A six-year wait for penalty payments by long-suffering Qantas ground crew who were illegally sacked by the airline is a step closer to ending after a judge referenced Adam and Eve’s original sin to expedite compensation bogged down by lengthy delays.

Justice Michael Lee, in Federal Court in Sydney on Thursday, said he will speed up payments for the sacked Qantas workers by decoupling $38 million in penalties from a larger $120 million scheme which will require more time to implement.

The years-long, drawn-out process to determine compensation has frustrated many of the 1820 ground crew affected, leading one former employee – Ryan Perrett – to request Justice Lee remove the administrators, law firm Maurice Blackburn, from the case.

Lee, famous for his erudition, told Perrett: “I must say to you frankly, my attitude towards that, Mr Perrett, is that since the third chapter of Genesis we’ve all been subject to the fall and we all make mistakes, and people of goodwill can make mistakes and they frankly admitted a mistake.

“It’s important to recognise that, with the benefit of hindsight, people learn from these things.”

The third chapter of Genesis in the Bible tells the story of original sin in the Garden of Eden, where a snake tempts Eve to eat forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and Eve shares it with Adam.

The case has resulted in the former Qantas workers waiting years for compensation; Lee in 2025 ruled that their sacking in 2020 by Qantas, effective in 2021, was illegal. In addition to the $120 million in compensation Qantas agreed to pay, Lee imposed a separate $90 million penalty on the airline, of which $50 million was paid to the Transport Workers’ Union, which brought the case.

Delays in processing compensation before the July deadline prompted Maurice Blackburn last week to seek an extension until October. The law firm sought the extension just 10 days before the deadline, a development that infuriated former Qantas employees like Perrett.

The legal firm apologised to the court for the delay.

Underscoring the frustration of Qantas’ former employees is the lack of transparency in the compensation process, an issue the judge acknowledged. Many of the former baggage handlers have struggled to find full employment since being sacked.

Perrett told the court he hadn’t “received any communication from the TWU since they won the $50 million”, noting the first word they heard from the TWU since Lee’s 2025 ruling awarding the penalty was in July, days before the compensation scheme was scheduled to be completed.

Lee said he accepted as “entirely genuine” the apology from Maurice Blackburn for how it informed him of the delays caused by a number of independent medical examinations that didn’t satisfy the requirements of the law firm for deciding compensation.

“I can understand workers feeling a sense of great frustration that the Transport Workers’ Union got money quicksticks and yet the workers have not got any money for this lengthy period,” Lee said.

Lawyer for Maurice Blackburn Adam Hochroth SC explained the delay arose after an independent medical examiner employed to evaluate the health of sacked workers produced 111 reports “which the administrator didn’t consider” were at a level required to determine compensation.

Another delay was caused by a rule requiring a person compensated after getting treatment under Medicare to reimburse the scheme from their payout.

Maurice Blackburn was granted an extension to complete the $120 million compensation scheme.

In describing his rationale, Lee again invoked the Book of Genesis: “Unlike Lot’s wife, we must not look back. We are in the situation we’re in. The question is where we go from here.

“I explained in my earlier reasons that the reason this matter is still before me was the coupling of the payments of compensation to the payment of the residual of the penalty amount.

“Thus I’ve explained the rationale for this approach elsewhere [and] I’m satisfied and I need to adopt a different course,” said the judge, suggesting the reality was that any continuing method of penalty payments “tethered to” the compensation scheme will “have embedded in it the scheme’s timetable”.

A Maurice Blackburn spokesperson said the court’s orders will allow workers to receive their share of the penalty payment in the coming weeks.

“We are continuing to work hard to ensure compensation assessments are completed and that compensation is distributed to workers as soon as possible,” they said. “This case has always been about achieving justice for the workers whose lives were upended by Qantas’ unlawful conduct, and our focus remains firmly on delivering that outcome.”

The TWU welcomed the decision. “It is fair and just that workers who spent decades at the airline, many of whom were never able to find other employment following their illegal sacking, would be apportioned a greater amount of the penalty,” national secretary Michael Kaine said.

“It’s now up to Maurice Blackburn to finalise the compensation process as quickly as possible so workers can move on with their lives,” he said.

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