SafeWork nails councillors behaving badly at Parramatta - and makes OLG irrelevant

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Published: Tuesday, 28 February 2023 15:08

Parramatta councillors behaving badly

On 15 February 2023 SafeWork NSW served an Improvement Notice on City of Parramatta Council for contravening a provision of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, section 19, “for failing to ensure that psychosocial risks are being managed as far as reasonably practical”.

SafeWork found that existing controls such as the Workplace Bullying and Harassment Policy hadn’t been reviewed since 2017 and after interviewing witnesses, “several Workers and other relevant persons reported being subject and witness, to inappropriate workplace behaviour of Councillors towards other Councillors and Workers, predominantly during workshop meetings. The behaviours described included personal criticism, unwarranted accusations, raised voices, ridicule and intimidation which, reportedly, are not being appropriately addressed during the following Workshop meetings”.

Personal criticism, unwarranted accusations, raised voices, ridicule and intimidation sounds like fairly common behaviour from boofhead councillors (and sometimes also general managers) but the significance of the action is that the complaint was made in October 2022. SafeWork acted immediately and interviewed councillors and workers and four months later issued the Improvement Notice.

That’s action.

At last, a NSW Government authority has demonstrated to the Office of Local Government that investigations can be done quickly and penalties, in the form of an Improvement Notice in this instance, served.

SafeWork’s significant precedent at Parramatta puts a shot across the bow of councillors and others behaving badly. This is a stunningly attractive alternative to trying to do something with local government’s regulator.

Here is SafeWork’s Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work. This will be invaluable for members at many councils. We can’t wait.