Cocaine ‘addict’ employee wins $30,000 compensation from employer
BRISBANE: A former train driver on a $352,000 a year salary has won a huge compensation payout from his old employer despite admitting to an “eight ball a day” cocaine habit and pleading guilty in the courts to drug possession and assault charges.
Luke Bowen, a Bundaberg-based driver with Queensland Rail, was sacked from the transportation giant after he was arrested and charged for an after-hours assault at a tavern in 2023, with police later finding 50g of cocaine at his Bundaberg house.
Bowen was convicted of the offences in 2025, admitting to the courts that he was using cocaine while employed by the Queensland government-owned company, spending thousands of dollars to fuel his benders.
He was sentenced to three years in prison but placed on parole immediately.
Queensland Rail sacked him following the convictions, citing safety concerns for the dismissal, but Bowen bucked and appealed to the Fair Work Commission.
In a ruling from March, Deputy President Peter O’Keefe backed Bowen and found that Queensland Rail could not present any evidence that he had driven trains under the influence of drugs.
Bowen was sentenced for drug possession and not for operating a vehicle under the influence of drugs, the deputy president also stressed.
He ruled, however, that reinstatement would not be appropriate.
In his remedy decision, Deputy President O’Keefe awarded Bowen $29,818 compensation for lost wages.
The amount was far below the request from Bowen, who asked the FWC to award him $91,550.
Bowen was on $352,320 a year, or $6775 a week, before he lost his job, the FWC’s summary of the matter revealed.
But the deputy president, in blunt language, said he had decided to cut the compensation amount available to Bowen by 50 per cent after concluding the driver may have acted dishonestly in his submissions to both the tribunal and the Queensland Supreme Court during his criminal matters.
“My concern is that having had this good fortune before the QSC, (Bowen) has then tried to downplay his drug use in the FWC by portraying it in a manner that cannot be reconciled with the findings of the QSC,” Deputy President O’Keefe said.
“I have commented on this in my decision. As I also noted, it is hard to tell which jurisdiction has been misled. It may be that both have.
“However, it is clear that (Bowen’s) case is not the same in both jurisdictions and I do not believe this is the product of error.
“Given this, I am minded to make a significant deduction from his compensation to make it clear to parties that such behaviour is not acceptable.
“In this case, I will set the deduction at 50 per cent.”
Queensland Rail now has 14 days to transfer the money to Bowen’s account.
Last month, Deputy President O’Keefe found Bowen’s dismissal was “harsh” and “unreasonable”.
The deputy president reasoned that because Australians were the largest per-capita consumers of cocaine in the world, and it was therefore a “reality” that employees used drugs in their private lives.
“Australians are the biggest per-capita users of cocaine in the world,” he said.
“In 2023, some three per cent of Australians aged 15 to 64 used cocaine. Put another way, (Queensland Rail) employs – according to its annual report – 8,000 employees. If they are to be regarded as typical Australian citizens then it would be something of a statistical anomaly if (Bowen) was the only employee to use cocaine in 2023.
“The reality is that many people use illegal drugs in their private lives. Does being convicted of possession of such drugs and having the person’s employer find out about the conviction automatically mean that the employment relationship is damaged?
“I am not satisfied that this should be accepted as a general proposition.”
