Jim Staples earned himself the attention of ASIO as a member of the Communist Party of Australia before being expelled in the 1950s, and later became a successful barrister before he was appointed to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1975.

A long-time resident of Bywong just outside Canberra, he died at a nursing home in Gloucester on Wednesday night.

Justice Staples served on the commission as a deputy president until 1989, when it was abolished by prime minister Hawke and replaced with the Industrial Relations Commission. He was the only judge not moved across to the new body.

Mr Hawke explained in Parliament the decision was due to Justice Staples' failure to be assigned to cases by presiding officers for much of the 1980s. This had followed from lost confidence among some of his fellow commission judges due to his reasoning for some decisions.

Former High Court judge Michael Kirby, who was himself appointed to the commission in 1974, said Justice Staples was an unusual judge with a colourful turn of phrase, but was unfairly treated by the Hawke government.

"It certainly was very unusual and had never happened before in the federal sphere," he said. "In a court it was not possible to remove a judge, but the technical point was taken he was not a member of a court."

Mr Kirby, as a young solicitor for the Council for Civil Liberties, briefed Mr Staples in several NSW proceedings in the 1960s, including the prominent Tatar case involving a police shooting.

"He was a very good barrister and advocate, he was a terrier, and he was legally imaginative," Mr Kirby said. "He had great success before juries and won several important defamation cases. Many people said he should have stayed at the Bar because there is more scope for imaginative ideas there.

"The real tragedy of his case was that he never really found an appropriate niche after this happened to him. He was a charming, gregarious, kind and determined advocate, and that's where he really excelled."

In an Australian Bar Review article, Mr Kirby said Mr Staples was expelled from the Communist Party in 1956 when he published the text of the secret speech by then Soviet Union Communist Party secretary general Nikita Khruschev concerning the crimes of the Stalin era.

Mr Staples later became a director of Civil Liberties Australia. He is survived by a wife and three children.