1St Lindfield Scout Group Queen's Scout Awards 3818
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1ST LINDFIELD SCOUT GROUP QUEEN'S SCOUT AWARDS 3818 AFFORDABLE HOUSING 3864 ALSTONVILLE COMMUNITY PRESCHOOL 3816 ANNA BAY PUBLIC SCHOOL 3815 ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE 100TH ANNIVERSARY 3869 AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORT 3784 BANKSTOWN PUBLIC SCHOOL CENTENARY 3867 BELMONT DISTRICT HOSPITAL AUXILIARY 3818 BLUE MOUNTAINS LOCAL AREA COMMAND 100 YEARS OF WOMEN IN POLICING 3818 BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE 3784, 3809, 3821, 3837, 3839, 3839 CENTRAL COAST AUXILIARIES 3819 CENTRAL COAST COUNCIL OF PARENTS AND CITIZENS' ASSOCIATION 3820 CENTRAL WEST AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE PREMIERSHIP 3868 COMMUNITY RECOGNITION STATEMENTS 3815 COOGEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 3865 DEATH OF ARTHUR ROBERT MORRIS, MBE 3821 FAIR TRADING AMENDMENT (INFORMATION ABOUT COMPLAINTS) BILL 2015 3854 FOSTER CARE WEEK 3866 FREYA BLACKWOOD, CHILDREN'S BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA AWARDS 3818 GIRRAWEEN HIGH SCHOOL 3816 GRAFFITI REMOVAL DAY 3870 HARMONY IN DIVERGENCE EXHIBITION 3867 HOLSWORTHY ELECTORATE WALK 4 WILLIAM 3819 IMPOUNDING AMENDMENT (UNATTENDED BOAT TRAILERS) BILL 2015 3820, 3855 INDEPENDENT COMMISSION AGAINST CORRUPTION AMENDMENT BILL 2015 3853 INNER SYDNEY MONTESSORI SCHOOL 3819 JOBS FOR NSW BILL 2015 3784 KIAMA AND DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 3817 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AMALGAMATIONS 3833 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AMENDMENT (COUNCILLOR MISCONDUCT AND POOR PERFORMANCE) BILL 2015 3784 MAX JOHNSON, NORTHERN RIVERS 2015 VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR 3816 MEN OF LEAGUE FOUNDATION 3819 METFORD NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH 3816 NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME 3823, 3839 NATIONAL PARKS AND TOURISM 3830 NEWCASTLE SURFEST WOMEN'S CLASSIC 3817 NORTH ARMIDALE REDMEN 3817 OATLEY ELECTORATE MOON FESTIVAL 3820 PARLIAMENTARY LIONS CLUB BARBECUE 3821 PETITIONS 3836 PHOTOGRAPH OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 3821 PRIVATE MEMBERS' STATEMENTS 3864 PROPERTY, STOCK AND BUSINESS AGENTS AMENDMENT (UNDERQUOTING PROHIBITION) BILL 2015 3846 QUESTION TIME 3822 REPRESENTATION OF MINISTERS ABSENT DURING QUESTIONS 3822 RESIDENTIAL TENANCIES AND HOUSING LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (PUBLIC HOUSING—ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR) BILL 2015 3858 ST MARYS EAGLEVALE UNDER 12S DIVISION 2 PREMIERS 3819 STATE INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES 3835 STATE PRIORITIES 3823, 3824, 3829 STUDENT TRANSPORT CONCESSIONS AND LIGHT RAIL 3834 TRANSPORT ADMINISTRATION AMENDMENT (CLOSURE OF RAILWAY LINE AT NEWCASTLE) BILL 2015 3787, 3809, 3843 VIETNAMESE STUDENT'S ASSOCIATION MULTICULTURAL FOSTER CARE SERVICE FUNDRAISER 3817 VISITORS 3784, 3821 VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING 3826 WALBUNDRIE SMALL SCHOOLS NETBALL TEAM 3816 WILLIAMTOWN CONTAMINATED LAND 3832 WOODVILLE ALLIANCE NAIDOC WEEK CELEBRATIONS 3820 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 16 September 2015 __________ The Speaker (The Hon. Shelley Elizabeth Hancock) took the chair at 10 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. JOBS FOR NSW BILL 2015 Message received from the Legislative Council returning the bill without amendment. AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORT The Clerk announced the receipt, pursuant to section 63C the Public Finance and Audit Act 1983, of a performance audit report of the Auditor-General entitled "Community Housing: Department of Family and Community Services", dated September 2015, received this day and authorised to be printed. VISITORS The SPEAKER: I welcome 17 students from the Holroyd Intensive English Centre, guests of the member for Granville. I also remind members that today the annual Lions barbecue lunch will be held from 12 midday to 2 p.m. in the level 9 garden. The funds raised by the lunch will go to the Childhood Cancer Research Foundation, a very good cause, so I urge members to get to the barbecue. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Notices of Motions General Business Notices of Motions (General Notices) given. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AMENDMENT (COUNCILLOR MISCONDUCT AND POOR PERFORMANCE) BILL 2015 Bill introduced on motion by Mr Paul Toole, read a first time and printed. Second Reading Mr PAUL TOOLE (Bathurst—Minister for Local Government) [10.14 a.m.]: I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I am pleased to introduce the Local Government Amendment (Councillor Misconduct and Poor Performance) Bill 2015. It is often said that local government is the level of government closest to the people. It is for this reason that it is imperative that each local community can have confidence that their council will be focused on serving the public interest and its decisions will meet the highest standards of integrity. I am pleased to say that this Government has a proud record of legislating robust ethical standards for local government that are underpinned by a range of regulatory mechanisms that are designed to promote such outcomes. In 2012 the Government legislated reform to provide for a more effective regulatory framework for prescribing the ethical and behavioural standards expected of individual council officials and the enforcement of compliance with those standards. In 2013 the Government sought to address dysfunction and poor performance by councils by enacting an early intervention framework to allow a more rapid response to poorly performing councils and to drive improvement. It did this through new powers to issue a performance improvement order, requiring action by councils and individual councillors to improve their performance, and new powers to suspend a council for up to three months, with a possible extension of a further three months if required. While these reforms have been largely successful in achieving their objectives, exercise of these powers has highlighted opportunities to strengthen the provisions. The amendments proposed in this bill are designed to address these, to build on the earlier reforms by offering a more effective deterrent to serious and repeated councillor misconduct and to provide the means to ensure effective and timely action is taken to uphold the standards that local communities expect of their council and the councillors they elect to them. The bill also seeks to deliver on my commitment to amend the current provisions of the Local Government Act that allow councillors to participate in the consideration of changes to a planning instrument applying to the whole or a significant part of a council's area they have pecuniary interests in, subject to their making a special disclosure of those interests. Councillors hold their civic office in trust for the communities that elect them. It is therefore disappointing to see a very small minority of councillors who consistently fail to meet the behavioural standards expected of them and who persistently disrupt council business. One councillor has now been suspended on six separate occasions for misconduct. Another councillor has been expelled for disorder from 12 council meetings since being elected in September 2012. Such conduct damages community confidence in councils and the local government sector as a whole. The amendments proposed in this bill are designed to more effectively address this behaviour. It is proposed that councillors who have been suspended on three occasions will be automatically disqualified from holding office for the next five years, that is, two terms of the council. Disqualification will only occur after the Chief Executive of the Office of Local Government and/or the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal [NCAT] have established on three separate occasions that the councillor has engaged in misconduct that is sufficiently serious to warrant their suspension from civic office. The proposed amendment is informed by the principle that councillors who repeatedly engage in serious misconduct have abrogated their responsibilities to the community that elected them and are no longer fit and proper persons to hold office. The amendments also seek to address wilfully disruptive behaviour by councillors that is calculated to prevent councils from meeting the needs of their communities. They do this by seeking to expand the definition of "misconduct" in the Act to include conduct that is intended to prevent the proper or effective functioning of a council or a committee of a council. This will allow the chief executive or the Civil and Administrative Tribunal of NSW to take disciplinary action in relation to such conduct. Examples of such conduct include preventing a council from making a decision by deliberately leaving a meeting to deprive it of a quorum, submitting large numbers of notices or questions on notice with a view to preventing the council from getting through its business, and misusing rescission motions to prevent councils from revisiting a matter for another three months. Stronger penalties offer no deterrence where the means do not exist to support timely enforcement action. In some cases, the disciplinary process can take in excess of 18 months. The amendments contained in this bill seek to address this by streamlining the process for dealing with councillor misconduct to ensure faster but fair outcomes. It is proposed to remove the requirement under section 440G for notice to be given of a motion at a council meeting to formally censure a councillor. This is a historical anomaly that predates the current prescribed Procedures for the Administration of the Model Code of Conduct for Local Councils in NSW and causes confusion in councils. Under the prescribed procedures the only means by which a council can censure a councillor for misconduct is on a recommendation made by an independent investigator in their final investigation report. Under the procedures, this is to be reported to the council by way of a staff report in the agenda of a meeting and not by a notice