Special flying pigs issue: things we thought improbable start coming true

We have rewarding meeting with BPB!

 BPB Chair Sue Holliday has been keen to establish better relations with depa and has set up regular meetings as we work our way through issues associated with the accreditation of council employees.

On 15 June depa representatives Vice President Jamie Loader and I met with the entire Building Professionals Board. They had just finished their June meeting and all members of the Board but one stayed to provide us with some news about a variety of issues that we had been concerned about as the accreditation program rolled out.

It was hard not to mention our historic attitude (we mentioned it once but I think we got away with it) but now, trying to live with the reality, we are encouraging members to get accredited and at the highest levels possible.

The following issues were clarified:

• The BPB Act 2005 does not allow the fining of institutions, so Councils will not be liable for penalties arising from the accreditation of their staff and we had already been assured by the Board that the system will not provide for financial penalties against council employees.

• The NSW Government’s legislative program will not allow regulatory change (as anticipated about fining accredited Council employees etc) until sometime after October but the BPB undertakes not to take action despite this regulatory imprecision.

• There will be no exemptions for councils from accreditation because the Board believes "every council can make practical arrangements".

• Conflict-of-interest issues arising from section 66 and 68 of the Building Professionals Act 2005 will be resolved by regulation. There were two issues dealt with in our letter to the BPB of 14 May link

Firstly, on the issue of a Council employee certifying the work done by their employing Council, the BPB has determined that it will be prohibited for employees of a Council to certify an application by their own Council. We were a bit surprised to hear that this is happening at all as the ICAC railed against this more than a decade and a half ago. So, if the Council needs someone to certify its own construction, it will need to make an arrangement with an adjoining council. This should be relatively easy to achieve – you certify my compliance and I’ll certify yours etc.

Secondly, on the issue of a council employees certifying work arising from applications by other employee of the same Council, the BPB has determined that this is acceptable. And so it should be. This will be all be clarified by regulation after October.

• Council employees without sufficient specific building courses in the UWS degree (and now UWS is no longer an option to conclude these courses) will be required to do an "equivalent of those courses, chiefly those offered by UTS. We are still engaging with the BPB over this because we have had some members told that UTS courses, now claims to be "equivalent" to the building courses at UWS, are not acceptable. We will clarify this.

We have very little information about what councils are actually doing to have staff accredited before the end of August. We are recommended that as many people as possible be accredited, and at the highest levels, before the deadline.

The BPB claims that there are some councils not responding at all (and we don't know who they are) and in some cases they have found councils where the designated contact person won't return calls. And we think we can understand why.

Sometimes people need to be told things that they may not like but it was important that the Board understood that the appointment of the Board's Local Government Liaison Officer was not an enormously popular appointment in local government. Good bloke or not, we have had many members complain to us about not wanting to speak to someone who had left local government to operate as a private certifier and had championed and lobbied for the private certification system as President of both the NSW and National bodies of AIBS. Local government employees have a long memory about people who go to the dark side.

And this appointment was complicated by the Board Liaison Officer’s emailing to contact people in the industry without removing references to his own private building consulting service and suggesting that information could be copyrighted by his own company. Our complaint to the BPB about what had clearly been just lazy or an administrative oversight has had an instant response. That reference is now deleted and it won't happen again.

If you are interested, you can see our exchange with Neil link

We will be meeting again with the BPB on 27 July.

NSW government does the right thing on GIPA!

In February when reports on the implications of the Government Information (Public Access) Act started filtering out we asked the Local Government and Shires Association to convene a meeting of the three local government unions and the Office of the Information Commissioner from the Attorney-General’s Department.

They did this and we met on 29 March. At the time the two public servants from the Office advised that there was no Commissioner appointed, the Act was in fact an Act and not a Bill (and unfortunately none of us had been consulted in its construction) but there was at this stage no date for its operation and there wouldn't be until the Commissioner was appointed.

Our concern was that it appeared that the pecuniary interest declaration of designated officers (and that includes a great number of our members) may be required to be published on the Council's website and be available to everyone in the world. And if it wasn't a direct requirement, it appeared that there may be a discretion for councils to do this and, as we all know, as soon as the council gets a discretion, some boofhead will misuse it to our disadvantage. Particularly when the people responsible for exercising his discretion may not be designated persons themselves.

We have had a bit of a history about how councils provide access to members of the public (as they are required to do by the Local Government Act) and had a dispute with Blue Mountains at one stage. We have always thought it made sense to records to be kept of those members of the public who do want to seek specific access to PI declarations. We think that historically there has been a reasonable correlation between members of the public who want to do this and subsequent problems.

The Office of the Information Commissioner has now decided to issue guidelines to local government which make it clear that the publishing of pecuniary interest declarations is inappropriate.

The guidelines went on to be website of the Office of the Information Commissioner last week. You can find them at www.oic.nsw.gov.au

Progress in State Award negotiations!

 Having been involved in the negotiation of the Local Government Awards since 1984 (from the days of half a dozen awards until the introduction of the Local Government State Award in 1992 and the completed Consolidated Local Government State Award in 1995) the process has often been slow, occasionally painful and sometimes almost glazier-like in its progress. Sometimes it's been a case of one step forward and two steps back.

There are now three days of conciliation before Deputy President Grayson in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to try to resolve those issues where the parties can't quite reach agreement. Some predominantly USU issues were dealt with today and time has been set down on 12 and 29 July. Some additional time will be set to allow the new Award to be considered by members and commence operation from 1 November 2010.

Importantly for us, there is agreement in principle with the LGSA that costs associated with accreditation by the BPB are appropriately paid by councils. We are working on the appropriate wording to go into the Award.

Hackers win depa Cup! And the Mayor presents the Cup!

We reported in the April issue how a team of maximum handicappers from Leichardt Council won the depa Cup on Union Picnic Day in March. Just to show this really is a land of opportunity.

Last week the Mayor of Leichardt Councillor Jamie Parker presented the depa Cup in the historic nineteenth century Council Chambers in Leichardt Town Hall. While most of us struggled to keep interested in the World Cup (the alleged world game) this moving ceremony in the Council Chambers acknowledged that golf has a far better claim to the title of the world game than soccer.

Pictured above are Eamon Egan, Dwayne Roberts and Adrian Moore with the Mayor. Missing from this celebration of sporting prowess (and a degree of good fortune for four 27 handicappers in a field that included teams with people playing off 3 and 4 and were thrilled to be beaten by this lot) was David Minty - apparently at Byron on holidays.

We are involved in how many disputes?

On a perfect winter's day is hard to imagine councils doing the wrong thing or making life hard for our members. But they do. We are currently involved in disputes with following councils before the Industrial Relations Commission:

• At Byron Shire we are in dispute after the Council provided 12 months notice of termination of all leaseback agreements as part of a clumsy process of reviewing their fleet – back in the Commission on Friday.

• At Gosford we are in dispute to provide access to leaseback cars for people working other than full-time hours - in particular parents looking after their carers responsibilities – back in the Commission tomorrow.

• At Taree we are in dispute about a clumsy investigation, - back in the Commission on Friday and

• At Waverley we are in dispute after the Council gave three months notice of termination of the current Enterprise Agreement and put at risk significant employment conditions for some of our members – back in the commission tomorrow too.

• And even though it was filed by the USU, we are involved in proceedings in the Commission over negotiations for a new Newcastle Award.

And is there anyone we would like to have a dispute with?

It's been a fair while since we've had members place bans on particular councillors because of stupid things said attacking our members in public meetings.

In 2004 members at Mudgee (now Mid Western) placed bans on a particular developer after documents were circulated in the community attacking the professionalism of our members. These bans allowed the Council to properly deal with the developer to ensure that relations were civil, courteous and professional in the future.

In 2005 members at Nambucca placed bans on a developer after he had foolishly attacked staff at a Council meeting. The mayor at the time and the General Manager had mishandled the exercise and, while they should have shut up the offensive developer, allowed him to continue speaking.

Apologies were subsequently provided by the Council for neglecting their responsibilities to protect staff and the developer understood that in the future he needed to be a bit more polite and be careful what he said. A valuable lesson learned.

Members also placed bans at Parramatta and Eurobodalla when councillors said things they should not have said in public meetings and where they exceeded their rights and their responsibilities under the Local Government Act.

Things went a little bit quiet on this front during that period where there was some uncertainty about whether WorkChoices operated in local government but now that has been clarified, and we have our arsenal of direct action available to us, we await with interest the opportunity to respond properly to bullying developers who think that they get their own way by abusing or complaining about staff.

Tick, tick, tick.

Ian Robertson
Secretary