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.

Developer agrees to apologise – depaNews November 2010

Uncle Fester head-in-box – November 2010

Developer agrees to apologise in long-running Wagga Wagga unpleasantness

Our August issue speculated about why Peter Hurst, a developer at Wagga Wagga and the Vice Chairman (wow, sounds like a great job!) of the Wagga Wagga Branch of the Housing Industry Association is so unkind.

Hurst had made a range of inaccurate, baseless, derogatory and offensive allegations about our members at Wagga Wagga and a comprehensive internal investigation conducted by the Council’s Internal Auditor had dismissed the lot.

As part of an industrial dispute we were conducting in the Industrial Relations Commission, Deputy President Grayson had recommended that the Council seek an apology from Peter Hurst for baseless allegations and the damage done. In our August issue we said:

"This will be a measure of the man. We can we hope he will be big enough to acknowledge his mistakes, apologise appropriately and get on with the job. We will see."

In a response to the Council, Walsh and Blair Lawyers advised that they were acting for Peter Hurst and "we are instructed that our client will apologise to council staff. The form of that apology will have to be the subject of agreement."

Clearly he was big enough to do the right thing but it is not prepared to make the apology being sought by the Council. Drafted by us, endorsed by our members, agreed to for its reasonableness by the General Manager when we met in Wagga Wagga on 21 October and subsequently agreed to be reasonable in all the circumstances by Deputy President Grayson, the apology would have put all of this unpleasantness behind us.

But something is getting in the way of this reasonable solution. Walsh and Blair acting for Peter Hurst have written subsequent letters to the Council which they want to be confidential and where they don't want the contents provided to a third party - whether that be the union representing the staff attacked by Hurst or the Industrial Relations Commission in resolving the dispute arising from the baseless and incorrect complaint.

As far as we can understand it, Mr Hurst may have changed his mind. In a clear gesture against male hegemony and in advancing his claims for equal status with the sisterhood, Mr Hurst, wants to exercise the prerogative historically claimed only for a lady, a lady’s right to change her mind. You go girl!

So, it’s not entirely clear what is happening but on the resumption of the dispute in the Commission on 25 November, the Commission recommended (view IRC recommendation) that the Council have published in the local paper, the Daily Advertiser, (see note below) a brief summary of the dispute and the dismissal of the complaints made by Peter Hurst and the apology being sought by the Council. The Commission also acknowledged its disappointment that while prepared to apologise in October, Mr Hurst looked like he had changed his mind.

After all, if Peter Hurst was prepared to apologise, he clearly knew that he had done something wrong. The apology identifies all the things that we and the Council think he did wrong.

We will be happy to publish the apology as well in the December issue.

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