He was fit, willing, and 65 - his contract said that was the end of the road
A worker required to retire at 65 has been awarded compensation after the Fair Work Commission ruled his dismissal unfair.
An employer that ended a long-serving worker's job the month he turned 65 has been ordered to pay compensation, after the Fair Work Commission found the dismissal was harsh, unjust and unreasonable.
The decision, handed down on July 16, 2026, involved a chauffeur who had worked for the Consulate General of India, Sydney, continuously for more than ten years from April 2015, and during earlier periods dating back to the 1990s. His contract said he would retire when he reached 65. When that day came in July 2025, his employment ended.
The Consulate's position was that no one had been dismissed. It argued the worker was on a fixed-term contract that simply expired, which would place the matter outside the unfair dismissal rules, and it raised a jurisdictional objection challenging the Commission's power to hear the case at all.
The Commission rejected both arguments. It found the worker had been dismissed under the Fair Work Act, and, as part of its reasoning, that the retirement clause was likely to offend section 18(1)(c) of the Age Discrimination Act 2004 - the provision that makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the ground of age.
The reasoning is what HR teams should note. The Commission found the worker had to agree to retire at 65 just to be offered the job, with no discretion for the employer to do otherwise. It described the requirement as having been "dressed up as a fixed term contract" that the employer then relied on to try to defeat the claim.
That is the practical lesson. A fixed-term label does not shield an employer if the true trigger for the end date is the employee's age. The Commission looked at what the clause actually did, not at what it was called.
The employer put forward reasons for a set retirement age, including assertions about health risks and slower reflexes in workers over 60. The Commission gave those little weight, noting there was no scientific evidence and no medical evidence that this particular worker could not perform his role. It set the case apart from an earlier decision involving Qantas pilots, where mandatory retirement flowed from binding international aviation rules - a genuine inherent-requirement limit that did not exist here.
The Commission found there was no valid reason for the dismissal, credited the worker's long and unblemished service, and accepted he would struggle to find new work given his age, English-language skills and lack of qualifications. It also observed that the employer had withheld about $28,500 in leave entitlements for roughly nine months, with around $3,500 still outstanding at the hearing.
The worker had initially asked to be reinstated. That option was closed off by the Foreign States Immunities Act 1985, which prevents a tribunal from ordering a foreign state to re-employ someone, so the Commission turned to compensation instead.
Applying the standard Sprigg formula, it found the worker would likely have stayed until he qualified for the age pension in July 2027, producing estimated lost earnings of about $174,076. After deductions for contingencies and his limited efforts to find other work, the running figure was $116,050.80 - before the statutory compensation cap reduced the final order to $43,519.05 gross plus superannuation, payable by July 30, 2026.
The message for HR is direct. A mandatory retirement age sits on shaky legal ground, and rewriting it as a fixed-term contract will not automatically make the problem disappear. Where age is the real reason a job ends, it can be tested against discrimination law - and may not survive.
