May depaNews

And this time they’re using “intelligence”.  Is there any word more likely to strike fear into your heart?  Is it the Russians? The Chinese, or just a euphemism for gossip?

The BPB must have run out of complaints about private certifiers and discovered that there was little to investigate in local government, so has decided to take a broader approach to the investigation of Council employees who are accredited certifiers.

When the Government decided it made sense to accredit local government employees, the industry (and not just us) was concerned about how the BPB would handle the accreditation of Council employees and, in particular, how they would manage the dual accountability of an accredited certifier to their employer with a parallel line of accountability to the Board.
 
Would this set up the possibility of parallel, or sequential investigations, if a complaint is made simultaneously to the Council and the BPB, or to the Council first and then to the BPB, or whatever.  And what about penalties?  What if the Council deals with that first in a way that the BPB thinks is insufficient, or the Council nails the employee but the BPB doesn’t think it’s such a big deal?
 
We were assured at the time by BPB President Sue Holliday and the Board that the BPB would rely upon any investigation conducted by the Council.  They would review the adequacy of the investigation, its thoroughness, any penalty that might have been imposed, and then make their own judgement about whether anything else needed to be done.  It was an acknowledgement of the primacy of the employment relationship.

But leaving Griffith aside, complaints against accredited certifiers and councils have been few and far between.

(Griffith was a fiasco, a Council with a very long history of understaffing and under resourcing, failures to provide market rates to attract staff and even now, after their humiliation at the hands of the BPB (depaNews October 2017) the Council has now appointed a Director Sustainable Development who is neither a planner, nor a health and building surveyor.  He is a Certified Practicing Accountant who was previously the Council's Manager Economic Development and Tourism. What could possibly go wrong?)

But now we discover that the BPB in February commenced an investigation into a council employee who is accredited with the Board.  There had been no complaint to the Council, the findings themselves focus on minor administrative matters (as if something needed to be found) but more worrying was how the BPB came to be investigating in the first place.

When our member received a letter from the BPB early this month advising that findings had been made and that he, and the Council, had an opportunity to respond, it was signed off by the Manager Complaints Investigation - a job title with no uncertainty, it’s complaints investigation and that’s it.

The accredited certifier and the Council had no idea how this unexceptional domestic construction site had come to the Board’s attention.  There had been no complaint made to the Council and while lots of advice flowed back from the BPB about those sections of the Act that allow them to conduct investigations, there was no answer to the question.  What was there to hide?

And similarly for us, when we started to chase the BPB, understanding that if this can happen to one of our members, it could happen to all of them, they tried to fob us off as well.

When we claimed it was logical that if the Manager Complaints Investigation was managing the investigation then there had to be have been a complaint, we then received a response from the same person but miraculously, they were signed off as Manager Investigations.  Hard not to smell a rat.

But worse was to come, with email advice from the Manager Investigations to the accredited certifier that the Board was relying upon “intelligence or concerns that had come to the Board’s attention.”  That’s a real WTF moment if ever there was one. Not I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E, mind you, because who doesn’t love a supercomputer invented by Matt and Trey, but because that word could mean anything.  “Intelligence” from someone who sits next to you at work but doesn’t like you, a grumpy neighbour who thinks you play music too loud, or resents your success in the local garden competition, a councillor who thinks you’re too vigilant, an ex in a messy relationship separation, who knows?
 
But we’re going to find out.  If the BPB was going to do this they should have individually advised every accredited certifier in local government and the organisations that represent them.  That’s probably only depa at this stage (although we assume AAC and AIBS are scratching their heads) but no-one received any advice or tipoff that it didn’t just require a complaint, that the Council didn’t need to be involved, but the BPB, however they got their information, can decide to investigate you. That’s disappointing.

Here is a link to our letter of 23 May to the Director of the BPB complaining about the circumstances and attaching a couple of email trail is where we have protected the identity of the accredited certifier.  We will be meeting with the Director and the Manager Complaints investigation/Investigations on 13 June, and we’ll let you know how random and dangerous this process can be after that.

For decades depa has seen the flaws created when senior staff are appointed on term contracts.  There was always going to be a risk to senior staff giving advice without fear or favour if they are being heavied by councillors or a GM who wants them to do something else when their contract was up for renewal.

There is no protection at all and that’s the whole point of there being term contracts required by section 338 of the Local Government Act being accompanied by section 340 prohibiting any access to entitlements under any industrial instrument, or more importantly, any protection available from the Industrial Relations Commission on dismissal.

It may not have been the plan, but it has delivered up vulnerable senior employees and potentially compromised their advice.
 
38 weeks’ pay and no obligation to provide a reason for the termination has been embraced by many councils - very happy to get rid of good people and do this apparently unconcerned that it costs their ratepayers and the community 38 weeks’ pay, and often a pretty good rate of pay as well, to sack people who don’t deserve to be sacked.  And GM’s do it too, equally as unrestrained by the unnecessary cost.

We’ve seen the misuse of term contracts since their introduction.  We have always tried to do something about it and Operation Dasha, with allegations by the GM of the former Canterbury that councillors were bullying, or blackmailing him, as he put it, to make a particular appointment to job of Director of Planning, is an opportunity too good to miss.  Maybe the ICAC will see the wisdom of removing the fixed terms and recognising these positions as both requiring and deserving permanent employment.  They must otherwise be struggling to understand how this can all happen.

The Office of Local Government has their own barrister, harrying the current GM of Canterbury-Bankstown about the value of the “termination without reasons clause ... in the event that there was a breakdown in the relationship between the councillors and the general manager”.  Full credit to Matthew Stewart for not succumbing to the pressure and we all know that “breakdown in the relationship” means only that the Council doesn’t like the GM, because the GM, for good reasons, won’t do what they want.

It’s also odd that while the State public sector has transitioned almost all of their Senior Executive Service employees to ongoing employment, including those SES employees working at OLG (OMG!) that the OLG continues to defend this anachronistic and dangerous employment arrangement.  There will never be confidence in local government, if employees can be directed on the content of their advice and are afraid to provide advice without fear or favour.

So this is the first problem and the second problem is the overwhelming evidence over the past decade or so in particular, that it was never a good idea for the elected councillors to have anything at all to do with the assessment of a DA – a view now recently shared by the NSW Government, which required Sydney Metropolitan councils to do what Wollongong has been doing, of having DAs dealt with by a Local Planning Panel.  We called for the removal of councillors from DAs in depaNews in July 2017 and the Government responded almost immediately and did so.  It must be the power of the pen.

What we know already about the way business was done at the former Canterbury brings together these two areas of government policy as if they were to storm cells we have been watching on a weather map, gradually getting closer and closer together, then joining with catastrophic results.

The ICAC’s consideration allows us the opportunity to respond to both these areas and we have done so, lodging a submission with the ICAC on 23 May and making some sensible and easily implementable recommendations on both employment protection and planning.  Check it out.

Public hearings for Operation Dasha resume on 13 June.  Let’s see what happens.

It is our business because when the State Electoral Commission posted notices for our 2018 election to financial members, we were surprised how many of you hadn’t kept us up to date with your residential address.  It’s clearly never front of mind when you move (because moving is one of the great stressors in life) and as time goes on, we get fewer and fewer letters, but sometimes we do need to write to you, or the SEC does, and if we don’t have your address, you miss out.

Here is a link to how you can update your information on our website.  Go on, it’s so easy - as a surprisingly high number of members who actually stood for election, but hadn’t told us of changes to their addresses, have now discovered...

Every now and again we remind members about letting us know when you’ve moved from one Council to another and we also remind our delegates to help us out here as well.  It does make life easier for us if we know who our members are at each Council and this month we received email advice from a member who moved from The Hills to Liverpool, followed up by that advice from the delegate as well!  This was almost unprecedented.  Thanks Juliana and Daniel.

Come on, it’s not that hard.

Ernie Page 18 February 1935 - 20 May 2018

Ernie Page was a comrade to me and depa and a friend of local government.  He was a community activist before the expression was invented, a councillor on Waverley Council for 15 years from 1962 to 1987 and Mayor for nine of those years, a member of the New South Wales Parliament representing the seat of Waverley from 1981 until 1991 when it was abolished, and then three more terms as member for Coogee.

Ernie was a lifelong member of the ALP, was active in his union the USU and was awarded life membership in recognition, was the Shadow Minister for Local Government for what seemed like forever and the Minister for Local Government from 1995 to 1999.  It was during this time he entrenched his position as a friend of depa, organised drinks in Parliament House for a freshly elected Committee of Management, regularly attended depa events, was always available for advice, assistance and to be lobbied, and was responsible as Minister for Local Government for establishing a consultative mechanism between Government and the local government unions and in the Five Year Review of the Local Government Act in 1998 recommended the removal of term contracts for senior staff - sadly, like some of Ernie’s best ideas, killed off by the conservatives in the Parliamentary Party and the Cabinet Office.

Ernie believed in and loved local government.  He knew how it worked, where it was deficient, where it should improve and what should be done to improve it.  And while appointed by Bob Carr as Minister in 1995, he was also removed by Carr in 1999 in one of his worst decisions. Ernie was furious and disappointed, privileging me to a call containing more C words than I thought humanly possible, and unchallenged by anything I’ve seen or heard before or after.
 
Thanks, Ernie.  At a time when we have little respect for our politicians, either State or in local government, that we don’t have more people devoting their working lives as assiduously, selflessly and honourably, as you did.