Why "employment ends after each shift" did not save this national sporting body
Two tennis officials lost their memberships. Tennis Australia said no one was sacked. The Commission disagreed.
Tennis Australia thought it had a clean argument. After it cancelled the Officiating Membership of two officials on Oct. 7, 2025, both filed dismissal claims. The body's reply was simple: you can't be dismissed if you were never really employed past each tournament.
In a decision handed down on June 5, 2026, the Fair Work Commission didn't buy it.
The two officials, Simon Cannavan and Karen Mak, had worked the Australian Open and other events as casuals. Tennis Australia argued they were engaged one tournament at a time, each contract ending when the event finished. On that reasoning, the relationship had lapsed back in January 2025 - making the October claims badly out of time - or it had simply expired because the contracts ran for a specified period, task or season under section 386(2)(a) of the Fair Work Act.
The officials told a different story. They said the real relationship ran all year, held together by an "umbrella" contract: the Officiating Membership. It let them apply for shifts, kept them in uniform, and tied them to ongoing training, police checks, working-with-children checks and a minimum number of working days each year.
Commissioner Yilmaz looked past the paperwork to the "real substance, practical reality and true nature of the employment relationship" - the casual-employee test under section 15A. The contracts, she found, used the word "employment" inconsistently. They said employment ended after each shift, yet piled on obligations that ran between tournaments. The Standard Non-Summer Contract made the whole engagement conditional on holding "active Tennis Australia Officiating Membership."
That was the hinge. If membership opened the door to all work, then cancelling it didn't just end one booking - it ended the relationship. In the words of the decision, "Without Officiating Membership there cannot be further employment."
Tennis Australia had a backup argument: frustration, the idea that losing membership made the contract impossible to perform through no one's fault. The Commissioner rejected it. Tennis Australia controlled the membership and chose to cancel it, so the ending wasn't some outside event - it was the employer's own decision.
Her conclusion: both officials were dismissed at the employer's initiative under section 386(1)(a). The jurisdictional objections failed, and the matter now goes to conciliation.
For HR teams, the lesson lands hard. Calling a worker a casual and writing "employment ends after each shift" into the contract does not settle the question. Where an accreditation, membership or panel spot is the real key to future work, withdrawing it can count as a dismissal - and the label on the contract won't rescue you. Mixed use of "employment" across documents, uniforms handed out between gigs, compulsory minimum days and rolling compliance duties all pointed to one ongoing relationship.
The practical move is an audit. Look at how your casual, contractor and panel arrangements actually operate, not just how they read. The gap between the document and the day-to-day is where exposure lives.
One caveat: this ruling dealt only with jurisdiction. Tennis Australia cancelled the memberships over what it called alleged inappropriate conduct, a claim the officials dispute, and the Commission has not decided whether the dismissals breached the general protections. That fight is still ahead.
