Job offer withdrawn just after his passport showed he was 71

In July 2019 Lance Heather was offered a job as a business development manager with Hikvision, a supplier of video surveillance equipment. As part of the paperwork he sent a copy of his passport. It showed he was 71. The very next day the chief executive decided to withdraw the offer, and Mr Heather was told on 5 July 2019.

Mr Heather claimed the offer was pulled because of his age, contrary to s 351 of the Fair Work Act. Hikvision accepted that refusing to employ him was adverse action against a prospective employee, and that the reverse onus applied, so it had to prove age played no part.

The chief executive said he never saw the passport and did not know Mr Heather’s age. The HR manager admitted she noticed it but said she did not pass it on, and IT records showed the email was not forwarded. Hikvision’s explanation was a change of plan: its mid-year review showed Victorian sales falling, so it dropped its push into large corporate and government clients and moved an existing staff member into the role.

Mr Heather’s lawyers attacked that story hard. There was no strategy document, key witnesses were not called, and Hikvision had wrongly told the Fair Work Commission the offer was only conditional. Judge Riley called it “a very finely balanced case”.

What decided it was what Hikvision did next. Eighteen months later it had three business development managers, all working with entry and mid-level clients, and none chasing the big clients Mr Heather was hired for. If age had been the reason, the judge reasoned, it would have hired someone younger to do that job. The timing alone did not prove that one thing caused the other. The claim was dismissed.