George Calombaris apologises, blames inexperience

George Calombaris has apologised for underpaying his staff by almost $8 million, blaming youth and inexperience.

Celebrity chef George Calombaris has apologised for underpaying his staff by almost $8 million, blaming youth and inexperience for his failures.

The former MasterChef judge has broken his silence after the Fair Work Ombudsman ordered he pay a $200,000 contrition payment, in an interview aired tonight on the ABC’s 7.30.

“I'm not here to blame anyone,’’ he said, appearing close to tears.
“I take full responsibility for this. I'm sorry”.

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Mr Calombaris said proper payment systems had got lost when he first started out as a young chef.

“The thing about 13 years ago, you're a young chef, 26 years of age, you want to open your first restaurant, you get together with three other partners at that point,” he said.

“You open the first one, then the second one opens, the third one, the creativity is flying, the ideas are flying, the dreaming is there … But the sophistication in the back end wasn't there.”

Mr Calombaris’ restaurant empire backpaid $7.8 million in unpaid wages and superannuation to 515 workers and was fined $200,000 under a deal with the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Attorney-General Christian Porter described the underpayment as “wages theft”.

Mr Calombaris said his organisation had reformed.

George Calombaris has spoken on camera. Picture: ABC/7.30

“There was no CEO, there was no people culture manager, there was no elite finance team like we've got now, that can make sure that mistake that we made will never happen again."

Mr Calombaris said he now wants to be a “voice for change” in the industry.

“We aren't closing our restaurants, we're here. And it's my job as their leader to keep pushing forward and keep speaking this message, not shying away from the mistake we made, but also acknowledging that we fixed it,” he said.

Fair Work inspectors found significant underpayments occurred because they failed to correctly apply annualised salary arrangements for some staff, including by failing to conduct annual reconciliations to check that workers on annual salary arrangements were paid for overtime and penalty rate hours worked.

MAdE Establishment backpaid $7,832,953 to 515 current or former employees of Press Club, Gazi and Hellenic Republic for work between 2011 and 2017. A further $16,371 has been backpaid to nine employees of Jimmy Grants.

An emotional George Calombaris on 7.30. Picture: ABC/7.30