General protections

What counts as adverse action?

Dismissal is the obvious one, but adverse action also covers demotion, cutting hours, altering a role to the employee's disadvantage, discrimination between employees, and refusing to hire. The protection extends to prospective employees, which is why general protections claims can arise from recruitment decisions, not just terminations.

What is a workplace right?

Broader than most managers assume: making a complaint or inquiry about employment, taking personal leave, requesting flexible work, asking about pay, participating in a Commission process, or having the benefit of an award or agreement. The claim structure is "adverse action because of the right", and the word doing the work is *because*.

Why do employers treat these claims so seriously?

Two structural features. The onus reverses: once adverse action and a workplace right are shown, the employer must prove the action was not taken for the prohibited reason, which makes contemporaneous documentation of the real reason decisive. And unlike unfair dismissal, compensation is uncapped, with no minimum service requirement. A first-week employee who is dismissed after raising a safety complaint has no unfair dismissal claim and a perfectly viable general protections one.