She proposed the deal, accepted the payout, then told the Commission she was pushed out

A worker who negotiated her exit package from a government department couldn't later claim she was sacked, the Fair Work Commission ruled.

In a decision issued on August 21, 2026, the Commission dismissed a general protections application brought by a senior executive, finding she had not been dismissed at all. The case turned on a distinction HR teams deal with constantly: the difference between resigning, agreeing to leave, and being terminated by your employer. Only the last of those can support a general protections claim - the kind that lets a worker argue they were pushed out for an unlawful reason.

The worker had been with the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, a Victorian government department, since 2015. She was a senior executive on a five-year contract that still had years to run. In March 2025 she went on personal leave and never returned, after raising allegations that she had been bullied by two colleagues. According to the decision, the department assessed those allegations but decided they did not need further investigation, and a WorkCover claim she lodged was later rejected. The Commission did not rule on whether any bullying occurred - that was never the question before it.

By October 2025, it was the worker who first raised the idea of a negotiated separation. Over the following weeks the two sides exchanged offers. The department proposed a Targeted...

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