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.

Love him or loathe him - depaNews October 2007

Whether you love him or loathe him, or haven't made up your mind, he’s made up his mind about you

Well, what a bummer. We know that John Howard hates union bosses. That's what he calls the democratically elected officials of unions who get their jobs, and retain them, by having members of the unions vote to appoint them - just like the process of election in Bennelong. But the Howard Government conveniently ignores this democratic process and demonises people acting in the interests of their members as union bosses.

My mother taught me that if you can't say something nice, then you shouldn't say anything at all and while a succession of planning ministers, boofhead councillors, tedious and unimaginative general managers and know-nothing human resource professionals (sic) test my commitment to mum’s advice, clearly John Howard's mum didn't teach her kids such good manners.

But with the election now announced for 24 November, the Prime Minister reveals its not just union bosses he doesn't like. He doesn't like you either.

The Coalition's first election television ad asked the question " Who is more likely to put Australia's economy at risk?" - contrasting the options of "pro-growth" nice blokes like Howard and Costello with pictures of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan imposed on L plates.

But wait, there's more. Can there be anything worse than learners? Yes, there can, and its "trade unionists". And "anti-business" ones at that.

We know that many of you are easily offended and the idea that you belong to a union, in the eyes of the Government makes you one of those horrible "trade unionists" and that, of course, means you’re anti-business. Shame on you!

We think it's appalling.

More appalling though, is that the Government keeps making the assertion linking trade unionists, growth and the concept of anti-business in a climate where for the past five or 10 years, the best performing superannuation schemes have been Industry Funds, where "trade unionists" sit on boards in equal representation to employer representatives. These funds (and the Local Government Superannuation Scheme, although a government fund is essentially an industry fund) are always found to outperform corporate funds because they are run providing all profit to members. What, does that mean that the Government's obsession with demonising union bosses and union members as being bad for growth/business is wrong?

We also think it's a sign of panic. In the last few weeks there have been two extraordinary examples of the Government launching unacceptable attacks upon academics whose only crime has been to carry out independent research and find that WorkChoices has damaged people's lives and incomes.

On Tuesday 2 October, a comprehensive study on work and life in Australia was released by the University of Sydney's Workplace Research Centre. Jointly funded by UnionsNSW and the Federal Government, it found, amongst other things, that average full-time workers on Australian Workplace Agreements were $106 a week worse off than those on collective agreements. $106 each week.

"Avuncular" Joe Hockey (as he was described by Prime Minister Howard when he was appointed as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to try and recover from the fiasco of Kevin Andrews) immediately launched a defamatory attack upon the authors of the research as well as the significance of 50% of the funding coming from UnionsNSW.

Describing academics who had never worked for unions as "trade union officials who are parading as academics", Hockey didn't hold back. Joined by Treasurer Peter Costello (who was formerly an infamous anti-union Victorian solicitor) they launched a partial, jaundiced and unfair attack upon the research. Soiled and infected by UnionsNSW (depa is affiliated to Unions NSW, so some of the funding would have come from us) he claimed it had to be tainted - even though half the funding came from a Federal research body notorious for being fastidious about research funding and proper scientific method and standards.

None of the four academics had worked as union officials and one of them had never even been a member of a union.

It's shameful and we hope the respected academics at Sydney University act on their legal advice and take defamation action against Minister Hockey. If there's something wrong with the research method, then the research method should be attacked. If there's nothing wrong with the method, then the Government should do something about WorkChoices.

Sadly for the Government, it's hard to find research, done by anyone, that shows that WorkChoices has had a positive effect on employees and Hockey is an old hand at dishonest attacks on academic research. His distorted and untruthful allegations about Professor David Peetz, the author of research from Griffith University which did not please the Government earlier this year, continued to be made after the independence of the research was clearly established and academics rushed to express their outrage at the unfair attacks.

Earlier this month at a public forum at Sydney University, Harvard University Professor of Economics Richard Freeman, claimed that WorkChoices was a "complete distortion of the most conservative economic thinking on how you would make efficient bargaining". He claimed it was "a law that does not seem to follow any economic principle for labour institutions in a market", it represented "outdated" rather than modern thinking and "previous proponents of the reform principles on which it was based - those of the early 1990s capitalist system - had already changed their minds".

Professor Freeman claimed "the outside world is interested because this is a unique experiment … it is unique in that it is large-scale reform that was not precipitated by any economic crisis, industrial disputes were down, the economy was good, and unions were fading away".

Sara Charlesworth is an academic who co-wrote a report for the Victorian Employment Advocate, which was released on 9 October and found some negative impact around maternity leave arising from WorkChoices. Charlesworth was phoned by an officer from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations after the research was published and asked if she "had a union background".

It's not really a question of whether you love or loathe John Howard. While he might have missed out on some important lessons about good manners from his mum and while he might be less than scrupulous with the truth, he is a good role model for older people to keep active with his morning walking program and he hugs his kids.

We think it is more important that he loathes you.

Finally, if you would like to see the Coalition's election ad about nasty "trade unionists" you can do so using this link.

And if you feel like a laugh, you can use this link and see a satire of the ad. Minor language warning, so don't blame us.

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