Warning: this article discusses suspected suicide.
Serena Keast is a nurse, who moved from her native Tauranga to Melbourne in 2007.
In September 2023 her brother Samuel, then 27, moved to Melbourne to work for a Whanganui-based company called Playground Centre Ltd which has a presence in Australia.
Ten weeks later, Sam died at his workplace. While the Victorian Coroner is yet to release its findings, it is informally well known to be a suspected suicide. This was reported by Ben Plummer from the New Zealand Herald a few months ago.
Family of Kiwi tradie Samuel Keast fight for answers after suspected suicide overseas uncovers ‘toxic’ workplace (4 October 2024)
Scope of this article
We are specialist media, mostly blogging on employment law, and we endeavour to complement mainstream media as opposed to competing with it. We became aware of Sam Keast because Ben Plummer’s article above was shared in LinkedIn.
Until WorkSafe Victoria and the Coroner release their findings, we’ll keep an open mind on the extent of any alleged bullying. The reputational risk to Sam’s employer is outside the scope of this article - we are only examining whether the company could be found liable under New Zealand law, including but not limited to employment law. For example, we note that since Sam passed on or about 29 November 2023, the former CEO of Ports of Auckland was found guilty in relation to the 2020 death of stevedore Pala’amo Kalati after Maritime New Zealand brought charges under the HSWA 2015.
Loyal tradie
Prior to moving to Melbourne, Sam worked as a Whanganui-based carpenter with the quirky title of “playground technician” for around five years. The job involved assembly and repair of playground equipment.
In 2023, Sam agreed to move from Whanganui to Melbourne, where his sister Serena lived, to help Playground Centre Ltd set up shop in that city. Public records indicate that Playground Centre already had a presence in Brisbane.
A short video post on Playground Centre’s Facebook page dated 2 November 2023 (at the time of writing, but will probably have been deleted by the time you read this) shows a forklift inside a small warehouse in Truganina, in Melbourne’s far West. We understand that Sam drove that forklift almost daily but he wasn’t licensed in VIC, and that exposed him personally to a fine of AUD 3,000.
That seems unlikely to be a simple administrative oversight (see the Herald article). Chillingly, the company’s Facebook marketing posts continued as if nothing had happened, and negative comments from those angered by the company’s apparent indifference were removed. “Angry” emojis on several late-2024 posts remain.
Q: What’s Playground Centre’s legal exposure under the Employment Relations Act?
A: Right or wrong, probably nothing. Records we have been provided with suggest that for the first couple of months, Sam was on an otherwise unremarkable secondment to a new depot in Melbourne. He was paid NZD30.52 (AUD28.00) per hour, having previously earned NZD28.00 per hour in Whanganui throughout most of 2023. Sam worked a lot of unpaid overtime which dragged his real rate down to about a dollar above the New Zealand mimimum wage. It was also below the Australian minimum wage. Initially, Playground Centre appears to have avoided a breach of minimum employment standards in both jurisdictions because the company paid for his motel accommodation plus other allowances, putting him in the category of a New Zealand employee working abroad, with a view to a permanent shift if it suited both parties.
But after a couple of months, Playground Centre revoked Sam’s accommodation and told him he had to find and pay for his own accommodation. Due to his low wages and his modest means, set against the high cost of living in Melbourne (compared to Whanganui), Sam had to borrow approximately AUD1,800 from his sister Serena to get into a share house. We consider that Playground Centre’s revocation of legitimate expenses to be a particularly egregious example of constructive dismissal, for which a personal grievance claim and an award or mediated settlement for hurt and humiliation at the high end (NZD25-40,000) would have been a reasonably foreseeable outcome. But as we know the outcome was much worse, and within two weeks he had died.
Response
Playground Centre sent flowers, and the usual platitudes, but didn’t reimburse Sam’s family for his accommodation costs, let alone contributing to the funeral costs. Soon after that, communications ceased altogether. In mid-October 2024 when we contacted a spokesman for the company, the response, copy-pasted from his earlier response to the Herald was:
The Playground Centre is committed to supporting the health, wellbeing and safety of communities through our recreational solutions. This commitment extends to our team members.
We are saddened by Sam's passing and have offered our sincere condolences to his family.
We have provided our full co-operation to Victorian Police and WorkSafe Victoria since this incident late last year and continue to support any ongoing inquiries.
We understand that the Coronial and WorkSafe Victoria investigations are ongoing and therefore, no further comment will be provided.
(Lack of) legal precedent
Leighton Associates has searched the Employment Relations Authority database but has been unable to find a precedent for:
Personal grievance claims brought posthumously (although we did find a few where the grievant died in the months between the investigation meeting and determination, and the Authority made an award payable to the Estate)
Grievances brought by third parties, eg: family of the late employee against their employer.
As Playground Centre narrowly avoided a breach liable to fall within the jurisdiction of the MBIE Labour Insectorate, the company and its officers will probably escape legal consequences for the events that led to the death of its long-serving employee, at least under the relevant New Zealand laws. We can’t speak for WorkSafe Victoria (or the Coroner).
Being a small business owner I like to see Kiwi businesses punching above their weight and setting up shop overseas. But not like this.
SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION
Where to get help:
• Lifeline: Call 0800 543 354 or text 4357 (HELP) (available 24/7)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
• Youth services: (06) 3555 906
• Youthline: Call 0800 376 633 or text 234
• What's Up: Call 0800 942 8787 (11am to 11pm) or webchat (11am to 10.30pm)
• Depression helpline: Call 0800 111 757 or text 4202 (available 24/7)
• Helpline: Need to talk? Call or text 1737
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Tristam Price, Editor
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