MediNat Australia

NSW Police overlooked scientific advice about hair sample and sacked drug-tested sergeant Eamonn Duff  March 12 2017  A single strand of hair that destroyed the life of a long-serving Sydney police officer has the potential to influence the future of not just the entire NSW Police Force but all workplaces across NSW. Sergeant George Zisopoulos insists he has been wrongly dismissed due to one of his hair follicles which returned a positive drug test reading. But while the state's top cop, Commissioner Andrew Scipione, has determined that, on the "balance of probabilities", the officer knowingly consumed drugs, scientific opinion suggests otherwise. Leading forensic experts have cast doubts over the decision to sack Sergeant Zisopoulos, concluding there is "no evidence" the substances found on his hair were ingested and that the minute readings may have been caused by "external contamination". ergeant Zisopoulos, who is the first NSW

Toll awarded $18,000 from drug-test faking employee by Victoria Bruce HC Online Logistics giant Toll Holdings has scored a win from the Fair Work Commission as a former employee has been ordered to pay the company $18,000 after falsifying drug test results to support an unfair dismissal claim. The commissioner ordered the former Toll Holdings employee, who was fired in June 2015 after a positive drug test, to pay the company $18,000 in compensation, AFR reported. The employee had tested positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine in his system after a workplace drug test, yet before his dismissal the worker told Toll urine sample tested by a doctor had showed up negative to the drugs. But at subsequent proceedings to hear the worker's unfair dismissal claim, the doctor gave evidence that the test had been "manipulated", and the original test showed the former employee had tested positive.   Read the full article here. Comment: It

Drug tests at Immigration a waste of time and money Noel Towell 14 January 2015 Reporter for The Canberra Times The Immigration Department is wasting its time and taxpayers' money on forced drug tests for thousands of public servants, according to a leading workplace drug and alcohol expert. The tests will be no deterrent, enormously expensive and might even make matters worse by forcing drug users in the department on to harder substances, according to AOD workplace testing's Dr Donna Bull. But the department says that it is no ordinary workplace and that illicit drug use by government officials represents an unacceptable corruption risk to the nation's border protection system. Dr Bull, an independent consultant, says up to 5000 public servants would have to be tested each year to give the department a realistic chance of catching bureaucrats who turn up to work high. But Dr Bull says a mandatory testing regime in the British Army resulted in soldi