• Private certifier gets nailed – depaNews November 2010
  • Wake up and don't worry - depaNews February 2011
  • HR professionals – depaNews January 2009
  • Upper Hunter gets coy – depaNews March 2011
  • BPB kills off B1 & B2 - depaNews July 2009
  • Councillors behaving badly Part One - depaNews December 2009
  • Councillors behaving badly Part Two - depaNews December 2009
  • Who is Peter Hurst? - depaNews August 2010
  • It's time to go, Peter Part One - depaNews September 2006
  • It's time to go Peter Part Two - depaNews December 2006
  • BPB survey on accreditation – depaNews November 2008
  • Improbable things start to come true – depaNews June 2010
  • Sex, lies and development – depaNews February 2008
  • Pizza man feeds non-members – depaNews April 2011
  • Bankstown wins HR Award – depaNews December 2010
  • Love him or loathe him - depaNews October 2007
  • Good Bad & Ugly issue – depaNews November 2010
  • Upper Hunter lets the dogs out - depaNews February 2011
  • IRC puts brakes on belligerent seven – depaNews June 2009
  • It's Tweedledum and not Tweedledumber - depaNews March 2007
  • 28 April International Day of Mourning - depaNews April 2009
  • IRC orders Hurst 'apology' published - depaNews December 2010
  • Debate on IR policy – depaNews August 2007
  • Developer agrees to apologise – depaNews November 2010
  • OH&S Day of Mourning – depaNews April 2009

The Development and Environmental Professionals' Association (depa)

Welcome to the depa website. We are an industrial organisation representing professional employees working in local government in New South Wales in a variety of jobs in the fields of environmental health, public health, building and development control and planning.

We take a broad approach to our responsibilities to members and give advice and assistance on professional issues as well as industrial and workplace issues. We understand what members do at work and that allows us to take a holistic approach. Read more about us...

This site will keep you up-to-date with union news and the diverse range of workplace advocacy issues we deal with daily. We have made it easy for members to contact us with online forms and quickly Join depa online nowaccess information from our extensive FAQs.

Who is Peter Hurst? - depaNews August 2010

 

IRC acts to protect members at Wagga Wagga - and sets best practice model for all councils

At last, some proper recognition of a Council's duty of care when employees reputations are attacked

depa has had a long history of successfully acting to support members treated poorly by councillors behaving badly and/or local developers - Parramatta twice, Mudgee/Mid Western, Eurobodalla, Snowy River and Nambucca. Local government is a very easy target and no more so for professionals working in strategic planning and development control. After all, every application that draws objections will invariably end up with someone unhappy with someone else, often someone doing nothing more that discharging their obligations under a planning instrument or the BCA.

Everyone is familiar with local dissidents, loonies and others launching unwarranted attacks on staff in public or at council meetings or even the local press without employees having the opportunity to defend themselves - and the Council which employs them often reluctant to acknowledge that they have a duty of care to protect employees in the firing line.

But no longer.

Who is Peter Hurst and why is he so unkind?

Peter Hurst is a local builder of domestic dwellings in Wagga Wagga. He is also a local heavyweight in the Housing Industry Association and has taken a particular dislike to Wagga Wagga Council which, after a long period of being under-resourced and pretty relaxed about development standards, started to take the job seriously and discharge their obligations to the community under planning instruments.

So distressed that he thought it appropriate to lodge significant complaints against Council employees involved in the management of planning and development control and then to distribute that complaint as broadly as possible within the local community, anyone in Government who would listen and, aided and abetted by the local rag the Daily Advertiser, ran a vendetta against the Council.

We thought the investigation of the complaint took a little bit longer than we would have liked and we filed a dispute with the Industrial Relations Commission to both speed up the investigation and seek the Commission's assistance to remind the Council of its responsibilities to protect staff and their reputations against defamatory and slanderous claims made by people who thought they could do so with impunity.

In a significant precedent, Deputy President Grayson issued a Statement on 11 August after the Council had dismissed all of the allegations made by Mr Hurst. Amongst other things the Commission called for the Council to:

  • "obtain legal advice as to whether any employee has been defamed by any person and in particular by the complainant, Peter Hurst and the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser. And in relation to the Daily Advertiser in editorial and journalistic content and the publication of blogs and thereafter that the council take any legal action consistent with that advice."
  • "prepare a letter to the complainant, Mr Hurst, expressly rejecting the allegations made by the complainant in relation to personal gain, breaches of the Code of Conduct and alleged attempt to deceive by incorrectly reporting development applications." The Commission also recommended that agreement be reached between the Council and depa on the content and terms of that letter
 
  • hand-deliver the dismissal of the allegations to Mr Hurst and call for his apology in an agreed form "to be published as broadly as the allegations have been published by the complainant and that the complainant indicate genuine remorse and a commitment to develop better interpersonal relationships in the future"
 
  • to explore the publication of the letter dismissing the allegations "as broadly as possible in the local media and, in the absence of proper publication, be the subject of a paid advertisement, in particular in the aforementioned Daily Advertiser"
  • to convene a meeting "and extend invitations to the complainant, Mr Hurst, and other critical and/or hostile builders and developers in the City of Wagga Wagga, with a view to acknowledging the factual inaccuracies of the complaint and with a view to developing a positive civil and professional relationships for the future, with a further aim of securing an undertaking from the critics that the media campaign being waged against the Council is at an end."
 
  • "without delay, develop and implement a policy around its duty of care to employees and around its need within the employment relationship to protect them against personal and reputational damage in the future."
The Council has already had its lawyers write to the Dirty Advertiser to secure the removal of offensive material from their site and the lawyers are reviewing all relevant material to see if employees have been defamed and then to act on that advice.

Mr Hurst had the dismissal of his complaint hand-delivered but we are waiting for the apology requested in the Council’s letter.

This will be a measure of the man. We hope he will be big enough to acknowledge his mistakes, apologise appropriately and get on with the job. We will see.

Robbo's Pearls...

What’s happening to the senior staff changes?

On 15 October 2021 the LGNSW Board, spurred on by a second recommendation from another ICAC investigation (Operation Dasha) to get rid of the “no reason” sacking of senior staff, unanimously resolved to do precisely that. LGNSW would now support the views we and the other unions have been expressing for decades. This was a historic consensus.

The consensus was to amend section 340 of the Local Government Act 1993 to ensure that the only Senior Staff positions, on term contracts and denied access to the industrial relations commission would be the general manager. And to amend the Industrial Relations Act to lift the remuneration level for access on unfair dismissals.

All we needed was the OLG and the Government to cooperate. That was close enough to two and a half years ago. 

There was some venal opposition from the usual suspects, but the policy was overwhelmingly reaffirmed at the LGNSW Special Conference on 1 March 2022. That was close enough to two years ago.

In April 2023 a Labor Government was elected in NSW. We all had a reasonable expectation they’d be more supportive of employment changes that reduced the risk of corruption and provided fairer working conditions. They say they are.

What have you blokes been doing?

Hoenig and Minns

It’s in the Minister’s office but nothing’s happening. It has been:

since the Government and the Minister were appointed on 5 April 2023. We are still waiting for the legislative changes required.

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