Ponderously slow, unexaminable, discouraging and disadvantaging of complainants, the OLG process must change

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Published: Wednesday, 06 April 2022 14:27

Late last year the Minister for Local Government announced an Independent Review of the framework for dealing with councillor misconduct in NSW. It’s a fiasco, and sometimes it’s worse than a fiasco.

The Minister’s appointment of Gary Kellar PSM (who had done a similar exercise in Queensland) coincided with depa pursuing OLG through NCAT after finding that OLG refused to review a decision and order made by the former CEO, Tim Hurst, which we were able to demonstrate was factually incorrect.

So our submission, starts like this:

On 5 February 2021 Tim Hurst, CEO of the Office of Local Government, made a mistake.

That mistake, the circumstances of making that mistake and the way in which OLG responded to the immediate reaction in the industry to that error, reveals everything that’s wrong with the current framework for dealing with councillor misconduct.

The first part of our submission deals with the mistake made on 5 February 2021 and demonstrates the contemptuous and arrogant dismissal by OLG of facts establishing that it had been a mistake - which provided a lesser penalty to a serial offender. That OLG could stonewall, based on legal protections of their processes that are essentially unexaminable, is part of the problem, and you can read our submission, and our responses to the 28 Considerations in the Consultation Paper here.