About Meredith

Meredith is a Partner in the Employment, Safety & People practice. She is an employment and industrial relations specialist who advises government and care sector organisations on sensitive workplace issues. 

Meredith works across all areas of the law that touch the employment relationship, including statutory and common law issues, industrial relations and equal opportunity law. She supports her clients to minimise legal risk across:

• Employment matters
  • Complex statutory interpretation, including constitutional issues
  • Employment contracts, disputes and drafting
  • Long service leave
  • Workplace investigations, including bullying and sexual harassment
  • Award interpretation
• Industrial relations and strategic workforce issues
  • Multi and single employer enterprise agreement bargaining
  • Disputes and protected industrial action
  • Transfer of business and workforce restructuring
  • Payroll remediation
• Litigation
  • Disputes in the Fair Work Commission, VCAT, Federal Court and Federal Circuit Court

Her clients are Local, State and Commonwealth governments, health, aged care and disability organisations, and not-for-profit bodies. 

Meredith is known for providing practical, strategic advice that helps these clients to:

• navigate complex workforce challenges
• respond to evolving regulatory and workforce pressures, and 
• make legally and operationally sound decisions. 

Her commitment to helping employers tackle difficult workplace issues is evident in her contribution to industry commentary. Meredith regularly shares her expertise by presenting seminars, authoring alerts, and speaking on podcasts, most recently for Lawyers Weekly and the Employment Law Alliance. 

Experience

• Local Government

  Advising a range of metropolitan and rural councils on the application of Single Interest Employer Agreements (SIEAs) in the local government sector, as well as the subsequent bargaining arising from these agreements. This has included providing strategic industrial relations advice and preparing legal submissions, managing the authorisation process and representing the councils in the tribunals and court. 

• State Government
  • Representing the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing in relation to an Executive employment termination matter involving complex Constitutional, policy and statutory interaction issues and a long running Federal Circuit Court matter involving multiple employment related claims.
  • Representing VICSES in relation to a number of sensitive volunteer and employee disciplinary matters. 
  • Advising State Trustees Limited in relation to workforce restructuring.
  • Providing general employment advice to the Victoria Auditor General Office.
  • Advising Fire Rescue Victoria on a misconduct investigation. 
• Care Sector
  • Managing a strategic payroll remediation for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which involved auditing payroll rules compliance with multiple industrial instruments (enterprise agreements and awards) and advising on enterprise agreement interpretation. 
  • Advising Headspace on employee disputes and disciplinary processes.
  • Advising Scope on employee disputes and employment contracts. 
  • Advising Neami – advising on portable long service leave and contractual matters, as well as representing it in general protections disputes.
  • Advising Melbourne City Mission on payroll remediation and portable long service leave, as well as representing it in disputes in the Fair Work Commission.
  • Advising Doable on payroll remediation and contract drafting. 
  • Advising Mallee Family Care on enterprise agreement and contract drafting, as well as representing it in employee disputes. 
  • Representing Mallee District Aboriginal Services in employee disputes involving investigations and misconduct.