A locum nurse ran the host-employer argument - and learned where control stops mattering
A nurse hired through a staffing agency tried to sue Queensland Health directly. A tribunal ruled it had no power to hear her.
The nurse spent much of 2025 working as a locum at remote Torres Strait health centres, on Yam Island and Murray Island, across a string of short engagements. She did the same work as Queensland Health's own nurses. She followed its policies, used its systems and answered to its supervisors. What she never did was draw a pay cheque from it. Her employer was a labour hire company, Vanguard Consulting & Services, which supplied her to the department.
When the relationship broke down in late 2025, she filed two claims with the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission: one alleging the department had taken adverse action against her, the other seeking unpaid wages and entitlements. The problem was the target. She named Queensland Health as her employer, arguing it controlled every part of her working life that mattered.
The department's answer was blunt: she was never ours. In its account, the nurse sat inside a standard three-way labour hire arrangement. Vanguard paid her, issued her payslips, deducted her tax and was free to place her with other clients. Because Vanguard is a corporation, it counts as a "national system employer" under the federal Fair Work Act. And that, the department said, knocked out the state Industrial Relations Act - the very law she...
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