Aboriginal woman sacked after making racial discrimination complaint

A Queensland Indigenous woman sacked two days after filing an official complaint about racism is taking a government-funded domestic violence organisation to the workplace watchdog.

Case manager Samantha Cooper had worked for the Centre Against Domestic Abuse in the Moreton Bay region, north of Brisbane, since March, running a pilot program aimed at helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

After six months of alleged racial discrimination, and several stated attempts to deal with the issues more informally, she filed an official complaint on November 27 outlining a long list of alleged incidents.

The 25-year-old had been described as going “walkabout”, told she was “quite pretty for an Aboriginal” and asked if she had ever met a “real” Aboriginal person, she claimed.

Two days later she was fired, effective immediately, leaving her “gutted” and worried about what would happen to the 12 families she said she was working with.

“I’m really concerned that that was the reaction to raising a formal complaint,” the third-year law student said.

“If they’ve got other reasons, I’d welcome that and I’d much prefer that for that community, because it would be really horrific to think that raising a formal complaint about racism would result in me being terminated.”

A little less than a month earlier, on November 2, a letter from the organisation’s manager, seen by Fairfax Media, confirmed Ms Cooper had been employed on a “fix term” contract until September 2018.

In Ms Cooper's termination letter, CADA blamed the state government reallocating funding.

“Whilst negotiations were ongoing with the funding body, we extended your contract,” CADA wrote.

“We have now been informed that due to funds being made available in the region for another position, the project is no longer required.”

A Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women spokesman denied funding had been cut to Ms Cooper’s Breaking Down the Barriers program, which he described as a 12-month project having started in March.

He said a new allocation of $120,000 had been granted in October for a full-time Indigenous worker starting January 1.

“Any decision around staffing is a matter for the organisation,” he said in a statement.

CADA is a registered charity, funded by the Department of Communities to the tune of $2.7 million in 2016-2017, an increase of $400,000 from the year before.

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