On 25 April 2016 my good friend Michael Gordon Roberts reached the statutory age of senility for service as a Commissioner of the Fair Work Commission as mandated by s 629(1)(a) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).

I first met Michael when I was a fresher at the University of Sydney when he was completing his Arts degree. We shared an interest in politics and became life-long friends.

Michael was raised in the Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill, the son of Clive and Genevieve (nee Patterson) Roberts and educated at Christian Brothers’ Lewisham. Michael’s middle name, Gordon, was, in accordance with his father’s family tradition, in honour of General Gordon of Khartoum. His father had served in the Second AIF on an anti-aircraft battery in the defence of Darwin. Michael’s mother was fiercely proud of her Irish Catholic background. Contrarily, she supported both Irish Republicanism and the Australian constitutional monarchy. During ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland a radio bulletin announced the death of two British soldiers, to which she commented,  “it is indeed sad, but they would not have died if they hadn’t been there.”

After university, Michael started work for a trade union, the Professional Radio Employees Institute of Australasia (PREI), from 1973 to 1992, first as an Industrial Officer and then as the Institute’s General Secretary. He recalls attending a meeting of members at the studios of Channel 9 in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon. Kerry Packer heard that there were union officials on the premises and had them summoned to his office. In a brief and blunt encounter Packer said to Roberts:

“I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who looks like one of us but you are really one of them, now sit down. I am in charge around here and I don’t want you causing me any annoyance. Got it? I am late for a plane, goodbye.”

Compliant with the ACTU’s and the Hawke/Keating Governments’ union amalgamation policies, the PREI somewhat reluctantly amalgamated with the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), the acronym of which some wits said stood for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. For four years Michael was the Secretary of its Technical, Communications and Aviation Division. The amalgamation process in the early 1990s of merging many smaller craft unions to form large conglomerates, was one of the reasons for the slow decline of union membership particularly in private industry. Some of the constituent unions of the CPSU had been in many bitter, protracted demarcation disputes in the 1980s with the PREI. A large section of PREI membership came from private industry. Many members of the PREI did not long continue with union membership under the CPSU banner.

Michael was appointed by the Howard Government as a Commissioner of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and sworn in by its then President Justice Geoff Giudice in October 2001. He was re-appointed to Fair Work Australia (now the Fair Work Commission). He served on several industry panels, including Coal Mining, Road Transport and Broadcasting, together with the unfair dismissal jurisdiction, until he attained the age of 65 years on ANZAC Day 2016, describing life on the FWC bench as “congenial, collegiate and yet semi-monastic”. If one adheres to the modern notion that “Sixty is the new forty” the 65 years of age retirement rule for the FWC is a joke and should be at least brought into line with the federal judiciary’s 70 years of age rule. With age comes wisdom and experience, why does the Fair Work Act deny its industrial umpire such important attributes? Michael continues to serve as a Commissioner of the Tasmanian Industrial Commission on an ad hoc basis and will be a consultant with the legal publishers, Thomson Reuters.

One major event in Michael’s life says a lot about him as a man. At the end of 1974 and the beginning of 1975 he and I toured South Vietnam. At the time I was heavily involved in student politics. Myself as a student leader and he as a young trade union official, we were on a speaking tour quixotically supporting the local war effort against the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. During our six week stint Roberts met a young Vietnamese girl, Lan. I did not see much of him for the last couple of weeks of the tour. My exhortatory speeches for a greater war effort and solidarity against the Communists were soon done in Michael’s absence, he having been shot by Cupid’s arrow. We both returned to Australia in late February 1975. Within a few weeks of our return, despite our oratory, the war took a grim turn. What was to be a strategic withdrawal by President Nguyen Van Thieu’s army turned into a rout. With the North Vietnamese on the cusp of victory, Michael flew back to Saigon to marry his girlfriend in a Buddhist ceremony and somehow both escaped the looming maelstrom. With Indiana Jones-like derring-do Roberts arrived in Saigon and left with his bride on the last RAAF evacuation flight within a few short days of NVA tanks crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and capitulation of the South on 30 April 1975. In June, I was Best Man at their Catholic wedding in Sydney and then Godfather to their son.

Lan and Michael’s marriage produced Catherine and Stephen. Catherine is now Head of Practical Law at Thomson Reuters and Stephen is a successful business owner in Newcastle. Together, they have made him a proud Grandfather of six.

I wish Michael well on the next stage of his career.