George Calombaris apologises in emotional interview

George Calombaris came close to tears as he apologised for underpaying staff by almost $8m.

George Calombaris during tonight’s 7.30 interview. Picture: ABC

Former MasterChef host and restaurant mogul George Calombaris came close to tears as he apologised for underpaying his staff by almost $8 million, saying “creativity was flowing” in the kitchen, but the financial systems were disorganised behind the scenes.

“You’re a young chef, 26 years of age. You want to open your first restaurant, you get together with your three other partners and you open the first one, the second one opens, then the third, the creativity is flying, the ideas are flying … but the sophistication in the back end isn’t there,” Mr Calombaris told ABC’s 7.30.

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Mr Calombaris backpaid $7.8 million in unpaid wages and superannuation to 515 works and was fined $200,000 under a deal with the Fair Work Ombudsman, a move he said was his company acknowledging they had made a mistake.

George Calombaris came close to tears during the interview. Picture: ABC

“In 2017, we found the problem, we self-reported, we said ‘hang on, we’ve made a mistake here, a terrible mistake’, we paid our team members back two years ago,” Mr Calombaris said.

A Fair Work investigation found the underpayments happened because MAdE Establishment, Mr Calombaris’s restaurant empire, had failed to correctly applying annualised salary arrangements for some staff, including failing to ensure overtime and penalty rates were correctly paid.

“It’s called not having the proper infrastructure in the background to make sure the classifications are being checked and done correctly. There’s a whole myriad of stuff that needs to be … checked and double checked and triple checked,” Mr Calombaris said.

“I truly believe that we’ve owned up, paid up, and we did that two years ago,” Mr Calombaris said, saying his Melbourne restaurants would not be closing, and assuring potential customers that when they pay their bill, they do so knowing staff are being adequately paid.

Mr Calombaris was on the verge of tears while talking about the “tumultuous” toll it has had on him.

“I love this industry, I really do and I love every opportunity it has given me. I love the people (who work for me) … and I don’t want them to suffer,” he said.