You didn’t cringe as much as we did

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Published: Thursday, 23 October 2025 14:00

On Monday, the Herald reported an exclusive interview with NSW Premier Chris Minns, with the headline “Minns puts councils on notice over NSW housing crisis”. Yes, in the Government’s frenzy to get houses built and social housing as part of that, it’s all councils’ fault! No mention of the failures of a succession of governments to provide schooling and other infrastructure which should precede the building of houses.

About councils he said, “and they can be a pain, yeah, they can. But we’ve been rolling over the top of them for the last two years, and now we are about to formalise it with the bill… The secret here, though, is that local government is just an act of the state parliament.” Seriously?

This coincides with the government’s bill to make changes to the 50-year-old Planning Act, supported by the Coalition, designed to make it quicker and easier to deliver new homes.

The changes, universally condemned by the industry, will enshrine in law a three-person Housing Delivery Authority, to set significant developments on a fast track and bypass local councils. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s been a long time since a government threatened councils by reminding them that local government exists through legislation of the State. Minns underestimated the response.

On Tuesday, the Herald reported, “The Premier backtracked yesterday, admitting he “cringed a bit” when reading his comments… So (I) definitely said those words, but if I had my time again, I would have said it in a different way - because we want to work with Councils”.

Governments don’t understand planning and have a history of bad decisions - starting with amendments to the Planning Act in 1998 removing building regulation from councils and lost forever the concept of a BA which was invariably handled locally, assisting applicants across the counter, and providing local solutions and introducing private certification; and in 2010 extending to the accreditation of council staff, who were already better regulated and managed as employees. Governments never learn.

Our Committee of Management is putting together a paper on planning, with some recommendations, and that link will be in next month’s issue of depaNews.

2026 State Award negotiations underway

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Published: Thursday, 23 October 2025 14:00

The Local Government State Award was initially made in October 1991 to apply from 1992. It revolutionised employment practices in local government and established a flexible and cooperative framework for the workplace. The State Award was originally made by the consent of the parties (LGNSW, USU, depa and LGEA) and has been varied by agreement ever since. There is a common view between the employer and employee organisations to create and protect rewarding work, flexible working arrangements, and improved productivity.

The parties built this important and historic document recognising our common interests, Socratic, rather than sledging, and we’re doing it again.

The meetings are scheduled to roll through into 2026 for a new three-year Award to be made to operate from the first pay period after 1 July 2026.

The employers and the unions have submitted logs of claims, and here is ours.

Too many disputes

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Published: Thursday, 23 October 2025 14:00

Waverley

This is now settled so we can provide details.

The Council proposed to abandon performance and progression reviews on an employee’s anniversary date, and replace it with a universal review of all staff at a particular month of the year. They hadn’t thought through the implications on employees.

It was a poorly thought out proposal, would disadvantage some employees based on the anniversary dates, and advantage others. It wasn’t fair.

If everyone was being reviewed at the same time with an operative date of any increase, for skills progression and/or good performance in July/August, for example, it would mean that employees with progression available with anniversaries from 1 January to the proposed universal date, would be disadvantaged and lose money. That’s clearly demonstrable, if you can count, and continues while ever they might have progression over the following years. For some it’s a loss of thousands.

While it appeared an innumerate management didn’t understood this, it was a stupid and witless letter that meant we had no option but to file a dispute and have the Commission assist us resolve it. The Council called the disadvantage a “perceived disadvantage”, trivialising and even denying that there would be a problem. It was infuriating ignorance.

The Commission immediately understood how employees would be disadvantaged, and that would continue indefinitely, the dispute has now been settled. Employees who have progression available will progress automatically at their anniversary (unless they have had a disciplinary process or warning) and further progression potentially from later in the year based on above average performance.

Over the years councils have abandoned anniversary dates to go to a universal review month or two, but we’ve never heard this happening and no one has ever contacted us to work out whether it was good, bad or indifferent. It’s bad, for some and it’s better, for others. It’s not fair.

This settlement will be a useful precedent for councils looking at moving away from anniversary dates.

Richmond Valley

The Council has form, winning our prestigious HR award in 2018 for wage theft - underpaying trainees by calling them “scholars”, and underpaying our member a massive $241.70 a week in the first year. When the council eventually settled, our member was paid around $30,000 in back pay and the total cost to the Council of backpay, because there were other “scholars” involved, was around $160,000.

In April we reported the Council had put a member of ours on a term contract that didn’t satisfy the restrictive provisions of the Award. They wrongly cited a part of the Award, then claimed it was an admin error and then claimed they could do it under another provision. We argued unsuccessfully with them, then filed a dispute and the Council settled five minutes before the dispute came on for a compulsory conference in the Commission!

They accepted they couldn’t rely on Humpty Dumpty’s philosophy, “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less”, when interpreting the Fixed Term Contracts provisions of the Award.

It was all about wishful thinking and their meaning of words and dodging provisions of the Award - unsuccessfully. The dispute was discontinued.

Then in providing a letter acknowledging he is a continuing permanent employee, they removed some of the things he had done over the previous two years, the result of training they had paid for including flights to and from Sydney, overnight accommodation and expenses.

Then an argument over their performance review and whether our member should progress in the salary system having satisfied six goals out of six as “meets expectations”, (one of which should be exceeds expectations) but still not being given progression.

A clumsy letter that had sat for nine days after the final date it should have been provided refused the progression. When we returned to the IRC on 16 October, the Council acknowledge the letter was inappropriate, asked for our consent to withdraw it, we agreed and suggested it should come with an apology and the reasons for refusal. We still don’t have it.

The dispute is next listed for conciliation in Casino on 15 December.

Tamworth

This dispute is at a delicate stage but is all about a member with an illness who has been on leave for most of the year returning to work. He wanted to return in April, and we wanted a mediation/facilitation conducted to enable that. The way the matter has been handled by P&C is a reminder of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill that “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else”. Now they are doing the right thing.

The mediation/facilitation, using our preferred facilitator, originally raised with the Council in June, will be next week, five months after we suggested it as the only way to resolve the issues. Too slow.

Agreed solution to chronic s353 misunderstanding

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Published: Wednesday, 16 July 2025 16:52

Councils (meaning GMs and/or HR) have been misunderstanding the obligations under section 353 Other Work almost since the Local Government Act was made in 1993. We’ve had disputes since then (twice with Sydney City!) with lots of councils where someone insists that anyone who wants to do anything other than their Council job, needs the GM’s approval. Bossy, moi?

For those of you interested in the history of this - how the declaration of everything was deliberately rejected by the Department of Local Government/NSW Government because it was unnecessarily invasive of employees’ privacy – here is a document showing that history.

It is also patronising because the decision to require everything to be declared assumes individual employees are unable to make that decision themselves. It’s a misuse of section 353 which clearly establishes that it is the employee’s obligation and that the only work that needs to be declared, and approval sought, is work that relates to or conflicts with the employee’s Council job.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a misunderstanding, or prurience (wanting to know things that are none of the employer’s business) or patronising, but LGNSW and the three unions have always believed that it was the employee’s obligation to declare specific kinds of work only. That has been a consistent view since the first Exposure Draft Bill in 1992.

Now the matter is clear and unequivocal. The LGNSW Board resolved, and this week signed off on a Joint Statement on Other Work, which will be circulated to their HR network this afternoon, and more broadly in their General Circular next week.

Here is the Joint Statement, we encourage our delegates and members generally to embrace it, to raise it with their Consultative Committee to have uniformity in the industry without the ignorance, prurience or patronising.

That includes councils which have tried to reject this advice and ignore our correspondence, who will not be able to any longer. Yes, that’s you, Laura.

Unions win protections for employees in significant IR Act amendments

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Published: Wednesday, 16 July 2025 16:52

The NSW Labor Government committed to a review of the Industrial Relations Act 1996 (which underpins everything we do, and the employment of local government employees across the state) as one of their first decisions. They had been pressed to do so by Unions NSW on behalf of New South Wales registered unions, who skilfully managed the process and the extraction of improvements from the Government. depa is an affiliate of Unions NSW and, just like being a union member at work, it pays to belong.

The process has been managed by Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis, with the appointment of a panel - former IRC President Roger Boland with significant experience and expertise in the NSW jurisdiction, and Fair Work Ombudsman and advocate of “interests-based bargaining”, for want of a better term, Anna Booth.  

As the IR Commission now only covers the NSW public sector and local government, there was a heavy public sector focus - a monolithic and old-fashioned structure that had ignored the significant modernisation and flexibility enabled by the Local Government State Award.

Boland/Booth made a number of recommendations but because the Government, for reasons known only to itself, refused to share the report, we can only speculate on the report’s contents  but after some unnecessary delays, amendments passed through Parliament without opposition and are already law, providing enhanced protection for workers:

• Enables unions to run WHS prosecutions and receive a moity (a proportion of the penalty) for successful cases;

• Enshrines gender equality and the elimination of workplace bullying and sexual harassment as explicit objectives of the IR Act;

• Strengthens WHS compliance by allowing unions to bring forward prosecutions with moiety for WHS breaches following consulting with SafeWork NSW;

• Implements a new workplace bullying and sexual harassment jurisdiction at the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC);

• Empowers the IRC to facilitate return-to-work for injured employees in the public sector and local government;

• Allows unions and employers to have unresolved WHS disputes heard independently by the IRC;

• Creates new powers to hold SafeWork NSW to account by allowing unions to seek reviews of its decisions; and

• Makes it mandatory for employers to comply with the WHS codes of practice or a higher standard.

These are significantly enhanced protections and action under these new areas of jurisdiction will be pursued across the industry.

We record our thanks to Unions NSW Secretary Mark Morey and his astonishingly effective team, particularly, for their dogged determination to get this done - notwithstanding the continuing stand-off with Government over their pernicious plans for slashing and burning Workers’ Compensation.

New Bullying jurisdiction will allow prosecution of councillors

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Published: Wednesday, 16 July 2025 16:52

We all know how difficult it is to manage bullying and boofheaded councillors. OLG struggles to do it in a timely and sufficiently punitive way and depa has historically been involved in disputes with half a dozen councils. At these councils, members have resolved to band services and responses to councillors who have said abusive things about our members in public.

We have pursued apologies, and received them, and been involved in disputes in the IRC to force apologies and commitments to better behaviour. In two disputes, OLG sent an observer, thereby revealing their own lack of confidence in their capacity to do what we were doing.

The new bullying jurisdiction will allow employees, including the GM being bullied by councillors, to take action and seek remedies and financial penalties.

Here is a link to brief commentary by a prominent IR barrister.

Bega Valley agrees to return the on-call roster

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Published: Wednesday, 16 July 2025 16:52

In the April issue we reported on an argument with Bega Valley about the right to disconnect after the Council had decided to terminate a long-standing on-call roster of EHOs to deal with high impact environmental accidents. The Council took the view that the roster, guaranteeing the availability of EHOs, cost too much at $12,000, and they would be better off individually ringing people out of hours.

At a meeting in Bega on 10 June, it became obvious that the Council was also concerned about having insufficient suitably qualified EHOs - something relatively easily resolved by that day agreeing to provide training ASAP to have suitably qualified people to fill the roster. This seemed a relatively simple issue to resolve, so it no longer was an issue about the right to disconnect.

In a happy conclusion, the Council has agreed to reinstate the roster for a trial period of 12 months, after surprising themselves that there were potentially seven employees who could receive expedited training on-site to staff the roster. Well worth the trip.

The Premier and Treasurer will get into bed with anyone

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Published: Friday, 13 June 2025 13:59

The Treasurer, the Liberal apparatchik and the Premier

On 9 May we emailed all members under the heading “Workers Comp is changing - Speak out before it’s too late”. Everyone needed to know of the dramatic changes being proposed to Workers’ Comp by the Minns Government – and in particular their attempts to effectively abandon the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale introduced by the Carr Government in the late 1980s. This would see Whole Person Impairment (WPI), currently requiring 15% impairment measured by the psychiatric impairments scale, leaping to an impossible level of 30%.

Dr Julian Parmegiani, the designer of the rating scale, described the proposal as “tantamount to ending the scheme.”

The moves are driven by the Treasurer Daniel Mookhey – to cut costs of workers comp by reducing benefits – instead of strengthening obligations on employers to provide safe work and encouraging a speedy return to work.

In 2018, Mookhey spoke against the “arbitrary cut-off” of 15% and attacked the Coalition Government for resisting Labor’s attempts to repeal the 15% test despite evidence this was contributing to self-harm and suicide.

He said, “what other policy have we ever implemented that we know leads to the risk of self-harm and we in this parliament have refused to do anything about it?”

A good question, and a timely reminder that Mookhey once did good work – something that seems a long time ago.

Prior to the 2023 election, 19 out of 22 current ministers signed a pledge circulated by Unions NSW to cut the section of the Workers’ Comp Act containing the 15% and support a system that “provides ongoing medical and financial support for workers”.

Labor sceptics will say nothing disappoints like a Labor Government, but this is a government with a history of supporting proper Workers’ Compensation, which is now turning its back on those commitments as if they had never been made. It’s shameful. In addition to making it more difficult to satisfy the WPI test, people with psychological injuries would be cut off benefits after two and a half years, and medical treatment after three and a half years.

The Government’s proposals have been described as “extreme and harsh” by lawyers, warning they could lead to “seriously injured workers being left without longer-term support”. The consensus of legal opinion is “if all of these proposals were adopted, the overwhelming majority of people with psychological injuries arising from the workplace would not be entitled to make a claim”.

A related proposal for changes to the Industrial Relations Act 1996 establishing a harassment and bullying jurisdiction in the Industrial Relations Commission is imminent. It would require already injured workers to make claims in the IRC that they had been bullied or harassed at work, before proceeding with a Workers Comp claim. Unions NSW Secretary Mark Morey said, “it is totally inappropriate, making people who have suffered any level of harassment, sexual or otherwise, having to litigate that, I think anyone would tell you that is not a trauma-informed response.”

More than a dozen ALP backbenchers prepared a signed letter to the Premier urging him to delay the cuts to Workers’ Comp entitlements, until the Premier’s office warned them against signing it. The SMH reported “a senior adviser in the Premier’s office called most of the government’s backbench MPs, dissuading them from adding their signature to the correspondence. ‘She monstered people’ one MP said of the calls.” The Premier’s office responded, “there was nothing untoward”! Charming.

Opposition Shadow Treasurer Damien Tudehope criticised the Government for not providing modelling to support Mookhey’s claim the Coalition’s planned amendments would “add $1.9 billion additional financial pressure to the scheme.”

As the dissent fermented through Parliament House and, the Herald again, quoted a crossbencher as characterising the senior government members as “panicked” and “rattled”. And so they should be.

The legislative changes are now delayed indefinitely after the Treasurer failed to convince the Coalition and crossbenchers to back his reform. There had been intense and broad lobbying of all politicians by Unions NSW and unions, forcing the government, trying to avoid an embarrassing loss in the Legislative Council, to not oppose a second enquiry into the bill.

With the changes opposed by the Coalition, Greens, crossbenchers and the unions, it has now been referred to the Public Accountability and Works Committee and in doing so, an amendment has provided the committee with the scope to interrogate details and modelling underpinning the proposed reforms.

Despite the Treasurer having to justify statements about costs, at the Business NSW’s prebudget breakfast on 11 June, the Premier stepped back from allegations he had made that the scheme would collapse within two years. He said, “in the next 5 to 10 years”. The Herald reports the Minister was “asked to reconcile the two timelines he put forward, means did not answer directly.” What a shambles. Hard to imagine how these ill-prepared pretenders will withstand forensic examination in the Upper House Committee.

The Opposition Shadow Treasurer, Tudehope claimed that he and Mookhey had “swapped friends” but with such widespread opposition, including 13 dissidents within the Government, the Premier, and particularly the Treasurer, are on the back foot.

Panicked and rattled, or not, the Premier and Treasurer were feted at the Business NSW breakfast.

Making sense of our first image, Business Sydney Executive Director Paul Nicolaou (look him up, an interesting history as a fundraiser for the Liberals) wallowed in the love-in, and urged the room: “turn to the person on your left, and say: ‘I love Chris Minns,’ now turn to the person on your right and say: ‘I love Daniel Mookhey’”. *

Described as an “effusive” welcome from the Business Council and by others as an emetic, they should enjoy the experience.

It’s hard to imagine a similar welcome for the Premier and Treasurer at the next ALP Conference in Sydney Town Hall in July.

(*Business leaders invariably think they’re very smart, but if you ask everyone to turn to the person on their left, all they will see is the back of the head of the person on their left…)

What about us?

Arguments about Workers Comp are more than relevant to us. We have members regularly at risk of psychosocial injuries in the work they do. It can and does happen everywhere. In some places they don’t learn from bad experiences.

Lake Macquarie, for example, has significant form here. In 2014 an employee made a claim in the Federal Court alleging their heart attack was caused by stress and bullying by a manager. Well into the second week of hearings, the Council settled the case in an undisclosed settlement that would have cost the Council (and/or their insurers) squillions.

They pursued a member of ours in 2016 with flimsy allegations and a lack of procedural fairness and drove him, through our workers comp lawyers, to pursue them through the Personal Injury Commission. The Council, having steadfastly defended their behaviour, then chose to withdraw their evidence, not call any witnesses, nor in any other way contest the claim. They were forced to reimburse our member 18 months of sick/long service leave, they withdrew their defence that his injury was “wholly or predominantly caused by reasonable action from the employer,” (thereby conceding that management was unreasonable) and the Commission awarded the statutory maximum in weekly compensation for up to 5 years, or as long as the injury continued.

The case continued, the member established he was impaired sufficiently to trigger the 15% WPI, and again, the Council (and/or its insurers) paid squillions. And all the while employees who bullied and harassed remained employed, some were promoted …

This can happen to anyone.

Got any good ideas?

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Published: Friday, 13 June 2025 13:59

The final pay increase in the 2023 Local Government State Award will be paid in the first pay period after 1 July - 3%, plus $1000 lump sum or 0.5% of your annual salary system rate of pay as at 30 June 2025, whichever is the greater.

Negotiations for the 2026 Award, which will operate from the first pay period after one July 2026, will start later in the year and this is an invitation to think about anything that happened to you in work that could have been dealt with better - things that might have happened during that time where you could have used an Award for protection if they’d provided certain protections, things that did happen that disadvantaged you and shouldn’t have happened, where you needed better protections. Is someone getting in the way of you being able to take two days sick leave as health and wellbeing leave, because they lack imagination and are too rigid-minded?

Let us know, emails to by COB Friday 18 July, to give us time to put our Log of Claims together.

LGS/Active Super fined $10.5 million plus costs

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Published: Monday, 14 April 2025 14:00

The February issue of depaNews was, as we expected, a revelation to just about everyone working in the industry and, as we’ve discovered subsequently, also to some councillors alarmed about issues of governance and the role of LGNSW directors.

The only negative feedback came from circulating depaNews to the other LGS Shareholders, drawing a response from the LGEA shareholder representative, their president Bede Spandangle, “could you please remove my email from further correspondence regarding this matter.” Probably not. While ever depa remains a shareholder we will communicate with the other shareholders whenever we think it appropriate.

The LGS story gets worse.

On 18 March 2025, Justice O’Callaghan of the Federal Court concluded his role, having already found LGS/Active guilty of greenwashing, by fining Active $10.5 million. In the last issue we dealt with what we regarded as an inadequate response by Active in the hearing in December over penalties, and our expectation that Active’s lawyers, having humiliated the fund and all its members by describing LGS as “a very poorly-resourced entity”. As if the SMH describing LGS as the “disgraced superannuation fund” on multiple occasions, having been found “to have misled and deceived investors”.   

The Judge was clearly disappointed at the lack of contrition evident from the LGS/Active defence of their position during the hearing of the case and this continued in the sentencing hearing.

The Orders issued by the Federal Court on 18 March rejected the flawed arguments presented on 17 December and took LGS’s apology to task. He noted “some contrition for its contravening conduct” but the contrition and the apology came in the sentencing hearing rather than before. “Although Ms Heffernan made that apology, it must be seen in light of the response of LGSS when it was confronted by ASIC with allegations of the contraventions and in particular the contentions it made at trial in its defence... Many of the submissions that it pressed in its defence at the liability hearing were contrived”. He listed eight submissions in particular, using terms like “threadbare” and “indefensible”.

And while he accepted LGSS/Active cooperated with the regulator/prosecutor “by attending voluntary conferences with ASIC, but again, such cooperation must be seen in light of the way that LGSS chose to run its case at the liability hearing”, for Justice O’Callaghan it was clearly not enough.

Strategic decisions made by LGS, always explained as based on legal advice, whether it be initially with ASIC, the trial itself, its reluctance to accept responsibility, its failure to disclose to members, and it’s crying poor at the sentencing hearing, were all bad decisions.

Justice O’Callaghan made it clear in his Reasons for Judgement that were it not for Active disappearing into Vision, and the potential that a more significant fine would also penalise the other party in the takeover, then the fine would have been higher than the $10.5 million.

The Orders also provide for an Adverse Publicity Order, in the form pressed by ASIC which will provide the details that were not disclosed to members during the course of this legal action. Even on this issue, the Judge’s disdain was evident:

“LGS asserted, without evidence, that there may be practical difficulties with an order that the text of the adverse publicity order remain available on relevant webpages after the merger is effected. But in my view, an order substantially in the form sought by ASIC is appropriate…”

And finally, the Court rejected the argument from LGS that they pay 90% of ASIC’s costs, to order “that LGSS pay ASIC’s costs of the proceeding.” All of it.

The parties had three weeks from 18 March in which to file any appeal, that three weeks has expired. There has been no advice to members or anyone else about the $10.5 million fine, the implications of the costs order, and there is no Adverse Publicity Order on the Active site, nor on the Vision site.

Clearly there will be more to this story.