Some Tasmanian councils lack the policies needed to prevent nepotism and cronyism in recruitment, and a common recruitment policy should be adopted across the state, according to a report of the Integrity Commission tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
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The report focused on the Integrity Commission's investigation of alleged recruitment misconduct at an un-named rural and remote Tasmanian council, including complaints that eight staff were hired either without any recruitment processes, or without internal or external advertising for the roles, or despite conflicts of interest.
Integrity Commission chief executive officer Michael Easton said the investigation revealed little or no documentation on why these particular applicants were recruited.
"Professional relationships and friendships that could amount to bias or a conflict of interest were not declared and managed," he said in relation to the Integrity Commission's investigation of the council.
He said the Local Government Act gave general managers of councils the power to make direct appointments - meaning hiring without any sort of competitive recruitment process.
"We are not querying that, what we are querying is how those decisions are made, and how they are documented - direct appointments clearly have the capacity to be at least perceived as being problematic, if not actually being problematic," Mr Easton said.
"We'd like to see a template policy developed that would allow all councils to deal with direct appointments and then recruitments more generally, consistently across Tasmania."
The report also recommended that the government reinstate a section of the Local Government Act that requires councils to recruit on the basis of merit. That requirement was removed by a 2005 amendment during the government of Labor Premier Paul Lennon.
Just seven Tasmanian councils had publicly available recruitment policies, according to the Integrity Commission report.
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