State of South Australia v Collins

The Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia considered an application for judicial review brought by Mr Collins against the State of South Australia. The dispute concerned Mr Collins' right to appeal disciplinary decisions made by the Education Department concerning his employment as a temporary teacher. Mr Collins had been employed on a series of fixed-term contracts and held an Authority to Teach, which was a precondition for his employment. Allegations of misconduct were made against him in late 2014, leading to an investigation and the withdrawal of his Authority to Teach.

The central legal issue before the court was the proper construction and application of section 54 of the relevant Act and regulation 36 of the Education Regulations 2012 (SA). Specifically, the court had to determine whether Mr Collins, having ceased to be employed as a teacher by the Department in January 2015, retained a right to appeal against decisions made in 2016 concerning his prior conduct. The State contended that the right of appeal under section 54 was limited to persons who were officers at the time of the impugned decision.

The court reasoned that section 54 of the Act confers a right of appeal on an "officer" against a decision affecting them, provided a right of appeal is conferred by the regulations. Regulation 36, in turn, grants a right of appeal to a "teacher" who has a just cause of complaint against a Department officer, subject to first appealing to the Director-General. It was common ground that the term "teacher" in regulation 36 referred to an "officer" as defined by section 5 of the Act, meaning a teacher holding office in the teaching service. Applying this, the court concluded that the reference to an "officer" in section 54 must be interpreted as a person who held that status at the time the decision under appeal was made. As Mr Collins was no longer an officer of the Department when the 2016 decisions were made, he had no standing to appeal those decisions.