The employer was right about the performance - and still got the sacking wrong
An employer had a valid reason to sack an accountant for poor performance - and still lost the unfair dismissal case.
On August 14, 2026, the Fair Work Commission agreed that Coronation Property Co had a genuine reason to let an assistant accountant go - then found the dismissal unfair anyway. The story will ring true for any HR team that has managed someone out: the employer chased the wrong problem, and never told the worker the real one.
It started with an invoice. The company said the accountant had “altered an invoice amount from $185 to $56,100” in its accounting system, approved it beyond her authority, then reversed it without flagging it to a senior approver. The Commission didn’t accept that. It found the $56,100 was a simple data-entry error, not a deliberate act, and called the allegation letter “poorly worded” because it made her sound as though she had deliberately changed an invoice, when the wrong figure was just a typing mistake.
The company also said she broke its financial rules by reversing the entry without approval. But it could never produce those rules. Its own head of people and culture had never seen them, and repeated requests to the finance team went unanswered. The Commission accepted the accountant’s evidence that no such rule had ever been spelled out to her, and found she hadn’t been dishonest and hadn’t broken the company’s code of conduct.
The performance...
White House border czar Tom Homan fired back on Sunday's "State of the Union" after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") of targeting parents at sch...