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Published: Wednesday, 22 June 2022 12:47
It was a long time coming and hugely anticipated from the merger of Hurstville and Kogarah in 2016 to create Georges River, with the high profile major players, one Liberal and one Labor, happy to help developers by overriding planning proposals from Council staff. In doing so, they created an environment hostile to staff, particularly senior staff, that explains why Georges River spent over $200,000 in 2019/20 on code of conduct complaints, more than $2.5 million to date on legal costs associated with the current three year ICAC investigation, Operation Galley, and another $1.2 million in the draft budget for 2022/2023 to cover the continuing costs of the investigation.
The ICAC is currently investigating two current councillors, Labor’s Vince Badalati and the Liberals’ Con Hindi (yes Con, maybe better to revert to Constantine now) and one former councillor, independent Phillip Sansom.
These three are being pursued to determine whether they “sought and/or accepted benefits as an inducement or reward for partially and dishonestly exercising their official functions to favour the interests“ of two big developers. The Corruption Commission is also investigating whether between 2014 and 2021 the three councillors “deliberately failed to declare or properly manage any conflict-of-interest arising from their relationships with” the two developers.
But wait there’s more, they are also investigating whether the two developers “provided benefits, including overseas flights and accommodation to Councillors Hindi, Badalati and Sansom, as a reward or inducement to favour their interests in relation to Council decisions regarding planning matters” affecting what have been described as the Treacy Street and Landmark Square developments.
ICAC investigations can be slow and grinding affairs, witnesses hedging, dodging and weaving, but the first witness, former Mayor Badalati, confessed that on two occasions a developer had provided him with a bag of cash, once containing $70,000 and on the second occasion, $100,000. Uh oh, and that he was with Councillor Hindi at the time and he received the same payments
Councillor Hindi has not yet given evidence but there have only been two days of hearings, opening submissions and while Badalati has confessed, Hindi and Sansom are yet to give evidence.
It’s astonishing how much time and effort can be spent on one councillor - in the last 12 months reporting period, Georges River forwarded 28 Code of Conduct complaints to the Office of Local Government, 22 of which related to Hindi. What an astonishing waste of ratepayer funds that could have filled staff positions and provided services.
This is a story that will continue. It comes as an enormous relief to Council staff whose recommendations have been overridden and whose focus on proper, orderly and lawful planning, has been treated with contempt. It’s been a hostile, aggressive and bullying environment for staff and while it’s clear that ICAC will get scalps, it’s more important to normalise relationships between councillors and Council staff, and to have those surviving councillors develop a proper respect for each other’s role. And stop the harassment.
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Published: Wednesday, 22 June 2022 12:47
The former CEO of OLG, Tim Hurst, for years told the unions and LGNSW that all we needed to do was to have a consensus position and OLG would refer it to the Minister and get things happening. With hindsight, clearly he was taunting us, because he would not have thought a consensus possible, but since October last year (yes eight months ago) there has been a consensus between the employers’ organisation and the unions to amend the Act so that the only senior staff employee would be the GM. And all other current senior staff positions would be employed under the Award.
Unfair and unreasonable sackings of people who should not have been sacked have been business as usual in the industry, and include close enough to 20 GMs sacked, or who’ve resigned, since the local government elections in December last year.
In 2016, the ICAC first referred to the need to review “no reason” sackings when councillors at Mid-Western had threatened the GM that if he didn’t sack the Director of Planning, and for good measure, also the Director Corporate Services, they would sack him. In a more focused way, the Commission referred to the unacceptable nature of “no reason” terminations in Operation Dasha into the former Canterbury and recommended it be fixed.
Too many GM’s have been threatened that if they didn’t sack the Director of Planning (the usual threat), the Council would sack them. This is a significant corruption risk but one where removing the risk is easy. Easy or not, it’s not being embraced as an easy solution to a corruption risk and facilitated as quickly as LGNSW and the unions would like.
OLG’s regular meetings with the employers and unions operate confidentially but it can be said that in the eight months, there has been limited action to keep the Minister briefed, and if there is to be some consultation with the industry, no one is rushing into it.
Things just move slowly, there is a backlash by tyrants and those reluctant to forfeit their right to sack unfairly, running stealthily in the background. Clandestine and secretive, none of the opponents are game to publish anything for fear of appearing self-seeking, naive or clueless, or unaware how employment works under the Award.
The employers’ representatives and the unions have now agreed to put together a brief rebuttal of the arguments being discussed in clandestine and secret places. If the tyrants are so confident, why can’t they put it in writing for a proper debate?
Mosman Council was prepared to identify six easily rebuttable reasons when they forced a review of the October decision at the special LG NSW conference in March and where the position of the LGNSW Board was unanimously endorsed.
The Act could be changed by the end of this year, we’ve seen how quickly, almost instantly, the Minister and those responsible for the process can move during COVID, but it will require something more than the sloth-like progress from OLG, and that in turn slowing the Minister, for this to happen.
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