"Desirable, Not Essential"

The Shoalhaven Council CEO Recruitment Pack Now Under OLG Investigation

Shoalhaven Council’s own CEO recruitment pack is now one of the documents the Office of Local Government is investigating under section 430. Read against the Local Government Act, and against what other councils put in their packs, the pack is a document that tells you what was, and was not, being asked.

Editor’s note — on defamation and contempt. All references in this article to Shoalhaven City Council, its current Chief Executive Officer The Hon. Andrew Constance, Mayor Patricia White, named councillors and named officers are drawn from documents on the public record — the Applicant Pack for the position of Chief Executive Officer issued in June 2025 by Stephen Blackadder Consulting and bearing Council’s name; the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW); Council minutes (in particular MIN25.543C of 29 September 2025, MIN26.25 of 13 February 2026, MIN26.35 of 24 February 2026, and MIN26.62 of 24 March 2026); the Notice of Intention to Issue a Performance Improvement Order dated 5 February 2026 and Performance Improvement Order A998905 dated 19 March 2026; the Office of Local Government’s 2024 Guidelines on the Recruitment of Senior Council Executives and 2022 Guidelines for the Appointment and Oversight of General Managers; and the publicly published instrument of authorisation for the section 430 investigation into the Council’s General Manager recruitment process. The section 430 investigation is, on its terms, an investigation, not a finding. No allegation of corrupt conduct, dishonesty or bad faith is made against any person.

You open the PDF on your laptop. You’re somewhere a long way from the South Coast — Brisbane maybe, or a regional council in Victoria — and a recruiter has sent you a link. The cover page is a photograph of Currambene Creek at Huskisson: boats on the turquoise, the headland behind, late-afternoon light on the water. You scroll past the Mayor’s welcome, past the section 335 quote, past the candidate-attributes page about humility and loyalty and being calm under pressure. You reach page nine.

“Direct local government experience is desirable.”

• Not required.

• Not essential.

• Desirable.

You read it twice. You scroll back to the cover and check the date: June 2025. You scroll forward to the page on qualifications. “Relevant qualifications and or senior executive experience.”

• You read that twice as well.

• You close the PDF and put your phone face-down on the table.

This is the document Shoalhaven City Council issued — under its own name and seal, through a private recruitment firm called Stephen Blackadder Consulting — to advertise the position of Chief Executive Officer.

It is the document on which forty-one candidates, on the public record, decided whether to apply.

It is now one of the documents being examined by the Office of Local Government under a section 430 investigation into how that recruitment was conducted.

It is also a document anyone can read.

We can read it together. That is the link to the document.

What is on the page

The Applicant Pack is sixteen pages.

• Pages 1 through 8 are presentation: a cover photo, a contents page, an Acknowledgement of Country, a welcome from the Mayor, a “Position Overview,” a verbatim extract of section 335 of the Local Government Act 1993, an Opportunities and Challenges spread, and a Candidate Attributes section that describes the kind of person the Council says it is looking for in terms of leadership style, humility, loyalty and emotional awareness.

• Page 9 is where the recruitment actually happens. It is headed “Selection Criteria,” and underneath it, the single word “Essential.” There follow nine numbered lines. The first reads: “

  • An understanding of Local Government and its regulatory environment — direct local government experience is desirable as is experience outside of local government.”

  • The ninth reads: “Relevant qualifications and or senior executive experience.”

There is no separate “Desirable” or “Preferred” list.

The Essential list does the work of both.

The word “desirable” appears inside criterion 1, which is the criterion that addresses local government knowledge.

The disjunctive phrase “and or” in criterion 9

means that a candidate with no relevant qualifications meets the criterion if they have senior executive experience, and a candidate with no senior executive experience meets it if they have relevant qualifications.

• No discipline is named.

• No minimum years are stated.

• No professional registration is required.

• Page 7, the Candidate Attributes section, makes the framing explicit: “A tertiary qualification will give a guide to the expertise you are likely to bring …

  • — we are not fixed on a particular expertise — and equivalent relevant work experience is also of importance.”

• Page 14 sets out the process. Applications opened Monday 2 June 2025. They closed at 5pm on Monday 23 June 2025 — three calendar weeks. Before lodging an application, every prospective applicant “must” have a confidential discussion with Stephen Blackadder on his mobile. Hogan Leadership Assessments and shortlisting were to run from 7 July. First-round panel interviews were scheduled for Saturday 9 August. The final shortlist was to be referred to the full Council by 12 August. The recruitment panel is named on the same page. Five members: Mayor Patricia White; Deputy Mayor Peter Wilkins; Assistant Deputy Mayor Selena Clancy; Councillor Bob Proudfoot; and Captain Paul Hannigan, RAN, of HMAS Albatross. Stephen Blackadder is described as providing “support to the Panel.” Four members are councillors. The fifth is a Defence officer. No senior council human resources manager is listed. No person on the panel is identified as having held a local government CEO or senior local government executive role.

• Page 15 is one paragraph long. It says: “Prospective candidates MUST NOT contact Shoalhaven City Council unless to seek information that is readily available to members of the public.” All other information about the role runs through one mobile number and one private email address.

What the Act actually says the role is

Section 335 of the Local Government Act 1993 sets out the functions of the General Manager. Read in its current form, those functions include

• the day-to-day management of the council in accordance with the council’s strategic plans and policies;

• the implementation, without undue delay, of lawful decisions of the council; advising the Mayor and the governing body on the development and implementation of strategic plans, programs,

• strategies and policies;

• advising on the appropriate form of community consultation;

• the preparation, in consultation with the Mayor and the governing body, of the Council’s Community Strategic Plan,

• community engagement strategy,

• resourcing strategy,

• Delivery Program,

• Operational Plan and Annual Report;

  • the appointment, direction and dismissal of staff in accordance with the organisation structure;

  • and the implementation of the Council’s equal employment opportunity management plan.

Read against those statutory functions, the nine Essential criteria on page 9 do not, on their face, require the successful candidate to demonstrate the ability to discharge any of them.

• The Integrated Planning and Reporting suite — the Community Strategic Plan, the Resourcing Strategy, the Delivery Program, the Operational Plan, the Annual Report — is not named anywhere in the selection criteria.

• The “without undue delay” obligation in section 335(b) is not named.

• The requirement for the GM to advise the elected body on community consultation is not named. Sections 334 (appointment of the GM), 337 (mandatory annual performance review), 338 (the standard contract required by the OLG), 344 (the final decision to appoint rests with the Council itself), and 348 and 349 (the merit-selection principles binding on every council recruitment) are not referenced anywhere in the pack.

The selection criteria, in other words, do not ask the successful candidate to demonstrate ability to do the statutory job.

They ask the successful candidate to demonstrate attributes —

• leadership style,

• communication,

• political astuteness,

• customer focus,

• financial acumen

— that any senior leadership role in any sector would name. The discipline-specific knowledge that the Act assumes a General Manager will bring is described, on page 9, as desirable.

What other councils put in their packs

Shoalhaven was not the only NSW council recruiting a General Manager in mid-2025.

• In July 2025, Narrandera Shire Council — a small Riverina council, population around 5,800 — issued its own Position Information Pack for the General Manager position, advertised through Local Government Management Solutions, the in-house recruitment service operated by LGNSW, the peak body for NSW councils. LGNSW Management Solutions describes its process as adhering to “the requirements of the Local Government Act 1993, including

  • equal employment opportunity and merit principles.”

  • The Narrandera pack names a discipline for the essential tertiary qualification — “a relevant tertiary qualification in accounting, business, management, or a related field.”

  • The advertised Total Remuneration Package is approximately $250,000.

The Office of Local Government’s own published guidance on how a NSW council should recruit a General Manager runs to two documents. The 2022 Guidelines for the Appointment and Oversight of General Managers — issued under section 23A of the Act, which means councils are required to consider them — state, on panel composition:

“The selection panel should consist of at least the mayor, the deputy mayor, another councillor and, ideally, a suitably qualified person independent of the council.”

Three councillors, one independent expert.

The independent expert is the integrity check. The 2024 Guidelines on the Recruitment of Senior Council Executives, written in direct response to the ICAC’s Operation Dasha findings at Canterbury City Council, go further.

They say councillors “should not, as a rule, be included on recruitment panels for senior executives or other staff” at all, and that the only narrow exception is roles providing administrative or other support directly to councillors.

They say a senior HR manager or external recruitment consultant must be involved and must have

“a role in verifying that council processes and procedures are followed.” They say a “suitable, impartial subject matter expert” should be on the panel.

• The Shoalhaven pack mentions neither document.

• The Shoalhaven panel is five members: four councillors and one Defence officer.

• The recruitment consultant is described as “support,” not as a panel member, and not as a verifier of process.

• No subject-matter expert in local government or senior public-sector administration is named.

• No qualification or discipline is required.

• The Council’s own recruitment policy is not referenced in the pack,

• nor is the OLG’s position description-and-criteria record-keeping requirement, which directs that every recruitment file retain “the advertisement, position description, selection criteria, questions asked at interview, interview panel notes, selection panel reports and notes of any discussions with the selected candidate.”

Whether those records exist in the Council’s files, and what they contain, is one of the questions the OLG is now being asked to answer.

What the OLG is investigating

On 5 February 2026 the Minister for Local Government, the Hon Ron Hoenig MP, issued a Notice of Intention to Issue a Performance Improvement Order to Shoalhaven City Council.

The notice concerned senior staff recruitment practices from 1 January 2025 onwards — which is to say, the period covering the recruitment advertised by the document we have just read.

On 13 February the Council accepted the notice and committed to full cooperation (MIN26.25). The vote was 11–2.

On 24 February the Council resolved unanimously to cooperate with a section 430 investigation into the General Manager recruitment (MIN26.35).

On 19 March the Minister issued Performance Improvement Order A998905.

It was served on 20 March and tabled at the next ordinary meeting on 24 March (MIN26.62).

At each of those three meetings the Chief Executive Officer and all four Directors declared a non-pecuniary interest. They did so because they had all been recruited inside the window the OLG is reviewing.

The Terms of Reference for the section 430 investigation, signed by the Deputy Secretary of the Office of Local Government, are public. They authorise principal investigators to examine, among other things, whether the recruitment process for the General Manager

“was conducted in a transparent, fair, and merit-based manner in accordance with legislative, regulatory and best-practice requirements”; “the nature and influence of Stephen Blackadder Consultancy’s involvement in the recruitment and appointment of the Council’s General Manager, and to determine whether all required recruitment records, documents and communications were appropriately created, managed and retained in compliance with relevant legislative, regulatory and policy obligations”; whether conflicts of interest involving the recruitment panel “was properly declared, managed and addressed throughout the recruitment process”; and whether the Council’s recruitment policies, procedures and training programs “are appropriate, effective, and compliant with the relevant legislative and procedural frameworks.”

Read those Terms of Reference back to back with page 14 of the Applicant Pack — the page that names the panel, the consultant, the timeframes and the process — and the document on the table at the OLG’s offices in Nowra is the document we have just read together.

The pack is the evidence base.

Every gap on the page is one of the categories the OLG investigators are now obliged to test.

What the Shoalhaven was entitled to

It is fair to say the Shoalhaven was entitled to a recruitment pack that did three things.

1. First, it should have anchored the role in the Local Government Act as the Act actually reads in 2025 — including the Integrated Planning and Reporting functions in section 335, the mandatory performance-review framework in section 337, and the standard contract under section 338.

2. Second, it should have named the discipline of expertise the Council expected from its CEO — local government, public administration, planning, engineering, finance, law — and stated whether direct local government experience was essential or merely desirable, in language a candidate could not misread.

3. Third, it should have constituted a panel that the OLG itself would recognise: a minority of councillors,

   1. a senior HR manager, an independent subject-matter expert with senior local government experience, and

   2. a recruitment consultant whose role was to verify process compliance, not to support a panel of elected representatives.

None of those three things are exotic.

1. The first is what the Act requires.

2. The second is what comparable councils, including Narrandera in the same month, did.

3. The third is what the OLG’s own published guidance recommends — guidance issued under a section of the Act that says councils are required to consider it.

Why this matters now

The Shoalhaven is currently led by a Chief Executive Officer recruited through the process described in the Applicant Pack we have just read.

That CEO is performing the statutory functions in section 335 — preparing the Delivery Program and the Operational Plan, advising the elected body on community consultation, implementing decisions of the Council, directing and dismissing senior staff.

The community is being asked to trust that those functions are being performed by the most meritorious applicant out of the pool that applied.

The Office of Local Government is being asked, under a Performance Improvement Order and a section 430 investigation, to test that proposition. The starting point of that test is the document itself.

The document, read on its own terms, set the bar for local government knowledge at desirable.

• It set the bar for qualifications at any-discipline-or-equivalent-experience.

• It set the bar for the panel at four councillors and a Defence officer, with the consultant on the sidelines as support.

• It set the bar for what candidates could ask the Council directly at:

  • nothing not already in the public domain.

  • And it did all of that without referencing any of the statutory provisions, the OLG Guidelines or the merit-selection law that should have framed every page.

What you can do

The Draft Delivery Program 2025–29 and the 2026/27 Operational Plan and Budget are on public exhibition until late June. A submission to that exhibition is the most direct way for a ratepayer to ask, in writing and on the public record, that the Council publish — alongside the next senior recruitment it conducts — its position description, its selection criteria, its panel composition, its recruitment consultant’s scope of work, and its conflict-of-interest declarations. The OLG already requires those records to be created and kept. There is no statutory bar to Council publishing them itself. Here are my view on the DPOP - Article.

It is also open to any ratepayer to write to the Minister, the Hon Ron Hoenig MP, asking that the public report on the section 430 investigation, when delivered,

• include the position description that was issued for the General Manager recruitment,

• the selection criteria as drafted and as finally published,

• the constitution of the recruitment panel, and

• any conflict-of-interest declarations made by panel members.

Those four categories of record are what the OLG’s own 2022 Guidelines say councils must retain. They are also what every ratepayer in this Local Government Area was, on the law as it stands, entitled to expect.

The Information Pack tells us what the Council asked for in June 2025.

The OLG will tell us, in time, what it found. Between those two dates is the period in which the rest of us are being asked to wait.

Sources. Shoalhaven City Council Applicant Pack — Chief Executive Officer (June 2025), issued by Stephen Blackadder Consulting. Local Government Act 1993 (NSW), sections 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 344, 348, 349 and 351. Shoalhaven City Council minutes MIN25.543C (29 September 2025), MIN26.25 (13 February 2026), MIN26.35 (24 February 2026), MIN26.62 (24 March 2026), MIN26.135 (30 April 2026 — Draft DPOP 2025–29 public exhibition). NSW Minister for Local Government: Notice of Intention to Issue a Performance Improvement Order (5 February 2026) and Performance Improvement Order A998905 (19 March 2026). NSW Office of Local Government, Instrument of Authorisation under section 430 of the Local Government Act 1993 in respect of Shoalhaven City Council (2026). NSW Office of Local Government, Guidelines on the Recruitment of Senior Council Executives (2024) and Guidelines for the Appointment and Oversight of General Managers (2022). Narrandera Shire Council, Position Information Pack — General Manager (July 2025), via Local Government Management Solutions, LGNSW.

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