• 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

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LGS launches special holiday arrangements for members

Details
Published: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 09:29

LGS Board members Bruce Miller and Martin O’Connell (pictured above) today announced that Local Government Super will now provide “sustainable” and low emission holidays and travel plans for members of the fund. Bruce Miller was Chair of the Board and Martin O’Connell Deputy Chair in 2014 when the board resolved to remove the ban on investment in nuclear and uranium. At the time they announced that nuclear energy was a “low emission” alternative to fossil fuels and, if you are looking at things in one dimension, as they were, then nuclear energy was an environmentally more friendly option than fossil fuels.

And consistent with their commitment to nuclear energy and uranium, LGS has now revealed a commitment to uranium and nuclear themed holidays and holiday destinations.

“There‘s lot of misinformation about nuclear energy”, a slightly glowing Mr Miller (or Mr O’Connell) claimed at the launch, “and we aim to build on our enhanced reputation embracing nuclear energy and uranium to allow members of the fund to go to places that people with a narrow focus wouldn’t ordinarily regard as a great destination for a holiday.”

The fund announced two vacation packages.

Chernobyl Chillout

“The Ukraine is a great place to visit at any time,” either Mr Miller or Mr O’Connell said, “cold one day, bloody freezing the next and a perfect place to chill. Who wouldn’t want to visit Chernobyl, the jewel in the crown of the Ukraine?  No wonder the Russians want it back. Spacious and empty hotels, broad open areas and our own masterchefs providing everything you’d like eat to make the trip a real hit - all grown locally and something that will give you a real glow when you come back to Sydney. Everyone will know you’ve been somewhere special. Forget coming home with a tan and having everyone know you’ve had a holiday at the beach, you can come home and glow in the dark.

“Sick of the crowds in Europe and Asia? Come with us on a tour to Chernobyl and enjoy the freedom to do whatever you like with no one in the way. Also a great opportunity to inspect troop movements or pick through the wreckage of Malaysian airline flights."

Fukushima Frolic

“Wow, we could have all been Fukushimaed if the reactors had all melted down but it was really just a minor incident, and wouldn’t have been a problem except for the weather. And the weather is something completely unforeseeable when you’re managing the risk of an alternative energy source” said either Bill or Martin.

“Fukushima is a great destination for all the family. Unusually for a holiday in Japan this is a location that doesn’t specialise in seafood, so it’s perfect for those who don’t like fish. Or the ocean, or anything that lives in it.

“And a great opportunity for the kids too. The 150,000 bags of radioactive waste make the Fukushima Maze, now sponsored by LGS as a private equity investment and known as the LGS FU Maze, a real treat for the whole family. The English might have old-fashioned hedge mazes, but you can’t go past the thrill of all those bags of radioactive waste, sitting there for almost eternity, and providing a perfect place for a challenge. Hedges get old and die but this maze will live forever.

“Had the fun of losing the kids at the Green Man Maze in Powys or the Peace Maze in County Down, or any of the other brilliant mazes in the UK? Nothing compares to losing them here”.

LGS FU Maze

Robbo's Pearls...

Je ne regrette rien

Lucky Edith Piaf, not regretting anything. Who wouldn’t like to live their life like that. Here are some of our regrets over the last 33 years:

The first historic consensus opposing the introduction of term contracts for senior staff was in 1991, and included the employers’ organisations as well as the predecessor of Local Government Professionals (sic), the Institute of Municipal Management. We regret the employer’s organisation abandoning that position, and the history of antagonism to getting rid of the concept of senior staff by LG Professionals (sic).

We regret that LGNSW, up until they responded to the recommendations in Operation Dasha, participating in the unfair dismissal of more senior staff and particularly general managers than anyone else, and probably collectively, more than everyone else.

The role of the Cabinet Office in 1998 rolling the recommendation made by the Local Government Minister at the time Ernie Page, in the five year review of the Local Government Act, that term contracts should be removed because of anticipated flowback into the State SES - which was nonsense. And the decision of the Cabinet that fell for it.

The role of the Office of Local Government, and their SES staff who had been provided with permanent tenure by the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (something that in the local government we knew nothing about) not flowing a similar provision for senior staff in local government when the SES had been a model for that arrangement in 1993.

OLG’s historic defence of their standard contract and assertion in a variety of investigations, including Operation Dasha, supporting “the “termination without reasons clause... in the event that there was a breakdown in the relationship between the Councillors and the general manager”

And in taunting local government that if they ever delivered a consensus view between the employers and the unions, they would deliver that through the Minister, and then failing to do so.

ICAC in 2002 after investigating Rockdale Council and making findings about corrupt councillor behaviour made observations about “the importance of protections for local government employees involved in the development process”, and then did nothing about it.

ICAC in July 2003, considering correspondence from depa identifying “corruptibility issues that arise from term contracts” after both Rockdale and Tweed, and doing nothing about it, and in a meeting with us in July that year having some pious wanker reject our concerns which he asserted “to some extent that’s the obligation of public service”.

The ICAC 2016 report in Operation Farra at Mid-Western Council observed “the ‘no reason’ provisions in the standard contract, however, could create an uncertain employment environment for a general manager. The Commission’s concern is that such uncertainty could be used to improperly influence the action of a general manager” and, then did nothing about it.

And in Operation Dasha ignoring the submission depa had made about problems with planning and the employment relationships of senior staff, with recommendations for change, that included repealing section 340. We should have been called to give evidence.

We were not able to reach agreement between the unions and LGNSW on transitional arrangements for senior staff similar to the employment protections in section 354D of the Local Government Act continuing senior staff on “the same terms and conditions that applied to the staff member immediately before the transfer day.” This had been the unions’ collective position for a number of months until abandoned in a meeting depa could not attend on 19 March, when an agreement was made by everyone else for what is in the current arrangements.

And obviously I regret spending an hour and a half at the dentist that day and being unable to argue against that happening, and forgetting the first rule of politics - “be there”.

How it could happen that this legislation was carried without dissent, with the support of the Liberal/Coalition Opposition and all Independents, who for most of those years opposed doing anything about this, but who nevertheless subsequently found an interest in doing something about unfair employment practices for senior staff and thought they should trumpet as if it were a revelation, and their idea.

Nevertheless, we record our appreciation and acknowledgement of three people and their critical role in moving LGNSW towards this position in 2021 - President Linda Scott, CEO Scott Phillips and Director Workforce and Legal, Adam Dansie, notwithstanding his awful advice given to Campbelltown to unfairly legitimise disadvantage against a group of employees, predominantly our members.

The LGEA has participated in support over this time, and the USU which, while they were late to the party, they brought a connection to Government, without which this would not have happened. And the new CEO of OLG, doing his best to get over the abject failures and connivance of the past.

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