A club volunteer secretly recorded a worker and threatened to sue

Matthew Mawer started as the part-time administrator of the Gold Coast Pistol Club on 19 June 2024. His supervisor was the club president. But the treasurer, Jonathan Moore, a volunteer committee member and director, kept trying to direct him, locked the club debit card that Mr Mawer used for day-to-day purchases, and opposed his access to the accounting software.

On 2 February 2025 the club secretary and president asked Mr Mawer to email members a notice that included the club’s legal costs. Mr Moore took offence. He walked into the office, took the debit card from the safe, and told Mr Mawer that unless a retraction went out that day it would “go against everyone involved”. He said he had “the money to follow through”, and that he took on solicitors and won. He added: “despite what others might say, I don’t think you’re a bad guy”. Mr Mawer learned the next day that the whole conversation had been secretly recorded.

Commissioner Hunt listened to the recording at the hearing. She found Mr Moore’s claim that he forgot to switch it off was “fabricated”, that the “bad guy” remark was “incredibly offensive”, and that he had targeted Mr Mawer as “a softer target” than the secretary who wrote the email. A volunteer can bully a paid worker: Mr Mawer had been bullied at work.

The Commission ordered Mr Moore to stop making covert recordings at the club or of Mr Mawer, not to restrict his access to the accounting software, to retract in writing within 14 days any implied threat to sue him, and for 12 months to give him directions only through the president. Mr Moore had filed his own bullying claim against Mr Mawer and the president. It was dismissed, the Commissioner finding he had brought the claim against Mr Mawer “vexatiously”.