Ms Han herself.