| Bulletin #2, July 2003 As amalgamation pressure builds, anyone who is anyone seems to have an opinion about council amalgamations
Disappointed after 8 years of encouragement but little progress, Minister for Local Government Tony Kelly has written to all councils encouraging structural reform. In his letter to the councils he says "after 31 August, I will be contacting all councils who have not responded to my call for structural reform and asking them why they believe they should not participate". Councillors and general managers are up in arms at this pressure but do we really care? No-one will be personally devastated by a reduction in the number of general manager positions and the reduction in councillors across the state can only be a good thing. At the same time the Minister for Local Govt. increases the pressure on councils, he had Parliament adopt the Local Government Amendment (Employment Protection) Bill 2003. This was an attempt to introduce in the 1993 Local Government Act the amalgamation protections that previously existed in the old Act. Previously known as section 20C, this provision protected the staff of those councils involved in amalgamations for three years. The benefit of legislative protection is that the Minister's office does not have to provide individual proclamations to accompany individual boundary changes or amalgamations. There remains some fine tuning to be done. The legislation should provide proper protections for all council staff. No-one should have to be relocated in an unacceptable way but this is ordinarily not a problem for members of ours. Fewer general managers and councillors dabbling and fiddling in professional staff responsibilities must be a good thing. And if you saw Four Corners on 7 July about development at Tweed Shire, you would think the sooner the better. The depa Secretary had an hour and a half with the Minister for Local Government on 3 July and depa will be involved in the development of regulations under the Employment Protection Bill. One area of the legislation which is causing alarm is that which prevents a council from making a payment to the general manager or other senior staff member in relation to their termination of employment (and that includes termination on the grounds of redundancy and amalgamation) without first obtaining the Minister's approval. We are unhappy about this and will be doing what we can to ensure that the regulations developed have minimal impact. Government needs to make up its mind - to regulate or not regulate senior staff employment? In the lead up to the 1993 Act, all the people who thought they knew best in the NSW Government claimed that the best thing they could do for local government was to remove senior employees from coverage and protection by the Award and to deregulate that area of employment. They did this because they thought that employees on these salary levels didn't need the protections of industrial tribunals (remember that the Greiner and Fahey governments were generally hostile to employee rights) and because one of the aims of the Local Government Act was to entice high flyers and others from the corporate world into local government. It was thought that would do local government no end of good. We all know that the number of high flyers from the corporate world or private enterprise that chose to enter local government, and who provided positive input, were few. We could almost offer a prize for anyone who can nominate someone who came from interstate, or New Zealand, or anywhere else, that made a positive impact. We know that those who tried it found that there was nothing more irritating than the daily grind of politicians wanting to dabble in their work - something of which the high flyers didn't expect. In the discussions that led to the 1993 Act, those that promoted the idea of deregulating senior employments, so that higher flyers would be attracted, really meant to say that they wanted to deregulate employment so that anyone else other that current local government employees could get the jobs. There was a very anti-local government employee attitude in the 1993 changes. One of the issues which they failed to consider was that if you do genuinely want to attract high flyers from outside local government then they have to be paid well. High flyers fly high. They get good salaries and they get good compensation packages if their contracts aren't completed. The NSW Government can't continue with an attitude of deregulating salaries and conditions for senior staff and general managers while at that same time introducing levels of regulation to prevent maximum payments on termination of contracts. The Government has to make up its mind.
On 3 July the NSW Government announced a review of the development approval process. This was announced partially in a speech by Planning and Infrastructure etc. Minister Craig Knowles during that week. Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 3 July Minister Knowles announced that the single development application process was "cumbersome" and overly expensive for some applicants. The Minister was concerned with criticisms that the DA was expensive because structural details needed to be provided when all the applicant initially wanted was an approval of a concept or envelope. Wait a minute? Is this the same Craig Knowles that as Minister for Planning decided that the old DA/BA process, in itself "cumbersome" and needed to be resolved and streamlined into a single process? Was this the same Craig Knowles who introduced private certification, despite the reservations broadly across local government, and the evidence of such poor practices that led to the Campbell enquiry in 2002? Craig Knowles is back. Those of us with long memories will recall depa's defense of the DA/BA process for those who wanted a two step process. Many councils were able to carry these two processes out in parallel if the applicant wanted to and the system of two separate applications provided a variety of flexibilities and cost savings for applicants. The development application process would allow an applicant to get an approval for the "concept" or the envelope or how the general structure would be placed on the land and the building application process would then allow the applicant to deal with the important considerations like whether the building would actually stand up or not. Assistant Planning Minister Diane Beamer told parliament on 3 July that the government "was determined to introduce a faster, simpler and more efficient DA process". In our publications leading up to the 1997 EPA Amendment Act we said that the government had missed the point by focusing on the introduction of private certifiers to certify compliance when what they really wanted was speeding up the assessment process. We said that it wouldn't be long before the Government would acknowledge that the private certification option didn't speed up assessment and then they could review it again. Our fear in 1997, and this remains our fear now, is that any attempt to speed up the assessment process can only be done at the expense of community participation and community development values. Any changes to current planning legislation which makes life easier for developers can only occur at the expense of the community. Depa will be making a submission and we urge all members to have their councils similarly make submissions to protect their integrity of local government development control. We will start our campaign on 16 July with our first meeting, with Labor Council for support, with the Minister's staff. Term contracts: we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore... The depa Committee of Management has resolved that we will pursue a two pronged attack against term contracts. We have always been opposed to them - we think that they reduce employees entitlements, they remove the protections of permanency for people involved in areas of regulation, planning and compliance and they are simply unnecessary. The depa Committee has resolved to launch an initiative in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to have the Commission remove concepts of term employment for Award- based employees. We are also keen to remove the requirements for senior staff to be placed on term contracts. We have already initiated approaches to discuss these concepts with the government (including the Premier) and have written to the ICAC and the NSW Ombudsman's Office seeking their support in identifying the "corruptibility" issues associated with termcontracts. ICAC Commissioner Irene Moss was in attendance at the Planning Network
conference in the Hunter Valley in May when depa Secretary Ian Robertson
spoke of the need for those involved in regulation, strategic planning
and compliance to have the protections of permanency so that they can
do their job properly. We hope she agrees. As part of this process we need witnesses about how term contracts operate in the industry. We already have two examples of employees being "reminded" by councilors or by a general manager that they need to think carefully about recommendations because their contract is up for renewal. If you have had a similar experience we encourage you to phone the office to discuss this with Ian. Complaints about private certifiers Complaints about private certifiers are increasing. Some of them have been favourites of ours for years. We thought they were entertaining employees when they worked for councils and we think that they are even more entertaining as private certifiers as they rack up a string of complaints and observations about the way they work. The Committee of Management at the July meeting resolved that there needed to be better information available for members to make complaints. Vice-President Frank Boom and Committee member Tania Antony will prepare a pro-forma statuary declaration for our website to assist members making a complaint. Complaints by councils have to be in an appropriate form or they are not processed by the Department of Planning. We think it makes the process a little bit too difficault and will discourage complaints. We are also sure that this is not intentional. In the meantime, complaints about private certifiers should be made direct to: Mr Neil Cox Anyone interested in food surveillance? This has become, in many councils, a neglected area of surveillance. We know we have members doing this work with an interest in ensuring that it remains a local government responsibility and that it is properly resourced. We also know that the NSW Department of Health claims that it is not adequately resourced itself to carry out this role alone. Depa has been represented on the Local Government Strategic Liaison Group which liaises between the Departments of Health and Local Government, Safefood and other interested Local Government organizations. Tony Gleeson, a depa member and employee of Parramatta Council, has been depa's representative. If you have an interest in this area Tony would love to hear from you.
There is a draft food bill 2003 which needs consideration. Tony's contact
details are; Hello Emma! Emma Bennie is our new Office Manager. Hers is the friendly voice at the end of the phone. Say hello next time you ring.
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