Ex-MP awarded $1.45m compo for job discrimination claim

A former Queensland politician was awarded $1.45m compo after the state’s largest hospital refused to employ him.

Dr Chris Davis, former state president of the Australian Medical Association.

A former assistant Queensland health minister was awarded $1.45 million compensation after the state’s largest hospital failed to employ him when he quit ­parliament.

An experienced doctor and past state president of the Australian Medical Association, Chris Davis was elected to parliament in 2012 as a member of the LNP government.

After a falling out with premier Campbell Newman over, among other things, the employment contracts of public hospital doctors, Dr Davis was sacked as ­assistant minister in 2014 and resigned from parliament.

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard Dr Davis, an experienced geriatrician, applied for a position at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Despite there being only two applications and the other applicant being unqualified, Dr Davis did not get the job. Instead, the hospital told him there was no longer a vacancy.

“It is reasonable for the tribunal to draw the inference that the reason for the decision was directly connected to who the sole applicant was and to his recent ­actions — less than four months previously and as recently as late July 2014 — as a politician and a potential future political candidate,” QCAT member Clare Endi­cott found.

Ms Endicott ordered the Metro North Hospital and Health Service, which had previously employed Dr Davis, to pay him $1,450,771.69 in compensation within 30 days.

“The tribunal accepts Dr Davis reacted strongly to what he perceived to be a major fall from grace with the entity which had employed him for over 20 years,” she found. “He had enjoyed eminent status within that entity.’’

The health service, which may yet appeal, denied its failure to employ Dr Davis was politically motivated.