September depaNews

It’s hard to believe that when the NSW Premier Mike Baird and Local Government Minister Paul Toole last week launched their response to the authoritative, scholarly and compelling recommendations of the Independent Review Panel, the best the Premier could say was “less people picking up pencils and more people digging up roads”.

What a bizarre, old-fashioned and primitive understanding of local government the State Government must have. They can call it “Fit for the Future”, but they need to be realistic about both the past and the present first.

When did you last see a pencil? Some tradespeople, certainly, but if the Government anticipates that it’s going to create more financially sustainable councils providing better services to their communities, identifying the few people who may use pencils, and getting rid of them, won’t help.

Pencils have been around for centuries. They lived alongside quilled pens and both quilled pens and pencils will be hard to find in any Council office. What on earth did they mean? Fewer “pen pushers” perhaps, or less colouring in, the closing down of childcare and sending the kids out on the road to dig it up, it’s hard to tell. Virtually everyone and everything is computerised today, even in the most financially unsustainable, smallest and most primitive of local government area.

And as a response to such a carefully drafted series of documents and recommendations as those produced by the Independent Review Panel, everyone is entitled to feel disappointed.

Digging up roads? Surely the point of better services is not just digging up roads, but maintaining them? Who writes this drivel anyway? Poor language and grammar skills, poor imagery, poor execution. It’s hard to get good help.

But nevertheless, on 10 September the Government did announce its strategy of inducing/bribing councils to embrace, voluntarily, the recommendations to merge, amalgamate, remain unchanged or perish made by the Independent Review Panel almost 2 years ago. On council boundaries, the recommendations of the Panel leave only 32 of the State’s 152 councils with the recommendation of “no change”.

A number of documents have been published – repetitive and overlapping but with summary documents that make easy reading and which neatly and colourfully identify the inducements offered -$258 million to help councils which decide to merge to make the transition; $13 million to  local transition committees to provide some comfort to elected representatives wondering about the continuing relevance; $5.3 million to get new regional Joint Organisations up and running; $4 million to help small councils (fewer than 10,000 residents) develop “innovative ways of working” and let’s hope that doesn’t just mean getting rid of pencils; and up to $600 million in potential savings in cheaper finance for councils that make the grade of being “Fit for the Future” to invest in local infrastructure.

No chance with all that cash available that the Government will be accused of offering insufficient bribes. There will also be expert assistance provided to help merging councils, regional relationship managers from the Office of Local Government and facilitators to help councils begin discussions about how to merge.

And access to a team of technical experts to help councils prepare their Fit for the Future proposals which need to be filed by 30 June 2015.

All the information you need to know, the 32 Councils without recommended change to boundaries, the “Blueprint” for the future, the “roadmap for Stronger, Smarter Councils” and the “roadmap for intergovernmental collaboration in NSW” for joint organisations is all on the website – www.fitforthefuture.nsw.gov.au

It’s all about financial sustainability, roads and road maps. That must be why their concerns about infrastructure never mention rail.

Some of the LGPA Board and CEO (GAICD)

One of the findings of the Independent Review Panel in the report in October 2013 was to reject the submissions of the inaccurate, dilettantish, fanciful and paranoid that the “current Local Government Award lacks flexibility, focuses on skills at the expense of other attributes of staff, and builds in excessive labour costs for some activities, especially where 'out-of-hours' work is involved.”

The panel is not convinced that the award is as costly and inflexible as some believe, and believes that further efficiency and productivity gains can and should be made through negotiation… There should also be opportunities for some increased flexibility to address specific skill shortages.

Thus the award should continue to evolve through negotiation to address the changing circumstances of councils and their employees, and the needs of communities. Local government needs a system of industrial relations that will support an efficient and productive sector that can adapt to meet future challenges. In turn, this requires a climate of trust and cooperation amongst employer and employee organisations.

A climate of trust and cooperation between the employer organisation (something which they are not) and employee organisations (and they’re not that either) is something that the Local Government Poseurs Association can’t contemplate. This was a recommendation LGPA didn’t embrace, preferring to reiterate their view about the mysterious third force of general managers and HR professionals (sic) needing to be in negotiations.

But if it’s about trust and cooperation, they don’t have the pre-requisites.

depaNews publicised their views in July and now they’ve done it again. In a letter to Keith Rhoades, President of LGNSW (they got the address wrong but at least spelled his name right this time) LGPA President Paul Bennett complained “the absence of direct involvement by the professional leaders in the negotiations themselves, has meant we believe the significant negative consequences the award changes may not have been fully contemplated” (we think we know what he meant) and “the new State Award will make sustainability even harder to achieve, if not impossible.” Poor Paul believes that the award creates an “untenable position”. Professional leaders, indeed.

And, in case his letter was insufficiently melodramatic and hysterical, he was joined by CEO Annalisa Haskell to write to the Minister for Local Government Paul Toole (described as Paul Tool, in their publication and on their site) raising “a potentially significant impediment” to his reform commitment and calling on the NSW State Government “to do everything possible to assist councils in having unfettered access to the Federal Award system for commercial undertakings.”

LGPA in both letters says their views “are expressed purely out of our unwavering commitment to assist the government” but, despite their attempted seduction of other professionals and their boast to be “the peak body for all local government professional in the state”, they are really the GM/finance/corporate services/careerists and aspirants’ group.

But reform initiatives advocated by the highest paid employees which victimise and punish the lowest paid employees in the industry only make them look self-seeking, unimaginative and hypocritical.

In the August issue of depaNews we exposed management at Wagga Wagga City Council for their failure to support an employee with secondary cancer looking for additional sick leave. He was our delegate, by coincidence, and the article made those managers named appear heartless, mean-spirited and disinterested in the welfare of their employees in need.

We specifically identified Mr Crakanthorp as being one of those responsible for rejecting a reasonable application, consistent with the sentiment and provisions of the State Award allowing a discretion to provide additional sick leave.

We asserted that Mr Crakanthorp responded to an enquiry whether the Council would be sending flowers to the employee in hospital for their surgery, by saying “aaah, it’s just the bloody precedent”. This may have been read as suggesting Mr C was scared of exercising a discretion, unimaginative and fearful.

Mr Crakanthorp was also identified as a member of the LGPA Board which resolved to oppose the introduction into the 2014 Award of half pay sick leave for the chronically ill or injured. This made him look like he lacked compassion and was disinterested in the welfare of employees outside the boundaries of his own Council as well.

We have been contacted about this article and the accuracy of our reporting.

We apologise unreservedly for spelling Andrew’s name incorrectly.

It’s not Krakanthorp, it’s Crakanthorp.

In the interests of trying to find good in everyone, we’ll leave aside Penrith’s apparent incapacity to properly address a letter to us, to get the title of my position right (it’s Secretary not General Secretary) and to habitually remove the apostrophe from our union’s name.

And we’ll ignore their tendency to address letters to “Sir” when no one here has been knighted yet and when, to be correct, it requires a reply addressed to “Madam” and that sounds ludicrously old-fashioned. Very 19th century, just like their dress code policy.

But congratulations are due to the Council for finally understanding their obligations under clause 39 Workplace Change and Redundancy. This requires that changes with significant effects need to be conveyed to the employees affected “and the union to which they belong”. Everyone in the world knows that means the union office but Penrith has failed on the last two occasions to do so.

We now have a letter from the Executive Manager Corporate advising:

Council will provide written notification to the DEPA office in cases where clause 39 of the Award applies.

Well done.

Still, for balance, we do need to report that they think that they can develop an Enterprise Agreement effecting individual contractual entitlements for employees who have payment for untaken sick leave as a condition of their employment. You can’t, of course, because individual conditions of employment can’t be overridden by an industrial instrument.

Oh well.

On 1 October, the LGS Board will consider doing something that will change the Fund’s historic core values in investment.

Since 2000 LGS has refused to own tobacco, has screens against gambling, logging old-growth forests, poor governance, armaments and nuclear technology and uranium. These investment strategies have contributed positively to returns and haven’t compromised the Fund by investing in things with questionable or unacceptable risks.

LGS has received many awards and recognition and has been the leading Australian fund for these initiatives and the way it has managed carbon risk as we head towards a low-carbon future.

When the Board meets on 1 October, unless seven of the eight directors wake up to themselves, something really, really significant will change.

We will deal with this, when it happens, next month. We can tell you it won’t be unanimous resolution (because depa’s director on the Board won’t support it) and in the meantime, here is a hint: