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.

Sex, lies and development – depaNews February 2008

Lunch with minister only $5100 – February 2008

Sex, lies and development

There have been better times to work in planning and development control in local government. No one doing so can be immune from the community's perception of relationships between local government at Wollongong and developers revealed, on a daily and increasingly astonishing basis, in the ICAC.

The taint spreads well beyond Wollongong and while it's inappropriate to say too much before the Commission hands down its findings, one confessed bad apple can have devastating effects on the barrel. The message is beware. We can understand why those innocently caught up in the exercise come to the realisation that the safest thing to do is assume everyone is a crook.

In the past 10 years the ICAC has claimed some local government scalps. In the 90s they said that the potential for corruption in development control was so open and available that it was surprising how few Council employees actually took advantage of it. It was a testament to the integrity of council staff. Many, many more councillors had been exposed than employees.

It may have been a surprise to the ICAC but this doesn't surprise us. Many years ago (probably 1985 or 1986) Nick Greiner, at that time Leader of the New South Wales Opposition spoke at the annual conference dinner of the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors. He said there were three great lies in life: my cheque is in the mail, I’ll love you in the morning and I'm from the Council and I'm here to help.

Nick was short on sensitivity and didn't get the idea that people who choose to work in local government really do think they're here to help. We understand that because we see countless daily examples of competent, caring and ethical professionals working across New South Wales protecting the health, environmental and development interests of their local communities. And so do you.

But it's timely to provide a reminder of the view we regularly publish than when it comes to the discretionary area of pecuniary interest declarations, we think it makes sense to declare everything. Coffees, lunches, whatever. It doesn't really matter what the Council wants you to declare (because Codes of Conduct are dynamic documents that sometimes lag behind community and public perceptions) and it doesn't really matter if people think you are being a bit extreme declaring a sandwich, it's all about risk management.

But the immediate observation has to be the double-standards. While the reformers and critics of local government want it to be more like the private sector, the ICAC wants standards of propriety that would bring the private sector (and private certifiers’ businesses) to a grinding halt.

It's not just local government exposed at Wollongong. Political relationships between one ex-staff member at Wollongong and the ALP and the NSW Government ensured that questions are being asked about many others as well. Coinciding with the murkiness at Wollongong are the revelations about contributions by developers to political parties and who pays what to have dinner with whom.

The ALP is the principal recipient and our memory extends back far enough to recall that at the time developers got the right to buy their own private certifiers from Craig Knowles, developers were the largest contributions to the NSW Branch of the ALP. Funny about that.

$5,100 seems a lot to pay to have lunch with Planning Minister Frank Sartor. We know it was a fundraiser and all that, and a fairly common way of political parties doing business, and we also know that Frank is great company, a raconteur and storyteller but, depa has found that the Minister also responds favourably to a carefully worded letter.

While there were a few members who thought our January letter was a bit sub-professional there were even more members who thought that our language was far too temperate and polite. Suffice to say, it's hard to get Ministers of the Crown to pay attention to anything you want to say these days and our letter clearly worked.

A full and frank (if you'll pardon the expression) disclosure of views took place and the time with the Minister at least allowed him to understand our irritation at his unfounded allegations about Council staff, our concerns about the expansion of private certification and our worry that the concept of consultation with the community was really a hoax. Frank really didn't care about the letter, won't apologise - although understood why we were distressed, and invited us to participate in this Working Party. Total cost to depa, one $10 taxi. Okay, it's now out in the open.

The letter is temporarily removed from the website as a sign of good faith. Before it was removed, however, it created a record for the site. Many, many more hits than we have members and, as far as the Local Government and Shires Association is concerned, probably the best thing we have ever done.

But there is no shaking the Minister's conviction and we should prepare ourselves for the worst.

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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depa Golf day 2015