The board skipped warnings and a chance to respond - and it cost them a finding, not cash
A Tasmanian charity dismissed its managing director unfairly - yet the Fair Work Commission ordered it to pay nothing at all.
In a decision handed down on July 8, 2026, the Commission found the National Trust of Australia (Tasmania) dismissed its managing director both unjustly and unreasonably. Even so, it ordered no remedy. The case is a sharp reminder for HR that a strong outcome and a good process are two different things.
The Trust is a small not-for-profit with seven staff and a volunteer board. In early 2025 it decided not to renew the managing director's two-year contract, which was set to end on March 6, 2025. That call was the charity's to make. How it handled the exit was where things went wrong.
On January 30, 2025, the Board Chair and Deputy Chair met the managing director and worked from a prepared script. They told him there would be no new contract, gave him an "end of employment" letter, suspended him immediately, and shut off his email and IT access within about half an hour. He was asked to pack up and go. The Trust later accepted this amounted to a dismissal, not a contract simply expiring.
On whether there was a valid reason, the ruling is instructive. The Trust said the managing director lacked financial literacy and had a poor relationship with the board. But it did not put the underlying financial records before the Commission, so the capability claim could not be assessed. The Commission read the blunt emails and testy exchanges in evidence as concerning his direct communication style, rather than substantive conduct concerns. A difference of view, bluntly put, did not justify letting him go.
The process failures weighed heavily. The Trust conceded the managing director was never properly warned he was at risk and never given a chance to respond. No warnings sat on his file. As a small business, the Trust also had to satisfy the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code, and the Commission found it had not.
Timing mattered too. Some of the pointed remarks attributed to the managing director came at the end of the exit meeting or later, after the employment had already ended. Conduct that occurs after employment ends, the Commission noted, cannot supply a valid reason for a dismissal.
So how did the charity avoid a bill? Remedy saved it. Reinstatement was impossible because the fixed-term contract had already run out. The managing director had been paid the balance of his contract to March 6, 2025, so there was no lost income, and the Commission cannot award compensation for distress or for the manner of a dismissal. The finding stood alone, with no order behind it.
For HR, the takeaways are concrete. Ending a fixed-term contract early can turn a routine non-renewal into a dismissal that must clear the usual bar. A stated reason, a warning, and a real chance to respond still count, even in a small organization with no HR function. And a manager being blunt or hard to work with is not, by itself, a valid reason to end their employment.
