Volunteer sacking must stand: mayor

By Rebecca Fraser
A CASEY councillor’s attempts to have a sacked community volunteer reinstated by the council have been blocked on legal grounds.
Last year, Casey Council told its 1998 City of Casey Citizen of the Year and City of Greater Dandenong’s 2000 Non-Resident of the Year Murray MacGregor that his volunteer services were no longer required.
The move came, after Mr MacGregor, a 78-year-old Endeavour Hills resident, was accused of breaching the council’s volunteer code of conduct.
Mr MacGregor had offered his services at Casey Council since 1999, driving disabled people to community programs once a week.
On two occasions he received telephone calls from the community facility saying the intellectually disabled person he was driving had experienced a seizure.
He subsequently telephoned council in a bid to find out the nature of the person’s condition and raise some related safety concerns.
The council then informed Mr MacGregor that he had breached its code of conduct, particularly its privacy provisions, when making his inquiries.
At last Tuesday’s council meeting Cr Paul Richardson tried to move that Mr MacGregor be reinstated as a volunteer and receive a written apology from the City of Casey.
However, the notice of motion did not even get off the ground, Casey mayor Kevin Bradford ruling it out of order and saying the motion was “illegal in its interpretations”.
This decision was based on the fact that councillors do not have the power to hire, reinstate or dismiss council workers.
Cr Richardson had previously said that the sacking of Mr MacGregor was a deplorable and cruel action.
However, when Casey CEO Mike Tyler spoke to the News about the issue in April he said that while council deeply appreciated the services of all its many volunteers, its volunteers were required to comply with the Privacy Act and uphold client confidentiality provisions.
Mr Tyler said Mr MacGregor was then given the opportunity to resign and had done so.