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Data#3 Says ‘No Way’ After Order To Pay Drug Seller $76K

Data#3 Says ‘No Way’ After Order To Pay Drug Seller $76K

ASX-listed Data#3 – one of Australia’s top information technology companies – has rejected a ruling by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s controversial president Gillian Triggs, pictured, that it should pay more than $76,000 to a former employee it sacked for having a drug conviction.

The man, identified as “Mr AW” was hired on a $185,000 salary in December 2013, but was fired just over a month later when Data#3 discovered he had been found guilty of six counts of selling the drug MDMA – better known as “ecstasy” – in New Zealand in 2011, two years before he joined Data#3

Mr AW was sentenced to a year in home detention. In 2014 he complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission about losing his job. This week Triggs ruled that he had suffered “hurt, humiliation and distress”, said he had only “old minor convictions” and ordered Data#3 to pay him a total of $76,639

Data#3, aware that the AHRC has no power to enforce its decisions, wrote to the commission, saying “Data#3 respectfully declines to pay any compensation to Mr AW”.

 Triggs has been a controversial figure, claiming cartoonist Bill Leak had breached a section of the Racial Discrimination Act with his recent cartoon of a drunken Aboriginal man being questioned over his child’s behaviour; and separately over claims that she misled a Senate committee with false testimony about an interview she gave to The Saturday Paper. Government sources say she is unlikely to be reappointed when her term expires in 2017.



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