2024 depa award for The Worst HR in Local Government

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Published: Friday, 13 December 2024 11:54

How’s HR been this year?

The big achievement of the year for us was the culmination of 36 years of railing against the inappropriateness of term contracts regulating employment - a system that allows councils to get rid of good employees. And railing against the inappropriateness of term contracts for senior staff in the Local Government Act 1993 for 31 years, and in the Exposure Draft Bill for two years preceding that. It’s been a long battle.

It’s a long and painful history, which says a lot about our true grit, the NSW Government deleted reference to senior staff (other than general manager) from the Local Government Act and transitioned existing senior staff across the coverage under the Award or relevant Enterprise in June this year.

It is a significant achievement to roll the protections against unfair dismissal for all other employees in local government to the second level of Council management.

Moves to remove or restrict Working From Home have evolved into a fairly common arrangement of two days a week WFH, and the remainder of the week in the office, with variations between councils about whether an RDO should be taken from home days or the office days. The better arrangements provide flexibility.

Councils are getting used to the rights of employees to disconnect (introduced in clause 21.F of the 2023 State Award), we know many employees are asserting that right, and managers are recognising it. Our four point clarity in the State Award is a much clearer, and facilitative provision, than the more complicated and less facilitative arrangements later adopted federally by Fair Work early this year.

And bit by bit, councils are also acknowledging their obligation to “provide adequate staff and other resources to enable employees to carry out the duties and functions over the course of working hours that are not unreasonable”.

We know from our survey of members during the year that councils are still running understaffed, are still reluctant to pay proper market rates to fill jobs but are more often accepting reduced performance targets to accommodate the number of staff. The obligations under clause 10(ii) give councils a choice - they can spend the money and fill the jobs, or they can adjust expectations.

If your Council hasn’t adjusted their expectations, let us know.

This is the sixteenth year we had of awarded The Golden Turd and it has to be a good sign that we have fewer nominations this year than we have in the past.

We could provide dishonourable mentions:

• again, to those inflicting misery at the City of Ryde;

• the continued embarrassment at Mid Coast, the salary system dispute resolved in February, and some astonishing stupidity with a councillor asking a fundamental question about whether assertions made in depaNews about Mid Coast having won the Golden Turd were true, which ended up in the Federal Court and made the Council look like fools (August issue) but the more venal approach to employees has been modified;

• the worst letter ever written by a CEO to an employee, where the CEO describes themselves in the first person, the second person and even the third person, at Greater Hume;

• Liverpool’s uncooperative resistance as we tried to resolve the folly of decisions putting people in the new Administrative Centre - not just the inappropriate work spaces, but the decision that employees with Council cars they need to do inspections twice a day should be parked 10 or more minutes away, potentially walking there in the rain (or the dark) with files, and wasting more than half an hour of work time in doing so, rather than in the basement of the building, where employees who don’t need to leave the office during the day, get preference because of their status and influence, and the continuing resistance to providing proper sun protection on windows facing west;

• and, the proposal by a relatively new GM at Shoalhaven to restructure in a way that would have created a mega department (that also at the same time separated some of our compliance people from the rest) and that favoured one member of senior staff (the one who went gaga and made last years’ nominations) and would dislocate many - only resolved by what is known now as the “murder-suicide”, when after the local government election a new council encouraged the exit of the GM, and the GM as a final gesture confidentially settled the exit of the Director of Corporate Services;

But when it comes to the crunch, for incompetence and/or ignorance in managing termination processes; for letting decisions be made by people with no experience or knowledge; for providing spreadsheets containing information on tax rates which were accurate and were relied upon by the affected employees, then claiming they were inaccurate based on sub-professional advice after the Council months later changed their mind, and took too much tax,  then extended an apology to depa for having got it wrong.

But they hadn’t, their only apology and confession was yet another mistake - as was revealed during the industrial dispute we filed when the Council accepted that it should have been the lower tax rate all along.

All this confusion, the complete disregard for the welfare and wellbeing of our three terminated members, we only have one nomination and declare them the winners unopposed. An unchallenged winner.

If you need more information, here is a link to the August issue of depaNews, which was completely focussed on this dreadful process.

Eurobodalla Shire Council wins the Award for the Worst HR in Local Government in 2024.

(Please note, we would normally feature one or more of the people responsible, but consistent with an undertaking given to the Industrial Relations Commission during our dispute with Eurobodalla, we are not naming the two primary culprits or the job titles.)

Here we go again, how can HR not understand section 353?

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Published: Friday, 13 December 2024 11:54

Section 353 of the Local Government Act 1993 regulates “other work”, as it is described in the Act. It is not described as “secondary employment” or anything else but it obliges employees to declare “other work” if it “relates to the business of the Council or that might conflict with the member’s council duties”. It does not make the council responsible for managing the obligations of employees in any way.

Simple really, but since 1993 there have been waves of councils misunderstanding the obligations imposed on employees and instead seizing the opportunity to require anyone doing any work at all, in addition to their Council job, to seek approval. This is wrong.

In a depa dispute with Sydney City at the time, the Department of Local Government supported our view that it was the employee’s responsibility and, in a letter dated 7 July 1974, under the signature of the Director General of the Department of Local Government Garry Payne, said this:

“While it is recognised that councils will develop employment practices which reflect their individual approach to staff matters, these policies should not be inconsistent with the Act"

Sydney’s policy was “inconsistent with the Act” and the dispute in the IRC was settled in our favour. Embarrassingly, decades later the City Council reintroduced the inconsistent policy, we filed another dispute and they reverted to the correct policy, but we are now discovering that 30 years after the Act was legislated, councils are reverting to policies which are “inconsistent with the Act”.

If your Council has a policy inconsistent with the Act, let us know and we will happily help them understand how it works. At the moment we are happily helping Randwick (where the GM instantly responded that the policy would be rewritten), Sutherland (where they are in the process of rewriting it), Georges River (which is, at a glacier-like pace, trying to respond to make their policy consistent with the Act), and Port Macquarie Hastings (who were initially reluctant but are also moving slowly towards consistency).

Something we can mop up in 2025.

Liverpool reveals who decided floor plans in the new Administrative Building

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Published: Friday, 13 December 2024 11:54

The great mystery of this is why it would be a secret, or why people would lie about it in the first place. We covered this briefly in the August issue, there had been no consultation with staff about what they needed in their new workspaces even though an Acting Chief People Officer had rejected our requests for evidence of the consultation, asserting that “extensive consultation with staff from the inception of the project to completion” had taken place. That was a lie, and for our members there was no feedback at all about what was being proposed in the move to the new Administrative Centre.

The Council stone-walled, refusing our requests to explain why there hadn’t been consultation, and who had made the decisions - particularly on the ninth floor - to install what became known as “dining tables,” which some anonymous boofheads had decided would seat eight people. This is how the shared tables for eight were pictured:

This image was clearly not to scale. On-site the double computer screens were one continuous barrier from one end of the table to the other, the height of continuous screens meant you couldn’t see the other poor hapless colleagues on the other side of the table, there were issues about connectivity and cabling, the table legs were too monstrous to leave room for people to get their legs under the table and stretch out, people were effectively shoulder to shoulder.

Misleading at the very least, and a hoax at the worst, but these were the drawings upon which the Liverpool City Place Project Control Group made the decision to approve the floor plan on the ninth floor where compliance and members would be working. It was a farce.

In the end, the Acting CEO refused to respond at all, we lodged a GIPA application on 27 June seeking evidence from the Council about when this decision had been made and by whom. Our application was refined in discussions with the Council’s Access to Information Officer on 25 July and the process began.

Clearly the Access to Information Officer was having trouble finding evidence of decision-making but on 27 November, four months after our request was made, some heavily redacted documents were provided. The Council will now also make them available for public access.

Now we know that on 22 June 2023, the Liverpool City Place Project Control Group adopted the fit-out proposed by the developer subject only to funding from the Council. The group included the former CEO (the most recent of the 10 CEOs sacked by the Mayor over an eight year period), and all the directors or acting directors, including some who have said they had no choice at the meeting, although the minutes don’t note that!

The reaction of staff to the requirement to work under these unacceptable conditions prompted the Acting CEO to abandon all the shared desks and tables and provide individual seating/standing desks for everyone. We have no idea what happened to the furniture that had been installed to allow the replacement at some considerable, and undisclosed cost. All because they hadn’t consulted.

As a bonus for our persistence, because the Council couldn’t respond to the GIPA request by the required date under the legislation, depa is entitled to a refund of our $30 application fee!

It was never a big deal, we knew someone had to have decided it, but no one wanted to confess. No wonder there is a Public Enquiry into that Council to try to get to the bottom of how it really functions.

No fee rise in 2025

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Published: Friday, 13 December 2024 11:54

The Committee of Management at their final meeting of the year on 7 November resolved that our membership fees won’t increase in 2025. One of the rewards from prudent financial management. The fees were last increased in 2023 and 2025 will be the third year at the current rates. 

Already the least expensive union in the industry, and becoming even more of a bargain when we do things like this and, we still provide almost instant responses to member requests.

Our fee will remain at $575 for full-time members, $290 for part-time members and $156 for trainees.

More members make it possible to keep our fees low, so it’s in everyone’s interest to sign-up a non-union member workmate (or two,) to make sure we can keep doing this.

Losing your job is one of the great stressors of life

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Published: Thursday, 31 October 2024 23:32

One of the worst experiences in a working life is to be forced from an organisation without your agreement, particularly losing your job in a restructure.

No one wants to leave an organisation other than having made that decision themselves.

There are protective provisions in the State Award about process and payments to be made for employees made redundant and historically in the industry, despite the anxiety of the process, there are good termination payments and entitlements, and for many, new opportunities.

When the process under the Award is followed it’s invariably fairly automatic and it was, early in the year at Eurobodalla, where a restructure removed three of our members. One was senior staff as the Director, and under the bad old rules, 38 weeks and no reason necessary. The other two were Managers, one was accepted by the Council to be a redundancy because her position was removed from the structure and the second was potentially a redundancy because there were significant changes to her job and it was going to be advertised externally. The Council would take advice.

The advice clearly allowed the Council to sign Deeds of Release emphasising the terminations were both redundancies and their entitlements enhanced the Award minimum. It was agreed there would be two payments, the severance payments and pay in lieu of notice in February and an agreement that accumulated leave entitlements, annual and long service leave, would be paid in the next financial year, the first pay period after 1 July - to do the right thing by the employees and provide more beneficial tax arrangements in the next financial year.

But, at Eurobodalla, notwithstanding deeds of release clearly establishing they were redundancies, using that exact word on multiple occasions, and providing exit calculations showing the accumulated entitlements would be taxed at “32%”, when the payments were made in July, the Council had decided that they wouldn’t be taxed at 32%, but at a higher rate - causing significant losses for both the employees.

The members tried to pursue this, found the Council unresponsive and unhelpful and we filed a dispute on 4 September. By that stage it was clear that the Council had decided their initial calculations were wrong, and the employees should be taxed at a higher amount, claiming these were not “genuine” redundancies - even for the manager whose job no longer existed. What the? They didn’t confess to it, we had to pursue them and we worked out that’s the mistake they had made.

Unforgivingly, all this happened five months after the employees had left the Council, with no advice to either of them, nor us, that the Council had changed its mind.

We knew the Council had initial reservations about one of the manager jobs, but we’ve been doing this for so long and the view of the industrial bodies is consistent whether it’s the employer’s organisation or the unions, we can be confident about the sort of advice they would have received. That’s why the deeds used the expression “redundancy” on multiple occasions. The concepts of genuine or non-genuine redundancies is alien to local government, this is an industry where you are either redundant or you’re not. Employees can’t elect, out of the blue to be made redundant.

We thought the Council had simply got it wrong, they attempted to have the proceedings confidential and cover it up and were most concerned about the possibility that we might criticise or attack individual council employees when advising members what was going on. We gave an undertaking to the Senior Commissioner “we will not name or attack any individuals who may have been involved in the process at all.” That’s why this article deals with the Council, and doesn’t allocate any responsibility or blame beyond that.

We agreed. No names, to protect the guilty.

The Council told the Commission that they were seeking advice from Maddocks Lawyers. They were reluctant to disclose the questions they’d asked and we were able in the Commission to have them agree that they would provide us a summary of the questions, because, they said, the advice had been sought verbally. The quality of advice often depends on the question asked and the Senior Commissioner described our concern as avoiding “GIGO”, garbage in, garbage out.

The Council didn’t comply with their undertaking to share the questions, it seems following advice from Maddocks depa was right, and the Council could and should tax at 32% and not a higher figure - all that meaning Council’s vigourous and unpleasant responses to everything we ever said, was totally wrong.

The Council conceded they had taxed the employees at the wrong rate and that they would take steps to reimburse the money that had been wrongly taken from their payments as tax. Winner, one for us.

The Council after this folly, owed the employees an apology. We’d raised that beforehand, they should apologise, and not just because they were so disastrously wrong, but for taking so long defending their indefensible position and making the lives of two employees, who didn’t want to be terminated anyway, even worse. Pretty shameful, really.

The Council agreed that they would “reissue” a letter already provided to the members and incorporate an apology. We undertook that we would not publish those letters, we had seen them already, and we had no intention of publishing them.

However, in reissuing the letters, the Council added two paragraphs, one of which was to do with the apology, so we won’t publish it, but then there was this:

Which taxation rate applied to your unused accrued leave payments involved a complex interpretation of employment and income tax law. The initial classification of your taxation rate was made in good faith based on the information available to Council staff at the time your termination payment was made.

Seriously?  They chose to reject the way the industry manages this every single time, they chose to reject the advice they had been given, they chose to do this apparent “complex interpretation of employment and income tax law”, and we’ve seen no actual evidence that they did, but after all the aggravation it just sounds like BS. It sounds like Donald Trump spoke off-the-cuff.

Have a listen, are we right, or are we right?

An immediate favourite for our prestigious HR awards in December.

This news is too good, and it’s true

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Published: Friday, 09 August 2024 14:39

The NSW Government has announced massive funding of training in local government. $252.2 million will be allocated to councils over the next six years to employ 1300 apprentices and trainees across the state. It is planned to be ready and available for school leavers at the end of this year.

This is delivering on an ALP election promise to provide funding to local government beyond the reach of individual councils. We note and appreciate the role of the USU in both the development of the policy and its delivery. Good job, Graeme.

This will train the next generation of skilled workers, keep jobs in local government and reverse the hostile trend of councils outsourcing jobs to contractors.

Contracting out is a poison across the industry, undermining permanent employment and putting many councils in breach of their obligations under the Local Government State Award to provide full-time permanent employment, and not replace permanent employees with contractors.

We pursued Wingecarribee in November 2021, citing their obligations to provide adequate staff and other resourcing. Then followed an extremely slow restructuring process, and a turnover of directors, one leaving instead of “committing career suicide” by participating in a process that wouldn’t be fully funded.

Our members revealed to a new director at a meeting in January that the Council had 18 external planning contractors with live DAs - yes, that’s not a typo, 18. Not just spending more money than would ordinarily be spent on full-time staff but requiring planning staff to manage and peer review work done by “consultants” who were often less experienced and qualified than they were. The new Director didn’t know the extent of the contracting and left as well.

The Government’s decision will assist in resolving this problem. Premier Chris Minns announced “this is the biggest state government investment in directly hiring new apprentices in recent memory and will play a critical role in building better communities across New South Wales.

From electricians and landscapers to plumbers and planners, these 1300 new apprentices and trainees will play a key role in building the homes and communities of our state’s future.

This investment will make a big difference in smaller towns and regional communities where fewer pathways for formal training currently exist.”

Minister Local Government Ron Hoenig said “Councils have been crying out for a solution to the looming skills crisis for years, but the previous government did nothing to address the problem.

“This funding will provide a much-needed boost for our councils which are responsible for providing the services and facilities communities use every day.”

The Minister said it would ensure councils were well equipped to build the infrastructure facilities and to support growing communities as part of the Government’s commitment to resolving the housing crisis.

The Minister for Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education Steve Whan said, “a decade of neglect and cuts to the skills training in local government sector by the former government has resulted in an alarming shortage of skilled workers and no solutions until now to ensure the sustainability of this critical workforce.”

We don’t normally quote politicians like this, but for $250 million, we can make an exception.

And it’s great news for regional NSW.

It’s time to start thinking about what your community needs, and ensuring that your Council gets its act together to provide proper supervision and mentoring for trainees and apprentices on the program.

This news is so bad, that at Liverpool it has to be true

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Published: Friday, 09 August 2024 14:39

Ten CEOs sacked by the same Mayor in eight years, a current investigation into the Council by OLG, a damning report, legal action by the Council to prevent it continuing and a Minister for Local Government determined to conduct a public investigation of the Council and put in an administrator.

The OLG Interim Report being contested by the Council found maladministration, nepotism, poor financial decisions and concerns about destroyed documents as part of the investigation.

Still, it’s surprising the Council is refusing to answer the relatively simple questions we have asked.

Built as a public project in Liverpool’s CBD, the Council’s Liverpool Civic Place is a 10 storey building and library, car park, intended to accommodate a good proportion of the Council staff. Normally, a decision by Council to build its own Administrative Centre, follows public consultation, and, in its fit out, significant input from staff to ensure optimum working conditions for the future.

Not so at Liverpool. Whether it’s the rapid turnover of CEOs, sacked by the Mayor under the senior staff contract, or whether there are secrets that really can’t be revealed, we thought we were asking pretty straightforward questions. There was no consultation with staff who were provided four weeks’ notice of moving into premises that they were only then allowed to inspect. And they were unsuitable. Massive, shared desks, described as either “workbenches” or “dining tables”, intended to seat eight employees, four a side, knees knocking, no room, with an impenetrable barrier of computer screens down the middle, like some dystopian fantasy. No shading or sun protection from the westerly sun, no parking on-site, which for EHOs and building surveyors doing inspections twice a day, 25 minutes or so walking time between the office and the car park. Hopeless.

The current acting CEO has agreed to spend more public monies removing the workbenches, replacing them with individual sit/stand desks, some undertakings about screening, not yet installed and summer is approaching, and still no solution to the car parking.

Described by the Acting Chief People Officer as “extensive consultation with staff from the inception of the project to completion” the only internal communications the Council could provide were those dated from 14 February this year about the impending move, but they included the critical date of 26 March 2024, when employees saw the site for the first time, before moving in on 6 April.... Seven days’ notice, into a poorly thought out and off the shelf design that satisfied no-one.

We tried to explain the concept of consultation to the acting CEO Jason Breton, who responded “Council will not engage in any further dialogue about the past relocation to Scott Street”. When we responded, he asked to be referred to when he had said that...

So we filed a GIPA application, which is being processed. In the meantime we were told the decisions about how the floor would be laid out and designed were made by a previous ELT - meaning person or persons unknown - and that the current Directors were shown the floors when they were already fitted with furniture and computer connections and everything else, and asked to choose their own floor!

That’s more than we had been told, but there is a public interest here and it shouldn’t be confidential. If it was designed and resolved by the Mayor, they should say so, if it was designed by the building company which was doing everything, then someone must’ve signed off on that being the process. Who was it?

And who was responsible for the decision to leave employees in the dark until days before they were forced to move in?

And this MidCoast news, is just hilarious

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Published: Friday, 09 August 2024 14:39

In our February issue, under the heading “He said what?” we reported on a developing fiasco at MidCoast where a Councillor had asked whether three things reported in the Golden Turd issue of depaNews were true.

Councillor Peter Epov asked, “can the GM confirm that depaNews, for the second year in succession, conferred the ‘Golden Turd Award’ to MidCoast” and whether the claims were correct that “MidCoast Council has had 300 resignations in the past 12 months, as stated in the last report to the Consultative committee” and “Almost 500 of council’s USU (United Services Union) members meeting and rejecting the proposal to the salary system proposed by MCC with not one person supporting them?”

The Council has never told us that those things were untrue, we still believe they are true, but the GM had responded that the matter was confidential due to “personnel matters concerning particular individuals (other than Councillors)” even though the question sought whether the allegations were correct, yes or no, and made no reference to any individual personnel matters.

When the Councillor ignored the inappropriate gag, a Code of Conduct complaint was made against him, the Conduct Reviewer found Epov guilty, he crowd-funded an appeal to the Supreme Court, he won, and the Council was a loser, in more ways than one.

Here is an article in the Daily Telegraph on 28 June and an article in the Newcastle Herald on 4 July when the Council lost the Supreme Court case.

If you were a creative, writing a television satire about local government, you could include this without embellishment. MidCoast is the gift that keeps on giving.

This news is confusing, and there may be legal issues, but HR tells us to relax

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Published: Friday, 09 August 2024 10:47

On 1 August, the new CEO at Shoalhaven City Council, Robyn Stevens, met with three Directors and told them she was restructuring and they would be terminated under their standard contracts and paid a redundancy. She provided organisation charts and details and followed this up with a slideshow for 30 or so managers that would see the new structure implemented on 4 November, and included even more organisational structures. No imprecision, a commitment that this would happen, and will happen by 4 November.

This is very unusual timing (potentially unprecedented) for a CEO to initiate a restructure so close to an election. The community will get a chance to vote on 14 September, and the caretaker period, where councils can’t do much prior to an election, starts in a week’s time.

More importantly, section 223 of the Local Government Act makes it abundantly clear that it is the Council’s responsibility to resolve the structure, not the GM/CEO.

There are two potential breaches of the Local Government Act here - section 223 prescribing the Council’s right to determine the structure after consulting with the GM, and providing that establishing the structure is the responsibility of the Council, and section 337 requiring the Council to be consulted on the dismissal of senior staff.

In neither the meeting with the directors who will be sacked, nor with the 30 managers, did the CEO and slides acknowledge the Council’s role in determining the structure, nor in the termination of senior staff.,

A week later, on 8 August she issued an email to all staff under her signature and with the subject “Proposed change of operating structure”, proposing a new structure of four directorates, consolidated functions, and “the disestablishment” of City Development, City Lifestyles and City Futures. Clearly written by someone unfamiliar with HR practices and restructuring, the GM says “I have proposed a new structure for the organisation”. The word “proposal” and the advice that “Consultation has now commenced” made it clear  this was happening, whether people liked it or not.

The Award establishes a “pre-proposal” period and a “proposal” period, with different requirements. Neither term was used to clarify how this workplace change would roll out and this put everyone on the back foot. We emailed the Council saying that we hadn’t been advised as we were required to under the Award, to receive a phone call from HR, valiantly putting to us that although not specified in the communication, it was intended to be a “pre-proposal”. With a proposal to follow…

Given that the proposal is the GM’s own, and that there are documents with organisation charts identifying what will be merged and things that might disappear, that seems odd. And it seems even more odd that in the slide showing the process, 14 October is a step identified as “Seek approval from CEO”.

And what all that means, is the CEO has designed her operational structure and is proposing it, there will be consultation and then the CEO will approve it! This only falls short of the abject stupidity at Hawkesbury last year, when a Director made a complaint against the behaviour of a member, investigated the complaint herself, and then found that it was not sustained!

We’ve been told by HR that even though it wasn’t said, it was intended to be a “pre-proposal” period, so we can all relax. It’s hard to relax when we know that there are documents already prepared, so we won’t.

The confusing email should be reissued, no one understands it, and it’s creating the sort of concern it suggests should be the subject of professional counselling, “if needed”!

The timing with the election, the apparent belief that this will be implemented by 4 November, will require a new Council - half the councillors are not seeking re-election which has significant implications for a change – to make a fundamental decision about the new structure, when they won’t have any idea about the current structure. The CEO must think she has a better hope with this Council, than the next one.

Yesterday a Notice of Motion was lodged for the next council meeting, “That the CEO be requested to withdraw any proposed changes and potential redundancies and hold the planned restructure of Directorates until after the New Council has been installed and consulted.”

Hear, hear!

Sophie to the rescue!

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Published: Friday, 14 June 2024 12:15

There will no longer be “senior staff” under the Local Government Act and existing senior staff members will be able to request transition to the State Award, or Enterprise Agreement if their Council has one. When a request is made to transition to the Award or EA “Councils must not unreasonably refuse such a request.” If they do, the employee has access to Industrial Relations Commission to contest the Council’s decision.

No more section 340 of the Local Government Act preventing senior staff from contesting industrial matters or dismissal. What an astonishing transformation, long-awaited, significantly belated and all thanks to Sophie Cotsis, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Work Health and Safety after she took charge of something that had languished in the Minister for Local Government’s office for more than a year.

Then it all happened, a draft Bill was prepared by the Department of Industrial Relations and the Minister's office, consultation with the three unions and LGNSW, and on Wednesday 8 May, the Minister presented the Local Government Amendment (Employment Arrangements) Bill 2024 to the legislative assembly and made her second reading speech.

No wonder that the pic above shows a triumphant Minister and three equally triumphant local government union secretaries.

The second reading resumed on 15 May where the Opposition supported the proposal and it was passed through the Legislative Assembly, without dissent, then introduced into the Legislative Council on 15 May and passed, again without opposition or dissent. Everyone made speeches about the lessons of corruptibility and unfairness revealed by Operation Dasha into the former Canterbury in 2021 and endorsed the concept of fairness for senior staff as if this was the first time anyone had the opportunity to think about it.

It wasn’t of course - a number of them are former councillors who provided examples and assertions of unfairness that they’d witnessed but done nothing about at the time, nor after becoming a member of Parliament.

The NSW Governor assented to the bill on 31 May (another anachronism from our colonial past) and it is now law.

And everyone will have to comply, including the troglodyte opponents who have lost the right to sack good people without good reasons.

Thanks Sophie!