• 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

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. Join depa online now

Debate on IR policy – depaNews August 2007

IR policy...the simple explanatory booklet cartoon – August 2007

New depths plumbed in unsophisticated debate on industrial relations policy

As the election gets closer, debate on industrial relations policy taps new depths. How else do you explain the Government’s fascination with the hoary old concept of "union bosses"? Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist Moir got it right in the cartoon that leads this Bulletin.

Whether the Government is tapping into recent market research or polling in the community showing an increasing mistrust and anxiety about trade unions and those elected to lead them, or whether this is simply their politics and hatred showing, there is a simple truism discovered when market researchers ask people about unions. And it is this:

While union members might be sceptical about the way other unions behave, and the way officials of other unions might be perceived, they never really feel like that about their own union. People have a different connection with their union to other peoples’ unions. That's why you find a specific attachment that is not reflected as a general view to all unions. It's also hard to look at the charming, benign and pleasant members of depa’s Committee of Management in the context of the Howard Government’s demonising of thuggish and boorish union bosses. Cripes, everyone’s elected and elected officials reflect the membership - just like in other unions.

And while union coverage has been declining over the last decade or so (although there has been a resurgence accompanying the anxiety about Workchoices) in industries like local government and the public sector, there has been no decline.

We make no apologies for supporting a system that allows us to negotiate a new Local Government (State) Award every few years or so. We did that with the other unions in the industry in negotiation with the employers represented by the Local Government Association and Shires Association. The system that allowed us to do that also allowed us to manage industrial disputes and minimise industrial action. It's hard to find anything wrong with that and it has worked like that for more than a hundred years.

In February we said in our Bulletin to members:

Living with WorkChoices: full steam into the fog. Nothing clear about councils and WorkChoices.

The High Court didn't clarify whether councils are constitutional corporations. That is an argument yet to be had in some court somewhere else. In the meantime, some councils have been happy to sign Referral Agreements with the local government unions and keep the management of industrial disputes and unfair dismissal applications operating in the New South Wales Industrial Relations system. Others have hedged their bets, asserting that they are a constitutional Corporation and therefore all will start "taking advantage" of the (nasty) options available in the Federal Legislation.

90 councils have already signed Referral Agreements. This removes the question of whether they are constitutional corporations or not because, regardless of this issue, they have agreed to continue with the well-managed arrangements of the past and have their industrial relations managed in the State system.

In case there is any doubt, and in case your council has not yet signed a Referral Agreement, we think everyone should.

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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