Australian Dictionary of Biography

Mac Downie, Sir Alexander Beattie, 1981

Courtesy of Richard Beattie

Sir Alexander Craig Beattie (1912–1999), industrial court judge, was born on 24 January 1912 at Gore Hill, Sydney, eldest of three children of Scottish-born Edmund Douglas Beattie, accountant, and his Tasmanian-born wife Amy Louise, née Alexander. Educated at Beecroft Public School and Fort Street Boys’ High School (1924–28), Alec was awarded a public exhibition to attend the University of Sydney (BA, 1932; LLB, 1935), where he won prizes in English literature and edited the student literary magazine, Hermes. He was admitted to the Bar in 1936 at a time when legal work for young barristers was not readily available. Needing a steady income, he found employment as an industrial officer for the Metal Trades Employers’ Association, later recalling that it was ‘marvellous training for a barrister specialising in industrial law’ (Beattie 2024, 104). After appearing for the MTEA before the Industrial Commission of New South Wales, in 1938 he took the advice of a presiding judge and began to practise on his own account.

Of medium height, with blue eyes and brown hair, Beattie enlisted in the Citizen Military Forces on 27 August 1940 for service in World War II, joining the 1st Light Horse (Machine Gun) Regiment (Royal New South Wales Lancers). Commencing full-time duty on 1 October 1941, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and transferred to the Australian Imperial Force in July 1942. A report of his performance on an intelligence officers’ course the next year observed that he was ‘keen on work and has sound knowledge, but should cultivate more suavity of manner’ (NAA B883). He became the intelligence officer and adjutant of his regiment, now renamed the 1st Army Tank Battalion, seeing action in New Guinea (August 1943—June 1944). During the operations in Borneo in 1945, he was a liaison officer at the headquarters of 1 Corps on Morotai (April–September 1945). Having been promoted to temporary captain in September 1944, he was demobilised in November 1945 with the rank of honorary captain. On 19 July 1944, while on leave in Sydney, he had married Joyce Pearl Alder at St Mark’s Church of England, Darling Point. Prior to marrying, Joyce had been the secretary of the Lady Gowrie Child Centre at Erskineville. The couple would have two sons, Richard and Andrew.

Returning to the Bar after the war, Beattie built up an extensive practice in industrial law in both the State and Commonwealth jurisdictions. In 1955 the Cahill Labor government appointed him to the Industrial Commission. He ‘acquired a reputation for the significant judicial characteristics of courtesy, patience and thoroughness’ (Australian Bar Gazette 1966, 11), and in 1966 the Askin coalition government appointed him president of the commission, succeeding Justice Stanley Taylor. An advocate of conciliation, Beattie was quick to intervene to resolve destructive conflicts. As a jurist he presided at nearly all the full bench hearings of the commission, including the 1973 case which granted equal pay to women. He authored an influential report on the apprenticeship system in New South Wales (1968), which led to extensive changes in the relevant legislation, and another on the industrial relations of the State’s public sector (1974), in which he recommended that public servants be granted equal access to the powers of the Commission.

Regarded as ‘a distinguished judge, an able conciliator and a fair arbitrator by all sections of industry’ (Shaw 1999, 18), Beattie retired in October 1981. Industrial strikes and militancy had peaked in Australia during his tenure. The premier, Neville Wran, who as a barrister had frequently appeared before him, remarked that ‘the prestige of the Commission at a time of radical, almost revolutionary, change in the industrial system is due in the largest measure to the conduct and character of its President’ (Beattie 1999, 19). For his part, Beattie spoke at his retirement in favour of wider powers for the Federal government to legislate on wages and conditions, and a greater involvement of legal counsel in industrial arbitration.

Beattie lived at homes on Sydney’s North Shore at Turramurra, Wahroonga, and Warrawee. At each he created gardens that became well known to locals. A keen golfer and tennis player, he had a lawn tennis court at Wahroonga. His love of gardens extended to the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, where he often walked early before court. He believed that the maintenance and development of the gardens by the Department of Agriculture could be improved and prepared a submission on this for the premier in 1977. He was subsequently appointed foundation chairman (1980–82) of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust and took delight in the constant improvements to the gardens, especially the construction of a new building for the National Herbarium.

Knighted in 1973, Beattie was conferred the honorary degree of doctor of laws by the University of Sydney in 1982. That year the university also established the Sir Alexander Beattie prize in industrial law. His first wife Joyce having died in 1977, Sir Alexander married Joyce (Joy) Elizabeth De Groot, née Frew, a nursing sister and widow, with Catholic rites on 2 September 1978 at St Edmund’s Chapel, Darling Point. The couple had mutual interests in gardening and lawn bowls. Survived by his second wife and his two sons, he died of Parkinson’s disease on 30 September 1999 at his home at Warrawee and was cremated.