Australia must not act like Canada
Shri Patrick Bill’s article insisting that India’s former High Commissioner to Australia must pay “ penalty “ …as deemed by a naïve federal Australian judge ……to his Indian domestic worker in the embassy could be just brushed aside as an half baked article based on inadequate knowledge.
However the matter needs to be taken very seriously by the Australian Govt because it has potential to totally derail not only the growing Indo Australian friendship and the rising trade and commerce but also the QUAD grouping in the Indo Pacific.
The Federal Court in its ignorance and total disregard of International diplomatic norms of all things has ORDERED the India’s former high commissioner to Australia Navdeep Suri Singh to pay a penalty to a domestic worker who he had paid less than $10 a day.
The judge can be pardoned for not knowing that even UNCLE SAM’S Judicial system could not IRDER anything to India in a similar matter. Initially the high and haughty New York Police department and te USA State Department tried to browbeat the Indian Consulate General in New York. However when the India’s External Affairs Ministry “retaliated “ ten the USA chaps had to ultimately eat crow.
The current acts of jumping jack Trudeau accusing India of killing a Canadian terrorist on Canada too has backfired very badly on Trudeau himself. India will just not tolerate such things from any Govt.
No wonder the Indian Ministry of External Affairs just outright rejected such outrageous verdicts as an Australian court does not have any jurisdiction in the matter, even if the said worker was motivated by Australian lawyers or others to stay in Australia.
So either the Judge passing such outrageous verdict himself/ herself pay the worker Seema Shergill the said penalty amount of $97,200 as per the Australian Fair Work Act. Alternatively Govt can itself pay the amount just to uphold its own law applicable only inside Australia but certainly not on diplomats of other countries.
The Australian court has outrageously ordered the former Indian high commissioner to Australia has been ordered to pay a penalty of almost $100,000 to a former domestic worker, who he had paid as per Indian law.
The penalty comes on top of a previous order that required Navdeep Suri Singh to repay Seema Shergill about $136,000, plus interest, for work she completed at the then-high commissioner’s residence in Canberra.
The court has found Mr Suri’s conduct amounted to nine contraventions of the Fair Work Act. Well the Court cannot impose its Australian laws and Australian “ VALUE SSTEMS “ on other countries..at least India will neither accept it or permit it.
In her written judgement, Justice Raper said Mr Suri’s “departures” from his obligations to Ms Shergill were not minor.
“They were in every sense egregious and exploitative in their effect of depriving Ms Shergill of any semblance of a work and life divide,” Justice Raper said.
“The circumstances of this case fall within [the] definition of slave-like conditions.” Imagine a federal judge of Australia passing such judgements.
Indian government rejects court’s authority
At the time of the original judgement in November, the Federal Court ruled Mr Suri was not entitled to diplomatic immunity because Ms Shergill was working for him personally and not for the High Commission.
Mr Hillard said that decision set a critical precedent.
“Diplomats and high commissioners and ambassadors can no longer hide behind diplomatic immunity in respect of the arrangements they make to employ domestic workers.”
But the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said last year it did not accept that an Australian court had the authority to adjudicate the issue.
“Any grievance that she may have has to be … addressed only in India,” it had said in a statement.
“Her conduct and false representations give rise to suspicions that all this has been motivated by a desire to permanently stay in Australia … in which she seems to have succeeded.”
