CATH NEWS REPORT: A nursing home in Victoria run by former Labor aged care minister Peter Staples has been criticised by the industrial tribunal for its ''unsound, indefensible and unfounded'' sacking of its Catholic priest last year, reports The Age.
The Sunday Age reported last October on the sacking of Father Andrea Bellia from the Assisi Aged Care Centre in Rosanna. In a scathing judgment by Fair Work Australia commissioner John Ryan last week, the priest was fully vindicated and the nursing home witnesses castigated, the newspaper said.
The home's latest financial report for the year ended June 2010 set aside $200,000 in legal costs to ''vigorously defend'' Father Bellia's case. Father Bellia had sought reinstatement to the home but ''I have no confidence the board would act professionally or fairly'', Commissioner Ryan said. Instead he ordered $95,000 compensation, subjected to reduction for various reasons, so only $2500 would to be paid to the priest.But last week the Assisi centre lost that case, with the evidence of Mr Staples, the home's executive manager, being described as ''unhelpful and unreliable'' by Commissioner Ryan. Father Bellia's account of events was deemed preferable in all respects to the witnesses from the centre.
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=25723
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