Sydney trader wins unfair dismissal case but gets no compensation

Charles Graham worked as a currency trader in Sydney for HIFX Australia, which operates under the brand name Xe. In December last year, he was fired. On Wednesday, the Fair Work Commission ruled that his dismissal had been unfair—but awarded him no money.

The sequence that led to his termination began when his manager asked an IT worker to track the IP address on Graham's laptop. What they found was that he was working from Singapore, a country he had no permission to work from. The company's policy required employees to seek approval before working overseas and to come into the office three times a week. When the manager dug deeper, another problem emerged: Graham had also worked from Bali on at least one occasion, telling his manager at the time that he was working from home because a plumber was coming to fix a bathroom issue.

Graham's account was different. He said he had gone to Singapore for a holiday, but his partner became seriously ill with a bacterial infection, making it impossible for him to return to Australia as planned. He provided documentation he said proved his partner needed medical treatment. He also noted that he had previously asked Xe if he could relocate to Singapore permanently, and the company had refused. When he found himself stranded, he argued, he was caught in a difficult position: he had no expectation that he needed to contact his manager outside business hours, and when he did log back in from Singapore, he was immediately overwhelmed with hundreds of unread emails and urgent calls from clients, which took priority over notifying his employer of his whereabouts.

Xe was not persuaded. On November 17th, the company sent Graham an email laying out what it had discovered. The tone shifted sharply the next day, when managers told him there was a case to answer for breaching company policy. Over the following ten days, emails flew back and forth. In his written response, Graham maintained that the trip was a holiday unrelated to his earlier relocation request, that he had made the decision to reschedule his return flight over a weekend when he couldn't reach his manager, and that he had intended to inform his employer as soon as practicable. He also said he had only worked remotely twice before—once from Townsville the previous year and once from Bali in April and May 2025—and that he had not been given clear guidance about hybrid work policies.

On December 2nd, Xe sent a termination letter. The company said Graham had failed to provide flight screenshots with his name on them, had not supplied medical evidence that his partner was unable to travel, had given no adequate explanation for not telling his manager he was in Singapore, and had demonstrated through his previous compliance with absence and approval processes that he knew the rules and had simply chosen not to follow them. "Your conduct represents a serious breach of company policy, a failure to follow lawful and reasonable instructions, and an irreparable breakdown of trust and confidence," the letter stated.

Fair Work Commission commissioner Alana Matheson examined the evidence carefully. She found that while Xe had a valid reason to dismiss Graham—he had indeed worked overseas without permission and had misrepresented his location before—the way the company had handled the dismissal was procedurally unfair. Xe had not fully raised all the matters it was relying on when it made its decision, Matheson ruled. She decided that reinstatement was not appropriate. She also declined to award compensation, reasoning that Graham's own misconduct had contributed to the dismissal and that he had already been paid four weeks in lieu of notice. Graham had worked for Xe for twenty months. He won the case but left with nothing.