• 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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IRC orders Hurst 'apology' published - depaNews December 2010

 

IRC orders Wagga Wagga to publish Hurst "apology"

We have spent a lot of time in the Commission this year with Deputy President Grayson trying to settle issues that arose from a complaint made by local developer Peter Hurst. We started running details of this dispute in the August issue and have provided links to a number of recommendations and statements made by the Commission.

In short, we now have a new template for how aggrieved employees in local government can deal with members of the community/developers/nutters/whatever, making unsupportable, untrue and baseless allegations. We look forward to applying that template to others next year.

In this dispute Peter Hurst advised the Council through his solicitors that he was prepared to apologise to employees concerned when his allegations were all dismissed after a comprehensive investigation conducted by the Council’s Internal Auditor. Then, he changed his mind.

But before he changed his mind, we had drafted the apology we thought appropriate, it was endorsed by a meeting of our members at Wagga Wagga, the Industrial Relations Commission thought it reasonable and the General Manager agreed that it was appropriate. The General Manager wrote to Mr Hurst and asked that he agree.

Sadly he wouldn't but we still believe the apology appropriate, the Council agreed that they needed to protect the reputation of their employees to ensure that a well-publicised and widely-distributed complaint was baseless and had been dismissed, and Deputy President Grayson on 16 December ordered that the Council publish by paid advertisement in the Daily Advertiser a brief introduction and the apology sought.

The Commission's order means that the Council has 28 days in which to have the advertisement published.

As those of you who regularly receive development applications from small developers (in both senses) no one would be surprised that he called upon the developer's prerogative to change their mind.

We will publish the content of the advertisement next year. We don't want to spoil the surprise when it hits the deck in the Daily Advertiser.

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