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Published: Monday, 12 February 2024 13:10
Appointed on a Wednesday and my heart stood still,
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron
We can’t wait until he tables the Bill
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron
Yeah, my heart stood still
He’s got nothing else to do
But when he tables the Bill
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron
(with apologies and acknowledgement to the Crystals)
You all know the story, it’s notorious.
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 an 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 1996 to lift the remuneration level for access on unfair dismissals.
All we needed was the OLG and 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.
We know it’s been in the Minister’s office but nothing’s happened. We’ve put a clock on our homepage so we can count how long since 5 April 2022, when the Government was appointed following the election, and the Hon Ron Hoenig was appointed Minister for Local Government.
https://depa.au/ and you can also count the days.
As an aside, the CBD column in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday this week, in an article about who NSW politicians had been meeting with, said this:
"Finally, a shout out to Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig, who held just 16 meetings in the final quarter 2023, the fewest of any government Minister."
It’s not good enough, this is a burning issue.
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Published: Monday, 12 February 2024 09:15
We’ve had two examples of Sutherland Mayor Councillor Carmelo Pesce abusing our members. The first, in 2017, expletives and anger about a member dealing with non-compliance under both the Food Act and building regulations of the Mayor’s cafés where the GM at the time, Scott Phillips, secured an apology and a handshake from the Mayor within 24-hours. And encouraged the manager who had made the complaint to always bring this kind of unacceptable behaviour to the attention of the GM for a remedy.
The second, in June 2020 where another member was chasing the Mayor to comply and received a similar serve, expletives and anger again about his cafés, but when the complaint was escalated through the organisation the GM Manjeet Grewal didn’t secure an apology or a handshake and we needed to file an industrial dispute to try to get the Mayor behaving.
We gave up on the GM and wrote to all the councillors asking them to agree to commit to better standards of behaviour and cutting out abuse, and only the ALP councillors did so.
The positive out of that awful experience is that there is now a Memorandum of Understanding between Sutherland Shire and Georges River Council (both councils have had issues with councillor behaviour) for compliance issues concerning properties or businesses owned by councillors, to be dealt with by compliance staff from the other Council. Hard to threaten them.
Councillor Pesce, is now favoured for Liberal Preselection to replace the disgraced member for Cook the Hon(!) Scott Morrison. The question is what do the electors in Cook think are important values and qualities in their local Federal member?
Given our experience with the Councillor’s behaviour to our members, it was only a matter of time before investigative journalists, scrutinising the pretender to the crown and finding plenty to investigate, contacted us.
See the ABC News article here