James Cook University v Ridd: the summary of principles used to interpret enterprise agreements

Why is James Cook University v Ridd relevant to workplace disputes in Australia?

At [65] of the Full Court’s decision, Griffiths and SC Derrington JJ set out a list of principles for interpreting an enterprise agreement. The starting point is the ordinary meaning of the words, read as a whole and in context. A purposive approach is preferred to a narrow or pedantic one because the drafters were likely to be of a “practical bent of mind”. A generous construction is preferred to a strictly literal one, but the instrument must still make sense in ordinary English.

The Fair Work Commission, its Full Bench, the Full Court of the Federal Court and the Western Australian industrial jurisdiction cite this summary when they construe agreement clauses. The passages show it applied to shift length, recruitment, relocation costs on redundancy, training and firefighting allowances, travel-day pay, redundancy pay and CPI wage rises.

How the Commission and the courts use it

Type of matter	What the decision said	What it means
Appeal on maximum shift lengths [2026] FCAFC 135	“The following further summary of the relevant principles was also provided by Griffiths and SC Derrington JJ in James Cook University v Ridd” (the Full Court)	The Full Court set out the Ridd summary alongside other authorities as part of its approach to construing the agreement.
Appeal on a university recruitment clause [2026] FWCFB 257	“despite the law being apparently well settled, there was a significant divergence between the parties relating to the principles of construction concerning the extent to which he could have regard to surrounding circumstances” (the Full Bench, recording the Commissioner’s observation)	Both parties cited Ridd with Skene and Berri, but they still disagreed about how far negotiation evidence and post-agreement conduct could be used.
Relocation expenses for pilots facing redundancy [2026] FWC 3621	“In doing so it is necessary that I apply the principles of interpretation as applied in James Cook University v Ridd.” (the Commission)	The Commission worked through the ordinary meaning of the transfer clauses and then a purposive reading to settle the dispute.
Firefighters’ allowance claim [2026] FWC 3457	“Awards, whether made by consent or otherwise, should make sense according to the basic conventions of the English language. They bind the parties on pain of pecuniary penalties” (Fire Rescue Victoria’s submission, quoting Ridd)	Fire Rescue Victoria relied on Ridd to argue that the generous construction the union sought could not be applied in disregard of the text.
Whether redundancy pay includes penalties and allowances [2026] FWC 3261	“The relevant principles governing the construction of enterprise agreements are uncontroversial, they are not in dispute and have been adopted for the purpose of these reasons.” (the Commission)	The Commission adopted the Ridd summary, as adopted by the Full Court in Australian Workers’ Union v UGL Resources, to decide how redundancy pay was calculated.
CPI wage increases under an agreement (WA) 2026 WAIRC 00802	“Despite the broad purposive approach to be taken to the interpretation of industrial agreements, that [canon] of construction remains applicable as a starting point.” (authority set out in the decision before its extract from Ridd at [65])	The decision set out the Ridd summary when construing the wage-rise provisions in a claim that was dismissed.

Key principles and takeaways

• The decisions attribute the summary to Griffiths and SC Derrington JJ at [65], and later Full Courts have adopted or cited it with approval, according to [2026] FWC 3261 and [2026] FWC 3486.
• The decisions treat the ordinary meaning of the words, read as a whole and in context, as the starting point. A purposive approach is then preferred to a narrow or pedantic one.
• Under the decisions, a generous construction does not override the text. The summary as set out in [2026] FWC 3261 requires the instrument to “make sense according to the basic conventions of the English language”.
• Context in the summary can extend beyond the surrounding words to the whole document, associated documents and the history of a clause.
• In [2026] FWCFB 257 both parties had referred to Ridd, and the Full Bench recorded the Commissioner’s observation of a significant divergence between them on the extent to which he could have regard to evidence of the negotiations concerning the making of the agreement and post-agreement conduct.

What the Full Federal Court decided

A professor dismissed after 27 years at James Cook University had no “untrammelled right” under the university’s enterprise agreement to express professional opinions however he wished, free of the behavioural standards in the code of conduct, the Full Court of the Federal Court has held in allowing the university’s appeal.

At first instance the Federal Circuit Court declared that the university had contravened s 50 of the Fair Work Act 2009, the provision that, read with ss 51, 53 and 54, binds those covered by an approved enterprise agreement to comply with its terms. The declarations covered 17 findings that the professor had breached the JCU Code of Conduct, two speech directions, five confidentiality directions, a “no satire” direction, two censures, and the termination of his employment, all said to be contrary to cl 14 of the JCU Enterprise Agreement 2013-2016, headed “Intellectual Freedom”. A penalty of $125,000 was imposed in a separate judgment.

The appeal was decided in James Cook University v Ridd [2020] FCAFC 123 on 22 July 2020 by Griffiths, Rangiah and SC Derrington JJ, sitting in the Fair Work Division of the Queensland registry. Griffiths and SC Derrington JJ, in the majority, held that the agreement did not provide the right contended for and that the termination did not contravene s 50.

The code breaches were never in dispute

The majority recorded that the professor did not dispute that he had engaged in the conduct behind the university’s findings, nor did he ask the court below to review whether that conduct in fact breached the standards in the Code of Conduct. His senior counsel told the court below: “we haven’t run a case that [JCU] contravened the code of conduct, that the findings aren’t supported by the evidence, that it doesn’t constitute misconduct.”

The majority observed that “some instances of the conduct charged were undoubtedly trivial”, and that many of the standards in the Code of Conduct were “couched in vague and imprecise language” that gave staff little clear guidance on whether particular conduct would amount to misconduct or serious misconduct.

The case he did run was that each instance was an exercise of his right to intellectual freedom under cl 14, and that because none of his conduct harassed, vilified, bullied or intimidated those who disagreed with him, which the university conceded, disciplining him contravened the agreement.

• 16 Dec 2015 Email to a journalist suggesting that reports produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies were unreliable, later the subject of the first finding of misconduct.
• 29 Apr 2016 Formal censure and first speech direction issued.
• 1 Aug 2017 Appearance on the television programme Jones & Co, interviewed by Alan Jones and Peta Credlin; another JCU professor then complained.
• 24 Aug 2017 University notified him it considered the interview a prima facie case of serious misconduct and gave the first confidentiality direction, citing cl 54.1.5.
• 20 Nov 2017 Proceedings commenced in the Federal Circuit Court.
• 21 Nov 2017 Final censure, second speech direction and “no satire” direction issued.
• 2 May 2018 Employment terminated for serious misconduct.
• 26 and 27 May 2020 Appeal heard.
• 22 Jul 2020 Judgment delivered.

Why the majority read clause 14 and the code together

The majority set out the established principles for construing an enterprise agreement, drawing on authorities including WorkPac Pty Ltd v Skene. “The starting point is the ordinary meaning of the words, read as a whole and in context”, and a purposive approach is preferred to a narrow or pedantic one.

Applying that, the majority held that cl 14.1 was conjunctive. The university committed to act consistently with the protection and promotion of intellectual freedom and in accordance with the Code of Conduct. The construction urged by the professor would leave the words “this comes with a responsibility to respect the rights of others” in cl 14.3 with no work to do, would ignore the express constraints in cll 14.4 to 14.7, and would ignore the express reference to the Code of Conduct in cl 14.1.

The professor placed considerable weight on that clause, submitting that it made cl 14 the primary provision and cl 13 subordinate to it. The majority rejected that reading, describing cl 13.3 as an interpretive provision that assists in construing cl 14, and holding that cl 13.3 and cl 14 “should be read together harmoniously”, with no inconsistency warranting one being treated as primary and the other as subordinate.

Where the judges split

Justice Rangiah agreed that the primary judge had wrongly construed cll 13 and 14, but arrived at a different construction. In his Honour’s view, cl 13.3 indicated that cl 14 limits the scope, operation and effect of the Code of Conduct by giving primacy to the university’s commitment to protect and promote intellectual freedom. “Where there is conflict, the former prevails to the extent of the inconsistency,” he wrote, and in such a case the university could not proceed with disciplinary proceedings based on a breach of the code.

That construction would require a decision-maker, or a court, to work through three steps: whether the staff member was genuinely exercising intellectual freedom, whether the code may have been breached and in what manner, and whether there was a “real conflict” between the two. Because that exercise had not been done, Justice Rangiah would have set aside the orders below and remitted the proceeding to the Federal Circuit Court for a new hearing on the same evidence.

Confidentiality directions and a “Kafkaesque scenario”

The primary judge had held that cl 54.1.5 gave the university no power to issue the confidentiality directions. Justice Rangiah disagreed in part, holding that the clause does impose an obligation of confidentiality and protects not only the staff member accused but also complainants and witnesses, who might otherwise be discouraged from coming forward.

He agreed, however, that the clause does not stop the person who is the subject of a disciplinary process from disclosing that it exists, so long as nothing is disclosed that would allow the complainant’s identity to be ascertained. To construe the clause otherwise, he said, “would reveal a Kafkaesque scenario of a person secretly accused and secretly found guilty of a disciplinary offence but unable to reveal, under threat of further secret charges being brought, that he or she had ever been charged and found guilty”. He also noted that the majority had described the drafting of the clause as clumsy.

The penalty, the damages and the union’s bid to be heard

The appeal also challenged the penalty judgment. Justice Rangiah agreed with the majority that the primary judge had erred in imposing a penalty of $125,000, but did not accept the majority’s view that $15,000 would adequately reflect the seriousness of the conduct, assuming an unlawful termination of a long-standing employee. JCU also contended that the primary judge should have found a single course of conduct for the purposes of s 557 of the Fair Work Act, and the Court considered whether a compensation order under s 545(2) could include a component for shock, distress, hurt or humiliation. Justice Rangiah agreed with the majority’s reasons on damages.

The National Tertiary Education Union sought leave to intervene (permission for a non-party to make submissions) on the proper construction of the enterprise agreement and was heard orally pending that decision. Leave was refused. The court held that construing the agreement did not raise matters of general relevance to NTEU members, because the agreement applies to JCU alone; that nothing suggested the parties would fail to put the submissions fully; and that the union’s submissions largely repeated those made for the professor. The court added that questions of costs liability do not arise in the Fair Work jurisdiction.

The majority observed that enterprise agreements at every public Australian university now contain clauses referring to intellectual freedom or academic freedom, and that the degree of freedom they provide varies across the sector according to the weight the bargaining parties gave to it. The construction adopted here turns on the particular wording of the JCU agreement, and the two sets of reasons set out competing frameworks for how such a clause sits alongside a code of conduct in a disciplinary process.

Source: [2020] FCAFC 123

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