February depaNews

2020 and its connotations of perfect vision remind us how we see things. For us, there are the new things, like our negotiations for a new 2020 Award, and a new dispute with Sydney City just to start the year, but there are the old and the continuing things as well - what’s happening with planning, the accreditation process of local government employees, and on and on.

The cartoon and the headline above were published in the last issue of the Health Surveyors’ News (one of our historic names) in May 1987. We were already fighting off the introduction of term contracts in the industry - allegedly to better manage performance as if continuing and permanent employees can’t be performance-managed, but really to make it easier for a Council to sack employees without the checks and balances provided by the Industrial Relations Act. The Council simply decides not to renew the contract...

It’s been a long history, not to be repeated here in this issue, but as we enter 2020 we remain committed to removing terms of employment for senior staff other than general managers, and even for GM’s to provide checks and balances, to ensure that a newly elected council can’t decide, as part of flexing their political or lack-of-intellectual muscle, to terminate their contract regardless of the GM’s performance. A waste of public money and poor treatment of a good employee.

We are immobilised in our section 106 with Narrabri Council/GM Stewart Todd as the Supreme Court considers Todd’s challenge that the Court doesn’t have jurisdiction to deal with contractual issues for senior staff under the Local Government Act. We can’t wait, there are only two alternatives here, Todd loses and senior staff win, or Todd wins and senior staff lose. Either way, the issue will be resolved.

There have been three major issues occupying negotiations.

The first is having the IRC require Councils to report on how they are complying with their Award obligations to have a training plan in place to manage the training and assist progression of their staff. Probably poorly, but we will see. The IRC has directed that information be provided and it is flowing in. It’s required by the Award, so it’s a legally enforceable entitlement. It’s the L-A-W!

The second, is having the IRC require Councils to furnish information about the extent to which their workforce is casualised (not just by the number and extent of allegedly casual employees - more often than not really temporary appointments, or part-time permanent appointments without the benefits of permanency - but labour hire and inappropriate term contracts as well) to ensure that local government remains a place for permanent employment. Again, it’s the L-A-W.

And the third has been to focus on the commitment of the three unions, and LGNSW from their Conference late last year, to recognise the need for proper protection and leave for the victims of domestic violence and introduce Family and Domestic Violence Leave through a new clause 21M. And the good news is that on 24 February, accompanied by the furious agreement and consent of the parties, the IRC will vary the 2017 Award with immediate effect to provide a protective clause.

NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler (above) admitted to the Sydney Morning Herald in an article published on 8 February that “a major fix to the state’s residential construction crisis is two years away, as fresh cracks emerged in Sydney’s troubled Mascot Towers apartment block”.

The Commissioner said, “he had been a ‘bit despondent’ after visiting some ‘pretty awful’ construction sites in recent weeks.

There are some really regrettable things out there that abhor me.”

And us too, Mr Building Commissioner. Nothing but a massive increase in your resources and funding and a commitment by the Government to make dodgy builders and developers responsible for their shoddy work and liable for damages will do. The owners and residents of Mascot Towers, Opal Tower and the other uninhabitable developments have been more than “a bit despondent” for a long time now.

But even the two years target identified by the Building Commissioner depends upon the Berejiklian government getting their building reform package through the NSW Upper House. It’s on pause while the Upper House presses the recommendations of the Shoebridge Committee as an alternative and more dynamic proposal. We prefer Shoebridge’s recommendations, too.

While we were all suffocating in the smoke or worse through January, the Minister for Better Regulation (sic), Kevin Anderson, announced on 21 January that he would “introduce a risk rating system for builders, certifiers and developers that would score them on the quality of their previous projects to weed out the dodgy operators”.

When it comes to certifiers, that has been the role of the Building Professionals Board, or whatever it’s called, or wherever it sits in government these days. Clearly the Minister has a lack of confidence in that organisation to have done what is now being required to be done with some kind of a rating system.

If you want to see a pretty good rating system, check out the penalties page on the BPB site. We’d be happy to help - the dodgy bastards with multiple penalties on the BPB site should never, ever work again in the industry, and should never, ever be able to run businesses employing others doing certification, or anything else to do with construction.

And while we’re at it, ratings, really? Let’s not forget that the Global Financial Crisis was all about dodgy investment strategies that had all been rated AAA by both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, respected and authoritative ratings businesses that really didn’t know what they were rating...

And speaking of people not paying attention...

We have an email from the BPB that says this:

It appears you have identified an unintended problem with the current provisions of the Building and Development Certifiers Act 2018.

This was a response to concerns initially raised by an Ordinance 4 building surveyor in the west of the state. Not a member of ours (although he had been) but it was brought to our attention by the President of EDAP, Brendan Hayes, a member of our Committee of Management. And while we generally don’t like the idea of doing things for people who aren’t members of ours, it appeared they had a point. Still, the optimistic way of looking at someone who is not a member, is that they are a potential member.

The provisions under the heading Saving of existing certificates of accreditation don’t properly provide for the continuation and renewal of existing certificates of accreditation for certain accredited certifiers - specifically those certified based upon the old Ordinance 4 qualifications and their experience. This would have prevented the renewal of accreditation for many of the older and experienced building surveyors and would have decimated smaller councils on the west of the Great Dividing Range.

Well done to that non-member, because he picked up things that no other building surveyors or certifiers had picked up, nor us, nor the BPB, nor any of the policy people who had drafted the legislation, nor even it would seem, the Parliamentary Draughtsman (sic).

It will now be addressed in the new Building and Development Certifiers Regulation.

Significantly, it wasn’t raised to the AIBS, nor the AAC - the two organisations that most boast about looking after the interests of building surveyors - nor to anyone else. It was raised by us. Member or not, everyone knows we are the organisation looking after the interests of building surveyors.

What is it with Sydney City? The City, boasting its progressive credentials in employment, has been nominated more than any other Council in our annual Worst HR Local Government awards. This progressive stuff is simply a façade, inclusion is gorgeous, we all support it, but getting a finger out and dealing with an application by your own managers for the introduction of nine day fortnight for their staff, consistent with the provisions in the City Award allowing this process to be considered, shouldn’t be sitting around ignored for almost a year.

We had members involved in the drafting of that submission to which there was no proper response, then members resolving that we do what we could to get some action happening under the terms provided expressly in the Award, which we did, to be confronted with the City’s Impossible GoSlow. A phenomenon where all HR issues can go to die.

And when our dispute is listed in the IRC, the City admits it doesn’t have a “process” to consider such an application, the latest in a series of attempted fob offs which included refusing to respond to our request about which policies or procedures should be addressed in an application - with some HR flunky saying they couldn’t be specified because it could be all of them.

In the IRC on 28 January, Commissioner Sloan was able to squeeze from the City’s lawyer an undertaking that they would identify the policies and procedures that needed to be addressed by the end of the following week. And just like the City, we received their advice at 4:50pm on Friday afternoon! That really is taking literally the concept of the end of the week.

But the letter contained no surprises, they identified the Code of Conduct, Leave Guidelines, their Work Health and Safety Policy and their Overtime Guidelines. These were not just four basic obvious policies that had been considered by those managers who drafted the proposal in March 2019, they were damning evidence that the City’s response to us was nothing more than BS. Our first 2020 nomination, will it be seven years of nominations for the City?

Six nominations for the Golden Turd since 2014, every year in fact, so there must be some common factor, something bogging stuff down to an Impossible GoSlow, and frustrating everyone since 2013...

Elections for the Committee of Management take place every two years, and for the position of Secretary every four years. This year will see the NSW Electoral Commission conduct an election for us for our new Committee of Management, other than the position of Secretary which was elected for a four year term in 2018.

Last year the Committee acknowledged the reasons why a Committee of ten was simply too big for an organisation our size. These days, with electronic communications, everyone is in contact with each other, and our structure needs to respond.

So the Committee resolved at its November meeting to amend our rules to move from a ten person Committee of one President, two Vice Presidents, and six Members (plus the Secretary) to a more compact group of seven, one President, one Vice President and four Members, and the Secretary.

depa and the NSWEC have agreed on this timetable for the election:

3 March               depa provides electoral roll to NSWEC

9 March               NSWEC posts election notices to all financial members and on their website calling for nominations

24 March             Nominations close

If there are sufficient candidates for the vacant positions, they will be declared elected. And if there are more candidates than there are positions, an election will follow.

There are three members the current Committee who have chosen to not re-nominate. President Jo Doheny will retire from local government this year, Vice President Joanne Dunkerley has been hit with the often-impossible logistics of managing a school age daughter and Brendan Hayes, in his new job at Parkes, will focus on that and EDAP.

We note and appreciate Jo Doheny’s contribution over the last decade. A great delegate for us at Gosford initially, a member of the Committee of Management, a Vice President and for the last few years President. Thanks Jo. Joanne was on the Committee for almost that long as well after a long period as our delegate at Great Lakes. Thanks Joanne.

And thanks Brendan.

There is a democratic process to be followed and all financial members are able to nominate. Sometimes it is a struggle for us to fill the nine positions and those most interested in what we do are active delegates or members of the Consultative Committee, and there is a limit to what can be asked of a volunteer.

If anyone is interested in standing for election, give the office a ring and we can talk through what’s involved. Otherwise we have enough current members re-standing not to worry. Relax, nothing to see here.