George Calombaris dumped from WA tourism campaign
MasterChef host George Calombaris has been dropped from a high profile campaign after he was fined for underpaying employees by almost $8 million.
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Under-fire MasterChef host and celebrity restaurateur George Calombaris has been dropped from a tourism campaign after he was fined for underpaying employees by almost $8 million.
The Fair Work Ombudsman last week fined the 40-year-old celebrity chef and his Made Establishment company $200,000 and money has been back-paid to hundreds of current and former staff.
Mr Calombaris featured in Tourism WA’s advertising campaign “Create Your Own Gourmet Escape in WA”, which first aired in the eastern states on MasterChef during WA Week earlier this month and was due to run until September. But on Monday, Tourism WA managing director Brodie Carr said the ads with Mr Calombaris had been suspended although the campaign with MasterChef would continue.
“We’ve paused all of our work with George for now and we’re talking to his management about recouping some of our costs that we’ve paid him,” Mr Carr told 6PR radio.
“We’ll continue with the campaign that we’re doing with MasterChef but probably not with George.
“George was just a small element of the whole MasterChef piece.” He would not reveal how much Calombaris was paid.
Mr Carr said they chose Calombaris for the campaign because “he loves WA, he sells WA really well”.
He said he had no idea about his underpayment scandal until it was revealed last week.
When asked if that should’ve been investigated before he joined the tourism campaign, he said: “Possibly, it should have.”
“I wasn’t actually on the selection committee of choosing him as a talent.”
Premier Mark McGowan previously said working with MasterChef for tourism promotion was innovative but would not confirm the reported $1.2 million price tag.
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s four-year investigation culminated in the announcement on Thursday that Calombaris had back-paid more than $7.83 million to 524 current and former employees of Press Club, Gazi, Hellenic Republic and Jimmy Grants.
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A spokeswoman for WA Tourism Minister Paul Papalia said: “The ad campaign that he (Colambaris) featured in has been paused.”
“It was meant to go on for six months. It’s been running for three weeks.”
She would not go into the reason for the ad pause saying it was an “operational matter” for Tourism WA.
Today, Attorney-General Christian Porter described the fine as a “light penalty” and said he had an “open mind” about legislating higher minimum infringements.
“The sheer quantum of the underpayment and the period of time under which it spanned seemed to me that, as a penalty under the system, that that was a light penalty,” Mr Porter told The Australian newspaper.
This comes after MasterChef Australia held a special “WA Week”, with an episode filmed at Optus Stadium, Perth city, the Swan Valley, the Margaret River and Rottnest Island.
From the Margaret River to the great Rottnest Island, @WestAustralia week will have our contestants on the culinary journey of a lifetime! 🙌 7.30 tonight on @Channel10AU #MasterChefAU pic.twitter.com/k75gmAxf6T
— #MasterChefAU (@masterchefau) July 6, 2019
Calombaris last week told News Corp Australia that mistakes were made as his empire grew.
“There is no excuse for this and we have the systems in place now,” he said.
He said his message to his customers and those who watched him on TV was that his business could now be “a force for change in this industry”.
Last week, his MasterChef employer Network 10 confirmed it was standing by Calombaris, with a spokesman saying: “George has the support of Network 10.”
But the ACTU said he should be removed from MasterChef. And the hospitality union United Voice claims Calombaris should be forever referred to as a “wage thief”.
Originally published as George Calombaris dumped from WA tourism campaign