June depaNews

It was a long time coming and hugely anticipated from the merger of Hurstville and Kogarah in 2016 to create Georges River, with the high profile major players, one Liberal and one Labor, happy to help developers by overriding planning proposals from Council staff. In doing so, they created an environment hostile to staff, particularly senior staff, that explains why Georges River spent over $200,000 in 2019/20 on code of conduct complaints, more than $2.5 million to date on legal costs associated with the current three year ICAC investigation, Operation Galley, and another $1.2 million in the draft budget for 2022/2023 to cover the continuing costs of the investigation.

The ICAC is currently investigating two current councillors, Labor’s Vince Badalati and the Liberals’ Con Hindi (yes Con, maybe better to revert to Constantine now) and one former councillor, independent Phillip Sansom.

These three are being pursued to determine whether they “sought and/or accepted benefits as an inducement or reward for partially and dishonestly exercising their official functions to favour the interests“  of two big developers. The Corruption Commission is also investigating whether between 2014 and 2021 the three councillors “deliberately failed to declare or properly manage any conflict-of-interest arising from their relationships with” the two developers.

But wait there’s more, they are also investigating whether the two developers “provided benefits, including overseas flights and accommodation to Councillors Hindi, Badalati and Sansom, as a reward or inducement to favour their interests in relation to Council decisions regarding planning matters” affecting what have been described as the Treacy Street and Landmark Square developments.

ICAC investigations can be slow and grinding affairs, witnesses hedging, dodging and weaving, but the first witness, former Mayor Badalati, confessed that on two occasions a developer had provided him with a bag of cash, once containing $70,000 and on the second occasion, $100,000. Uh oh, and that he was with Councillor Hindi at the time and he received the same payments

Councillor Hindi has not yet given evidence but there have only been two days of hearings, opening submissions and while Badalati has confessed, Hindi and Sansom are yet to give evidence.

It’s astonishing how much time and effort can be spent on one councillor - in the last 12 months reporting period, Georges River forwarded 28 Code of Conduct complaints to the Office of Local Government, 22 of which related to Hindi. What an astonishing waste of ratepayer funds that could have filled staff positions and provided services.

This is a story that will continue. It comes as an enormous relief to Council staff whose recommendations have been overridden and whose focus on proper, orderly and lawful planning, has been treated with contempt. It’s been a hostile, aggressive and bullying environment for staff and while it’s clear that ICAC will get scalps, it’s more important to normalise relationships between councillors and Council staff, and to have those surviving councillors develop a proper respect for each other’s role. And stop the harassment.

The former CEO of OLG, Tim Hurst, for years told the unions and LGNSW that all we needed to do was to have a consensus position and OLG would refer it to the Minister and get things happening. With hindsight, clearly he was taunting us, because he would not have thought a consensus possible, but since October last year (yes eight months ago) there has been a consensus between the employers’ organisation and the unions to amend the Act so that the only senior staff employee would be the GM. And all other current senior staff positions would be employed under the Award.

Unfair and unreasonable sackings of people who should not have been sacked have been business as usual in the industry, and include close enough to 20 GMs sacked, or who’ve resigned, since the local government elections in December last year.

In 2016, the ICAC first referred to the need to review “no reason” sackings when councillors at Mid-Western had threatened the GM that if he didn’t sack the Director of Planning, and for good measure, also the Director Corporate Services, they would sack him. In a more focused way, the Commission referred to the unacceptable nature of “no reason” terminations in Operation Dasha into the former Canterbury and recommended it be fixed.

Too many GM’s have been threatened that if they didn’t sack the Director of Planning (the usual threat), the Council would sack them. This is a significant corruption risk but one where removing the risk is easy. Easy or not, it’s not being embraced as an easy solution to a corruption risk and facilitated as quickly as LGNSW and the unions would like.

OLG’s regular meetings with the employers and unions operate confidentially but it can be said that in the eight months, there has been limited action to keep the Minister briefed, and if there is to be some consultation with the industry, no one is rushing into it.  

Things just move slowly, there is a backlash by tyrants and those reluctant to forfeit their right to sack unfairly, running stealthily in the background. Clandestine and secretive, none of the opponents are game to publish anything for fear of appearing self-seeking, naive or clueless, or unaware how employment works under the Award.

The employers’ representatives and the unions have now agreed to put together a brief rebuttal of the arguments being discussed in clandestine and secret places. If the tyrants are so confident, why can’t they put it in writing for a proper debate?

Mosman Council was prepared to identify six easily rebuttable reasons when they forced a review of the October decision at the special LG NSW conference in March and where the position of the LGNSW Board was unanimously endorsed.

The Act could be changed by the end of this year, we’ve seen how quickly, almost instantly, the Minister and those responsible for the process can move during COVID, but it will require something more than the sloth-like progress from OLG, and that in turn slowing the Minister, for this to happen.

The Fair Work Commission on 15 June lifted the national minimum wage by 5.2%, noting a “sharp increase in the cost of living”. Labor had campaigned in the 21 May Federal election to support an increase in the minimum wage because “we did not want people who are on the minimum wage to go backwards” and having won the election and formed Government, did precisely that. Minister for Employment and Minister for Workplace Relations Tony Burke MP ceremoniously brandishes the submission to the FWC, above.

What a nice change to have a government interested in protecting the 2.7 million or so workers on the minimum wage who will, from 1 July, receive a 5.2% increase, or $40 a week, whichever is the greater. The Commission delayed the increase for the aviation, tourism and hospitality sectors due to “exceptional circumstances”, including their slow recovery from the Covid recession.

And as these things go, there will be pressure from the trade union movement to flow that increase across federal awards.

Procedurally, the NSW Industrial Relations Commission will convene a State Wage Case to determine whether that increase in the federal minimum wage should be reflected in the New South Wales system.

And just as federal unions pursue that increase for their members in federal awards, New South Wales unions would pursue whatever came out of the State Wage Case for their members as well.

No immediate money for local government with an increase of 2% due from the first pay period after 1 July, which is way, way behind inflation and is effectively a wage cut, but is locked in.

Petrol, groceries, meat, all the staples, $39 a kilo for green beans, FFS!

Now we have a federal government that thinks it’s okay to be a union member and have unions involved in the debate, here is a brilliant ad prepared by the ACTU as part of a broad national recruitment campaign.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrTJgz72os

Watch the 30 seconds, enjoy its powerful message, it can bring a tear to the eye, and sign up your workmates to depa.

There’s no point having a GIPA Act, which when it was made was proudly claimed by the NSW Premier at the time, Nathan Reese, to set a new standard in allowing access to government information, if it doesn’t do so. Neither does it make any sense having an Information Commissioner more interested in the denial of information, than providing access to it. Nathan would be very disappointed.

NCAT found against us when we wanted access to documents within OLG which would explain how their CEO at the time could have made such a fundamental mistake in an order that the councillor concerned had no priors, nor any subsequent complaints in the pipeline. Both those statements were wrong.

How the investigation was conducted, by whom, or who was interviewed was not the purpose of our application. The application was not pursuing information which is locked away by exclusions to the GIPA Act that would make any totalitarian regime green with envy, but how the CEO could have considered an informed report from the investigators and still have got it factually wrong.

We hope for greater success with the appeal but in an environment where the Minister for Local Government has appointed an independent reviewer to review the framework of councillor complaints, and how they’re handled by OLG, including the embarrassing and astonishingly slow timeframes, it doesn’t hurt to keep reminding people about the failures of the current system.