The word 'or' in s 82(2A)(a) of the Accident Compensation Act 1985 (Vic) is to be read distributively, meaning an employer can rely on a course of conduct involving more than one of the listed actions (transfer, demote, discipline, etc.) as constituting 'action' for the purposes of the stress exclusion, provided the conduct is sufficiently intimately connected. This construction applies only to injuries sustained before 5 April 2010, as the Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010 has since legislatively resolved the issue. The question whether truly separate and distinct employer actions fitting different descriptors can be aggregated was expressly left open.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 3 later cases that cite this judgment.