Employer Conduct in Workplace Investigations and the Law

Description

Workplace investigations into suspected employee misconduct can have significant implications for all parties involved, particularly the employee under scrutiny.The proliferation of workplace investigations in Australia raises questions about how employees under investigation experience these internal processes, and whether existing laws provide adequate protection.

This event will explore significant legal developments, provide a comparative perspective from the United Kingdom and offer new understandings of how key actors experience these internal processes.

Supported by the Labour Equality and Human Rights (LEAH) Research Group at Monash Business School and the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law (CELRL) at Melbourne Law School, this event will feature research set out in a new monograph by Dr Adriana Orifici on workplace investigations in Australia, entitled Workplace Investigations: Justice and Legal Regulation of Employer Conduct published by Oxford University Press in 2026.

This monograph brings together interdisciplinary, doctrinal, empirical and theoretical scholarship to develop a concept of justice in workplace investigations in the Australian context and to suggest a targeted approach to improving the law to balance employer control with transparency and accountability.

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Keynote Speaker

Justice Stephen O’Meara, Supreme Court of Victoria

The Honourable Justice Stephen O’Meara was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria on 18 May 2021. As a Senior Counsel from 2011-2021, Justice O’Meara appeared in a broad range of matters that greatly impacted Victoria and Australia including commercial, public and common law cases, the Royal Commission into the Victorian Mental Health System and the Kilmore and Murrindindi bushfire class actions.Since his appointment in 2021, Stephen has sat in the Common Law Division of the Supreme Court and, very occasionally, in the Court of Appeal. He is one of two judges in charge of the Personal Injury Lists within the Court.

Speakers

Professor Anna Chapman, Melbourne Law School

Anna Chapman is a Professor at Melbourne Law School and member of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law (CELRL). She joined the Law School after a period of practice.  Her research focuses on inequality and discrimination in work relations. Professor Chapman has written about the National Employment Standards, General Protections (Adverse Action), unfair dismissal law and anti-discrimination law. She is a past Editor of the Australian Journal of Labour Law, and a past Co-Director of CELRL.

Professor Lizzie Barmes, Queen Mary University of London

Lizzie Barmes is Professor of Labour Law at Queen Mary University of London and co-Director of the QMUL School of Law’s Centre for Research on Law, Equality and Diversity (LEAD). Professor Barmes taught at UCL from 1999-2007, was a Government Lawyer in the Common Law Team of the Law Commission of England and Wales from 1995-1999 and practised as a solicitor from 1988-1994. Professor Barmes’ research interests are in the fields of equality and employment law. Her 2016 monograph, Bullying and Behavioural Conflict at Work: The Duality of Individual Rights, won the 2017 SLSA’s Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize.

Dr Adriana Orifici, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash Business School

Dr Adriana Orifici is a senior lecturer and director of the Labour, Equality and Human Rights Research Group (LEAH) in the Department of Business Law and Taxation. Dr Orifici is a lawyer and socio-legal scholar whose research interests span labour and equality law. Dr Orifici’s doctoral thesis was awarded the Harold Luntz Research Thesis Prize at Melbourne Law School in 2024. Dr Orifici’s first book, Workplace Investigations: Justice and the Legal Regulation of Employer Conduct (Oxford University Press, 2026) employs interdisciplinary, doctrinal, theoretical and empirical research to offer the first comprehensive critique of the legal regulation of Australian workplace investigations.

Host

Professor John Bevacqua, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash Business School

Professor Bevacqua is an active researcher in tax administration and taxpayer rights, and is published regularly in leading Australian and international tax journals. Professor Bevacqua is also a qualified lawyer admitted to practice in multiple jurisdictions, and prior to becoming a full-time academic had a ten-year career as a commercial and tax lawyer, working at top tier commercial law firms.

Organised by Labour, Equality and Human Rights (LEAH) Research Group, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash Business School

Supported by Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law (CELRL), Melbourne Law School