President's Message

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Cr Darriea Turley AM welcomes delegates to the 2024 Employment Law Seminar.

LGNSW President Cr Darriea Turley AM welcomes delegates to the 2024 Employment Law Seminar.

7 May 2024

LGNSW Board sets 2024-25 advocacy priorities

The LGNSW Board met last Friday to consider a full agenda, including revised LGNSW advocacy priorities for 2024-2025.

The Board resolved to support advocacy priorities based on the following key themes:

  • Financial sustainability
  • Planning and housing
  • Roads and infrastructure
  • Resilience to natural disasters
  • Environment and the circular economy
  • Caring and liveable communities
  • Skills and labour shortages

I look forward to sharing the detail of our key advocacy priorities with you soon and continuing our robust advocacy to the NSW Government.

Vale Tony Bleasdale

It’s with sadness that I have to report the passing of another member of our local government family.

Blacktown Mayor Tony Bleasdale tragically died flying back to Australia after being with a council delegation in China.

Tony had been Mayor of Blacktown since 2019 after serving for three years as Deputy Mayor. He had been on council since 1996.

He was a pillar of the Blacktown community, with his charity work including supporting financially the Gynaecological Cancer Research Fund, Westmead Hospital, Blacktown Relay for Life and the Cancer Council of NSW.

My sincere condolences to Tony’s family and the Blacktown community, who have sadly lost one of their great champions.

Housing Roundtable with Ministers

Mayors, councillors and general managers will have all now received an email invitation to the online LGNSW Housing Roundtable with Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Paul Scully, and Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Rose Jackson.

The online roundtable will be held on 29 May from 9am to 10.30am and will give you an opportunity to hear from the Ministers on working with local government on planning and housing reforms. We will also seek questions from you to put to the Ministers, aimed at ensuring reforms achieve the best outcomes for communities, and that density is done well, including infrastructure provision and sound strategic planning.

Crucially, the roundtable will also consider what different approaches are warranted for metro, regional and rural NSW. 

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on 29 May.

Waste Levy

I was pleased to see the Minister for the Environment, Penny Sharpe, announce last week that the NSW Government was extending the waste levy waiver to another four areas grappling with the aftermath of heavy rainfall and flooding in early April.

This will assist communities to dispose of flood-affected items without incurring the Waste Levy.

We continue to call for the NSW Government to remove the waste levy on asbestos to ensure disposal of this hazardous substance is cheaper and easier, and less likely to be illegally dumped.

Longer term, we know that the NSW Government is now collecting about $1 billion annually from the Waste Levy, with most of this directed into consolidated revenue for the NSW Government.

A review of the Waste Levy is due to take place this year, and we will be strongly advocating for the NSW Government to reinvest 100% of it to fund the delivery of priority infrastructure and programs as outlined in the Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy. This must include support for council costs as they roll out FOGO (Food Organics, Garden Organics) collections.

Rural and Regional Summit

I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Rural and Regional Summit on Thursday May 9 at the NSW State Library.

Premier Chris Minns will join us and it’s my great hope that we will jointly sign the Inter-governmental Agreement.

This is an important document and will pave the way for greater cooperation between our sector and the State Government.

The summit comes at a critical time for our sector, with significant opportunities emerging for local government, and I look forward to hearing some great discussions on the day.

Careers at Council Jobs Summit and Employment Law Seminar

It was a busy week for LGNSW staff last week, who hosted back-to-back events, the Careers at Council Jobs Summit and the annual Employment Law Seminar, at the Swissôtel in Sydney.

The Careers at Council summit featured specialists in labour market analysis and employment marketing, along with council case studies that explored ways to better engage with our future workforce, from the school and university sectors and untapped talent pools. The summit also discussed models of flexibility that work for employees and employers, the impact of job redesign, and effective succession planning, and looked to the future and the impact of AI on job roles and service delivery.

More than 130 delegates at the Employment Law Seminar heard updates about industrial relations, unfair dismissal claims, psychosocial health, the use of medicinal marijuana in the workplace, the rise of criminal conduct in the employment relationship, managing poor employee performance and not be accused of being a bully, and much more.

Thanks to our wonderful speakers at both events, who enabled delegates to go home armed with much important new knowledge.

Sincerely,

Darriea sign-off

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