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.

Councillors behaving badly Part One - depaNews December 2009

Councillors behaving badly

In September we told the story in depaNews about the poor old blokes at Parramatta Council lumbering around as if the 1993 Local Government Act didn't exist: carrying resolutions about staffing and the performance of staff when that is clearly the role of the General Manager. And has been since the introduction of the 1993 Act: a piece of legislation which is now more than a decade and a half old but we strangely still describe as the "new" Act.

In November we passed on the inspirational news that Lord Mayor Paul Garrard (pictured above) had forbidden managers from dressing casually on mufti day in case he wanted to summon them to his opulent and Regal Mayoral Chambers and they needed to be appropriately dressed to show their respect. Down on your knees, commoners!

The two industrial disputes that depa filed (which had involved bans being placed on certain activities by members) were discontinued in the Industrial Relations Commission on 17 December. Steps had been taken by management to protect the integrity of the planning system without the dabbling of dilettantes and amateurs, councillors were going to receive training about their responsibilities under the Local Government Act and everything was going to be very post-1993.

But not so fast. At a meeting of the Council on 14 December the general manager had sat meekly while the Council carried a resolution delegating to the Lord Mayor that he "retain and instruct" an investigator to review a recent tendering process. This is the same General Manager who sat meekly by while the Council had earlier carried two inappropriate (and incorrect) resolutions about the quality of development control being provided by the Council .

If the meek really are to inherit the earth, then giant slabs of it will be heading towards Parramatta "CEO", Dr Peter Brady.

We have written to the General Manager about this. Sometimes general managers need to be a bit tough with their councillors, telling them what the law actually says about who is responsible for managing staff and that the Local Government Act makes it abundantly clear that it is not the Council, it is the General Manager.

Some general managers are quite prepared to do so. Parramatta general manager, or CEO as he likes to be known, Dr Peter Brady is pictured below driving past the Industrial Relations Commission at the time we were telling the Commission that Dr Brady told us that both he and the councillors understood their roles and the disputes were concluded.

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