He served as a member of the Parliament of Nauru and its predecessors from 1955 until his death and was a cabinet minister for much of the period 1968 to 1983.

[1][2] He was educated at Nauru Primary School and then trained at the Commonwealth X-Ray and Radium Lab at the University of Melbourne.

Following the Japanese occupation, he was deported to Chuuk in 1942, where became the medical orderly for Nauruan deportees until 1945.

[3] He remained Minister of Justice until the 1976 elections when DeRoburt lost the presidency to Bernard Dowiyogo.

After the 1980 elections he returned to his original portfolio of Minister of Justice, a post he remained in until resigning due to ill health in 1983.