Latest news

A message to the Minister and the Office of Local Government

Details: Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 12:59

Sack councillor Jilly Gibson

Local government is an industry with a significant focus on regulation. That’s what our members do. If councils didn’t properly regulate, if they sat on their hands or looked the other way, communities and the government would be up in arms and do something.

The Minister for Local Government and the Office of Local Government have, since 2013, been sitting idly by as spectators and watched the unfolding dysfunctional fiasco at North Sydney Council. A mayor elected by the electorate rather than by the council, Jilly Gibson, has one supporting councillor and nine councillors who are opponents. If “irretrievable breakdown” is a suitable ground for the dissolution of a marriage, it should also be suitable grounds for the suspension or sacking of a Council. Or one or more of its councillors.

The risk with a mayor elected by the entire electorate, as opposed to a mayor commanding the support and respect of a majority of the councillors, is that there may well be occasions when the mayor simply doesn’t have the numbers. At North Sydney, the mayor never has the numbers - whether that’s an issue about relocating and renovating offices, mentoring programs for young people, representing the Council on regional boards, keeping a mayoral car, the appointment of the general manager or whatever, it’s normally 8 - 2 with the mayor the loser.

A mayor elected by the electorate commands no greater authority nor respect than one elected by the other councillors. Yet councillor Gibson behaves otherwise – asserting that there is some greater authority, or credibility, that derives from getting a majority of those who can be bothered to vote. The Act doesn’t support councillor Gibson’s opinion.

We’ve had far too much involvement in the breakdown of the relationship between the mayor and the councillors and the mayor and the general manager. It’s a mess, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.

But not so the Minister or those in the Office of Local Government, who sit and watch the debacle unfold - happily comfortable on the fence with the pickets in places that most of us would find unpleasant and unbearable.

In 2014 the Minister required the Council to show cause why they should not be suspended. The competent, rational and effective majority got their individual acts together and were able to convince the Minister that they shouldn’t be suspended and, as a fall-back, the Minister issued a Performance Improvement Order under section 438A of the Local Government Act. Things should have been done by April but the Minister begrudgingly agreed to an extension of time.

Amongst other things, the PIO required two conflict resolution processes to be undertaken - one between the mayor and the councillors and one between the mayor and the GM - the two key relationships that have broken down. And it won’t escape observation that the only thing common to both dysfunctional relationships is Jilly Gibson. A timeframe was provided, the processes began but no resolution or compromise could be agreed in either.

So, when the Minister’s deadline expired on 22 June, the Council advised the Minister that the requirement to conduct the process had been satisfied but the processes themselves had failed.

That’s five weeks ago and in the intervening weeks these things have happened:

The mayor had two Code of Conduct findings of misconduct made against her. The first related to defamatory allegations and the investigator found, and the council required, that the mayor apologise. The deadline for the apology has expired and there is no apology.
The second of the Code of Conduct misconduct findings related to confidential information and resulted in the council censuring the mayor on 19 July.
The council also resolved to note other things as well - expressing their “increasing concern” that this was the third finding of a significant breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct by the mayor and their “grave concerns” that the OLG “has failed in the past to provide serious sanctions”.
The resolution at part 5 deals with the “duty and obligation of the Office of Local Government to promote public confidence in the Code of Conduct, the Local Government Act and good governance in local government generally”, something which is clearly not evident at North Sydney.
That week the local rag, a compliant conduit for the mayor, announced under the heading “Mayor shoots back at council” that the mayor would now seek whistle-blower protection after the two misconduct findings against her – claiming there was a “vexatious political campaign against her” and “misuse of the council’s code of conduct provisions for political purposes”.

North Sydney finds itself in a dreadful position. It is already, by statistics compiled by the Office of Local Government, the second most complained about Council in New South Wales, the relationships between the mayor and the councillors and the mayor and the GM are dysfunctional, the conflict resolution processes required by the Minister under the performance improvement order have failed and findings of misconduct and breaches of the code of conduct continue.

The Mayor has borrowed the Emperor’s new clothes. There is no cloak of respectability or authority provided by “popular” election and the democratic process means that if you don’t have the numbers on the Council you don’t have the numbers on the Council. Behaving otherwise puts all of local government, those who are elected to it and those who work for it, in disrepute.

The Minister under section 440I can suspend councillor Gibson and should do so immediately.

While the rest of the industry is jumping through narrowly-focused fiscal hoops to survive to the future, councils are given 40 days to comply with a variety of directions from the Minister, instant action to restore the credibility of local government at North Sydney must be taken now.

Reviewing our rules is much more exciting than watching paint dry

Details: Published: Monday, 15 June 2015 13:19

Well, it was for us. There hasn’t been a complete review of depa’s registered rules in living memory. We’ve made a few adjustments over the time to recognise new offices, or to change our name or something like that, but our rules reflected the fact that they were drafted in a different era. The rules may have never been comprehensively reviewed and technological changes alone make this a big job.

Two reports with recommendations, a bit of legal advice and all signed off with a unanimous resolution of the Committee of Management at our last meeting on 11 May. If the rules were ever comprehensively reviewed it would have been more than forty years ago. We’ve now rewritten them entirely.

All our financial controls were about cheque signatories when we only sign two or three cheques a year anyway and all of our transactions are electronic; we needed electronic options for decision-making for the Committee of Management; we needed to recognise that members can become members over our site; we wanted to ensure members who apply for membership actually pay us before they get accepted; we wanted to reduce the timeframes for unfinancial members so we can remove them sooner; we wanted to reduce the timeframe and the way we go about throwing out members who don’t pay if they disappear or leave the industry and don’t tell us; and we wanted to remove reference to being allowed to charge an admission fee as well as membership fees.

We wanted to provide better financial oversight by the Committee of Management in the interests of good governance too and remove the burden of resigning with notice and paying us money to leave when you leave the industry.

We made innumerable other changes. Some practices, like allowing members on parental leave to put their membership on hold and still receive the benefits of union membership while they were on leave and negotiating their return to work, also needed to be legitimised.

Some old rules disappeared, new rules were drafted and we are ready and fit for the future. For want of a better cliche.

This was foreshadowed in the last depaNews and the NSW Industrial Registrar has now advised that the new rules have been accepted in their totality and apply from 1 June. They are on our website. The news made our day. (Last Dirty Harry quote this financial year, we promise.)

You can use this link to see the new rules with a further link to the certified stamped copy from the Industrial Registry (at the bottom of the page) to see how comprehensively things have changed. The only rules unchanged are rules 1 and 4, some changes are limited to re-numbering but the rest of the rules have been changed in one way or another and many have been completely rewritten.

If you would like to wade your way through a marked up copy of the old rules to see the millions of changes, please contact Margaret in the office and she can send you a pdf.

We are updating our rules

Details: Published: Tuesday, 19 May 2015 14:26

Over the last few months, the Committee of Management has been considering a thorough review of our rules. The rules of industrial organisations like ours are regulated under the NSW Industrial Relations Act 1996 by the NSW Industrial Registrar. Unions and employers’ organisations operate under rules which reflect provisions of the Industrial Relations Act or provide generally for good governance, effective administration and protections and fairness to members.

The Committee of Management at the last meeting on 11 May resolved to modernise the rules, improve administration, better manage how members become members and continue as members, how better to remove members who disappear and don’t tell us, and to reflect electronic communication, financial controls and record-keeping.

These changes were agreed in principle by the Industrial Registrar and will now be submitted as a formal application. This isn’t a very exciting process but sometimes good governance and transparency aren’t.

You can expect the changes to be announced in our next issue and then on our site.

Review of the BPB

Details: Published: Tuesday, 19 May 2015 15:41

Those accredited by the BPB will be aware that the NSW Government has established a review of the BPB’s legislation and effectiveness. We met with Michael Lambert, who has been charged with the responsibility and put our views and there is now a discussion paper out inviting further consultation and responses.

Here is a link. If you are accredited and have a view, use the link to express a view.

Old blokes collapse and let Mum keep working part-time

Details: Published: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 13:40

Somewhat coyly we haven’t disclosed the name of the Council where we have been having a running brawl with some 19th-century minds about a member returning to work part-time after her second child.

This is the Council that refused a request for a 31 hour four day week and demanded that she return to work full time. You’ve had your maternity leave, get back to work! So much for the changes in social attitudes over the last 50 years and the provisions of the legislation and the Award.

We made them provide a three month trial and the Commission tried to help them with encouragement to develop performance criteria so they could establish whether there were operational reasons to reject the request that this arrangement continue. There were no operational reasons to reject the application in the first place and, after almost 3 months, tail between their legs, the Council conceded and provided an extension of the part-time arrangements.

We give advice to parents wanting to return to work on a part-time basis all the time. Sometimes every week. There are some councils where parents returning to work are supported, where a variety of arrangements are put in place to ensure they don’t come back too early, feeling guilty and compromised in their responsibilities to their family, and are then joyfully welcomed back to fill the gap created by their absence. Welcome back.

And occasionally there are the laggards, the councils stuck in the 19th century or where the old blokes think they are part of the misogyny of Mad Men, who think they can reject requests for part-time work, not for operational reasons, but for political or ideological reasons. It’s not the 19th century, it’s not even the 20th century and it certainly isn’t 1950.

These councils give scant regard to their obligations under the Award and the Fair Work Act and not only look ancient, uncompromising and obsolete, but they then have that painfully reinforced when they find they can’t get what they want.

Tamworth brings in the big guns

Details: Published: Tuesday, 19 May 2015 14:18

In March we reported on the attempts by the GM at Tamworth Regional Council to remove the nine day fortnight - a system that had operated, by agreement and without complaint or examination for more than a decade. Neither the article in depaNews, nor the correspondence we had exchanged with the Council, nor observations we had made in the IRC about the process were appreciated by the GM.

So the Council, which has retrenched staff because of budgetary difficulties and saw the removal of the nine day fortnight as something they needed to do as they struggled with their fitness for the future, decided to hire a Sydney Senior Council to travel to Newcastle for a hearing barely longer than an hour, to complain and seek directions against depa for being unkind. Or not bargaining in good faith, as they put it.

Directions or orders were sought in proceedings for depa to retract everything we have said, to apologise unreservedly, to not allow the Secretary of the union to appear in the proceedings any longer and to generally behave in a more polite and subservient manner, like the staff are expected to behave at Tamworth. Just as well there are no penal provisions in the New South Wales Industrial Relations Act.

All these directions and orders were rejected by the Commission, notwithstanding the gravitas with which they were put by Senior Council in front of a jam-packed court including the GM, the Deputy GM and Legal Counsel, the HR Manager and two representatives from LGNSW. No shortage of heavyweights there. A lot of people who, we are sure, could have been far more productive doing something else.

But while Deputy President Harrison rejected the extreme requests, he did agree to set the matter down for further conference in Tamworth in June - something we and the two supporting unions had asked for on the first occasion the dispute had been considered.

They say that good negotiation is getting people to do what you want and having them think it was their idea all along. We acknowledge it was a great idea of Tamworth’s to suggest that we next meet in Tamworth.

Got the boss's job at last and don’t need us anymore?

Details: Published: Tuesday, 19 May 2015 14:55

Oh no, you’re not.

Every now and again, members of ours (and the other unions as well) get projected through the firmament and find themselves and their careers taking them to the top. We have a good number of members who are general managers, as does the LGEA and the USU. These are employees who understand the importance of being protected in their employment and that the need for protection doesn’t diminish the higher up you go in the organisation.

Then there are those who decide they can look after themselves. For us, that’s a tiny minority of members, but it’s timely to remind everyone that the standard contract for senior staff and general managers doesn’t remove the right to be represented, nor the capacity for depa, or the other unions, to act on behalf of their members and protect them from the vulnerability of that higher level of employment. At that level, being able to look after yourself is an illusion.

The most vulnerable employee in local government is the general manager and, while the frenzy of activity of good general managers being sacked after the last local government election has calmed down, the risk remains.

Making the decision that as bosses they are no longer vulnerable and need representation is demonstrably a bad call in local government. Bad judgements are not made in isolation. Like in kangaroos in the landscape, once you’ve seen one, you realise there are many.

The closer you get to the top, poor judgement and decisions that can cost you dearly.

Fit for the Future

Details: Published: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 13:34

Uh oh. I know what you’re thinking. “Did he amalgamate six councils or only five?” Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a 17 seat majority government, with the most powerful electoral mandate in the world and recommendations from an independent panel that would blow your Council clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

A rigid template of what constitutes fitness for the future is being hammered onto the 152 local government areas and no-one really knows how things will look when the dust settles. Probably not even the Government.

But everyone knows local government needs to be reformed, and the reform process will involve changes in boundaries, but no one wants anything to happen to their own Council. NIMBYism is both natural and understandable but it won’t get in the way of a rampant Government zealous about reform. How rampant, or reforming, or even how effective any changes might be remains to be seen but Premier Baird took the Fit for the Future strategy and process to the election and had a resounding win. An easy opponent yes, but a resounding win nevertheless.

30 June is the deadline for councils to be able to establish that they are financially sustainable for the future and should be left alone.

Councillors with far more important things to do than worry about long-term financial sustainability are justifiably concerned. Busy pursuing their own individual self-interest; looking after their mates or the local Racing Club; ignoring their own council’s cleanup orders under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act; having the ICAC looking over their shoulders; dabbling in the general manager’s responsibilities; or persecuting staff; or being in a minority and trying to ignore majority resolutions of councils; or who are the subject of performance improvement orders from the Minister for Local Government; and a variety of other distractions, who is looking after their ratepayers and citizens?

The council’s employees are, that’s who.

John Howard sees silver lining after Malcolm Fraser’s death

Details: Published: Wednesday, 01 April 2015 00:00

The death of Malcolm Fraser and the memorial service in Melbourne last week allowed Australians to celebrate an ex-Prime Minister who became more popular and likeable over the decades. As an old-fashioned Liberal, economically dry but socially progressive, Fraser had encouraged the acceptance and settlement of Vietnamese refugees during his period of Prime Minister and government.

While Fraser subsequently and compellingly argued he was no more likeable, he was surrounded by people who became more difficult to like as his political party became increasingly conservative. “It was all relative really”, he observed as he blasted his former political party for its hostility to refugees and multiculturalism.

Former Prime Minister John Howard, who remains precisely the sort of person he was when he was thrown out by his own electorate at the same time as his government was ejected, has embraced the possibility that he can now become the only living Liberal ex-Prime Minister the people grow to like.

“Certainly, I’m no more likeable than I was. I fought multiculturalism, compulsory superannuation, industry superannuation funds, I liked the idea of claiming babies have been thrown into the water by refugees trying to get into Australia, I followed the US and Britain into Iraq based on weapons of mass destruction that never existed and I never apologised for anything and I would never apologise to our own stolen generations.”

“But now, my time has come.”

Polling conducted by Fairfax Media and published this morning found 78% thought this unlikely. A further 17% thought this very unlikely.

South Africa stripped of World Cup placing

Details: Published: Wednesday, 01 April 2015 00:00

The International Cricket Council this morning moved on South Africa for flouting the NSW Government’s ban on unacceptable, misleading and obscene names. This policy initiative was announced a year ago as a result of a commitment from Premier Barry O’Farrell to Christian Democrat MLC Fred Nile that the Government would clean up language and unacceptable gestures.

The ICC announced that South Africa had breached the Government commitment by playing Quinton De Kock. This cultural insensitivity was “regrettable”, a representative of the South African Cricket Association said. “We also apologise for playing Vernon Philander, as his name could easily be confused as philanderer. We apologise to Mr Nile and the Government.”

The Hon Mr Nile, emboldened and encouraged by looking like he will shortly hold the balance of power in the Legislative Council, welcomed the Government’s pressure on South Africa.

Mr Baird is doing the right thing and for a Government committed to high standards, clearing out those ten questionable people and not having a Deputy Premier named Stoner is a real improvement.