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After sacking an employee for a code of conduct breach involving a consensual s-xual interaction, an employer has successfully appealed against orders to reinstate and compensate him.

The Australian National University dismissed the associate professor for serious misconduct after he swam naked with a student while on an academic retreat in 2017 and then engaged in "consensual intimate contact of a sexual nature" with her.

The student completed her studies in mid-2018, and in late 2019 she made a formal complaint about the interaction; after conducting an investigation the employer sacked him in early 2020.

In challenging his dismissal, the employee argued he'd engaged in a consensual interaction, which the student had only complained about after he rejected her subsequent pursuit of a relationship, and that he hadn't breached the employer's code of conduct because he was not in a "close personal relationship" with her...