Request a review

Parties involved in an investigation can request a review for any, some, or all of these reasons:

• a Fair Work Inspector’s behaviour was unprofessional
• they believe the process was unsatisfactory
• they don’t agree with the outcome.

You can request a review during or after an investigation over the phone, via our website, through email, or by writing to us.

Contact us to request a review

Complaints about Fair Work Inspectors

Fair Work Inspectors are either employees of the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman; the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner or of State Government agencies in NSW, South Australia and Queensland (where the Fair Work Ombudsman has entered into partnering arrangements to provide services in those states).

 Fair Work Inspectors who are employees of either the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman or the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner are Commonwealth Government employees and must follow the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct.

Fair Work Inspectors who are State Government employees must follow their relevant equivalent Code of Conduct (for NSW - Services, Technology & Administration Code of Conduct; for South Australia the Code of Ethics for the South Australian Public Sector; and for Queensland the Code of Conduct for the Queensland Public Service).

If you think a Fair Work Inspector has behaved unprofessionally, you can ask for their conduct to be reviewed.

You can do this with the Fair Work Inspector or with their manager. If the manager can’t resolve your complaint, they will ask the relevant director to review it.

Outcome reviews & how to get them

If you don’t agree with the outcome of an investigation, you can lodge a file review request with the Fair Work Inspector or their manager.

We’re committed to ensuring reviews remain impartial and transparent. For this to happen, reviews may go through up to 3-tiers of our review process:

• conducting a process review (we do this to check whether the original Fair Work Inspector followed our investigation process)
• redoing the investigation (this is done by our specialist File Review Team)
• referring the person who made the complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

After the review

After the review finishes, the reviewer reports the findings. Sometimes, they contact you and sometimes the relevant director contacts you.

The possible findings of the review include:

• the reviewer supports and upholds the investigation process and outcome
• the reviewer supports and upholds the process, but not the outcome
• the reviewer overturns the investigation and outcome.