Carol Altmann – The Terrier

What a difference a year makes.

This time a year ago, the Warrnambool City Council was in the absolute doldrums, with community satisfaction at an all-time low.

The annual satisfaction survey clearly showed Warrnambool was fed up with what had been years of suffering under a deeply divided council and a toxic internal culture – the good ol’ mate’s club – that had been allowed to flourish.

It’s two years, almost to to the day, since I wrote my first piece on the council credit card abuse.

Last year’s shocking survey result was not a consequence of just one bad year, but years of wobbling off course.

In seven of the past 10 years, for example, the council struggled to score any better than 50/100 for “overall direction”.

In 2015, it fell to just 38/100 on that score.

Last year, it bottomed out at 32/100.

As was said at the time of CEO Peter Schneider’s arrival in 2019, he inherited a shit show.

But this week, just days before Mr Schneider resumes his role after being removed illegally on 13 July, the council has bounced back big time.

The latest survey shows it has improved on every single measure.

The biggest leap was in “overall direction” which skyrocketed from 32 to 59 points.

[At this point, I have to dip my hat to the long-suffering WCC customer service team who, despite everything that has been thrown at them, have consistently scored really well in these surveys.

Being on the front line at the WCC cannot be easy.]

Enormous change has swept through the WCC these past 12 months, including the election of a brand new council in October and a change of several senior officers, right up to this week’s resignation of former Acting CEO Vikki King.

The latest Acting CEO Gary Gaffney also made an instant impact, despite only being in the place for a few weeks.

Not only was Mr Gaffney direct and decisive, he made a point of getting to know the people who worked for him – the staff – and the people he worked for, the citizens of Warrnambool.

The challenge for Mr Schneider is to maintain this momentum.

There can be no going back now.

The people have made it clear what they want and expect and the WCC is clearly tracking in the right direction.

Mr Schneider now has 12 months, before his contract will be up for renewal, to show his strengths and the next community survey results – also due in 12 months – will be a true test of his success.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

The change in ownership for the Warrnambool Medical Clinic has seen a huge change in staff since it was sold for $1.3m to Lyndoch Living in 2019.

It’s a little over 12 months since the clinic lost its practice manager – its chief administrator – who resigned after a decade in the job.

I have since learned that around 20 more staff have left the practice since then, including two GPs who resigned in recent weeks.

Two other GPs, you may recall, resigned immediately after Lyndoch Living took control of the practice in April 2019.

According to my sources, there is now only one nurse at the practice who has been there longer than 12 months, and another eight have resigned.

At least six reception staff have also left.

Not all the positions have been replaced.

What has happened, though, is a mirror of what has happened at Lyndoch Living itself these past five years: a balloon in the number of people with special titles.

Where there was once a single practice manager, there is now:

a Project Director Integrated Primary Health;

a Project co-ordinator Primary Care;

an Operations Manager Primary Health Care and;

a Practice nurse Clinical Lead.

It’s worth remembering that Lyndoch Living paid $1.3 million in 2019 to buy the “goodwill” of Warrnambool Medical Clinic, which means GPs on contract, staff and patient lists.

It didn’t pay $1.3 million for the actual building on the corner of Liebig St and Raglan Parade.

Given the high turnover of staff since then, and anecdotal evidence of patients transferring elsewhere, I can only ponder how much of that $1.3 million worth of “goodwill” still remains intact.

As for the building itself, the Standard’s Jackson Graham is reporting today that it is up for sale at an expected price of $1.2m to $1.3m.

According to the report, Lyndoch Living has a lease on the building until June 2022.

That is a mere 12 months away.

This might explain why Lyndoch is barrelling ahead with plans to build its new $24 million, 3000 sq/m medical clinic on Hopkins Rd, despite concerns around the financial viability of the project.

As we know, the Lyndoch board is continuing to refuse to explain how the clinic will be funded, how many tenants are locked in, and – most importantly – how much money it will create for the care of elderly residents.

At a cost of around $24 m, this project is even bigger than the new Warrnambool library at $20m but, unlike that project, it doesn’t have one cent of government funding.

The strange thing is, for less than $3 million, Lyndoch could have bought the Warrnambool Medical Clinic building AND all of its goodwill and maybe spent another couple of million bucks refurbishing what is a prime piece of real estate.

A $5 million investment sounds a lot less risky than $24 million.

As it is, that prime piece of real estate is now up for grabs and Danny Harris, the selling agent, says – wait for it – it would make an ideal medical clinic.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Look closely, this is the slow ruination of a public reserve by Lyndoch Living through ongoing, illegal parking with impunity.

They are photos of Scoborio Reserve, a public reserve on the north side of Lyndoch and the original site of the Warrnambool botanic gardens.

It is named in honour of a head gardener, Charles Scoborio.

It’s a place where a few remnant scraps of native vegetation cling to what used to be a rich habitat along the banks of the Hopkins River as part of the Peek Whurrong lands.

Yellow-crested black cockatoos, pink-chested galahs and nesting magpies still like to hang out there.

And now, bit by bit, it’s being lost to the expansion of Lyndoch.

Lyndoch is turning the eastern end into an unofficial staff car park because it has failed to ever provide enough staff and visitor parking on its own land.

The reserve is becoming a mud bath.

What was once a handful of cars has grown to 30 or more a day.

That’s because the opening of a mini medical clinic at Lyndoch and demolition work for the $22 million medical clinic has pushed scarce parking on site to breaking point.

Lyndoch has even had the gall to direct staff – in writing – to park on land that it doesn’t own because it couldn’t be bothered to find its own solution.

And what have the WCC officers done about it?

They haven’t, as you might expect, told Lyndoch to stop.

In fact they haven’t moved one inch to protect the reserve from this illegal activity.

No, what they have done is actually far worse than doing nothing: they are looking at ways to let it go on.

The council officers – NOT the elected councillors* – are busily working to solve a problem that is not their problem and are offering up a piece of public land in the process.

In other words, if Lyndoch breaks the law, the council doesn’t fine them, but bends to them.

What a disgrace.

I wish I could say this was a one off.

You may recall the large corporate sign that was installed on the side of Lyndoch last November without a council permit.

Seven months on, the permit application (lodged after The Terrier story) is still being processed.

The illegal sign is still there.

Lyndoch is also, as we speak, committing an offence under the State Planning and Environment Act by ignoring the permit conditions for its mini medical clinic.

Part of the permit issued by council staff (NOT councillors*) included a clear traffic and parking plan.

This plan has been completely ignored by Lyndoch ever since the clinic opened on 4 April.

Has anything happened as a consequence? Was the clinic forced to close immediately?

No, of course not.

And here comes the pub test.

All of these breaches are happening while the WCC chief of planning, Andrew Paton, sits on the Lyndoch board.

He is also a director of the Warrnambool Medical Clinic, a commercial, private company owned by Lyndoch that is driving the $22m project.

Former WCC Acting CEO and community services manager Vikki King is also deputy chair of a board chaired by the Lyndoch CEO and managed by Lyndoch.

How is it okay for senior council managers  – a chief planner and a former Acting CEO no less – to be anywhere near an organisation that requires multiple council approvals* as part of its expansion?

(You might also recall the secret talks between Lyndoch and the WCC about 18 months ago to sell off part of Scoborio for a childcare centre before exposure by The Terrier cut that off at the pass.)

The WCC says Mr Paton has declared a conflict of interest in all planning and applications from Lyndoch* and has not been involved in any decisions.

And Mr Paton, for his part, told me both positions he holds with Lyndoch are, “to date”, voluntary.

I have no doubt Mr Paton has acted with integrity, but that is not the point.

The question is, why would he put himself in that position in the first place and why would the WCC allow it?

If Mr Paton was a board member of a building company that was rolling out $100m worth of housing on Hopkins Rd hill, eyebrows would be up.

Why is it not the case here as Lyndoch rolls out a $100m masterplan*?

This is precisely the “wheels within wheels”, “who-you-know” rubbish that the people of Warrnambool are sick of.

We are all tired of doing the right thing – applying for permits, parking within the lines, paying our fines – while others sail past in the express lane of exemption and ruin public property in the process.

Insiders and outsiders.

As I wrote after the Schneider court victory, those days are done and it’s time for the WCC to end it, regardless of who is in charge.

* Not one part of Lyndoch’s $100m masterplan so far has gone to full council for approval by the elected councillors. Each part has been signed off by delegation.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Today’s emphatic victory in the Supreme Court by Warrnambool City Council CEO Peter Schneider did more than give him his job back – it has exposed the poisonous culture that tries to silence our city.

This victory exposes a rotten culture of power and entitlement that was allowed to take root and fester in the council for almost two decades.

Mr Schneider, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked off the plane from WA, walked into a culture that thrived on the cruel concept of  “insiders” and “outsiders” and the snivelling, sycophantic silence of those who quickly learned how the game was played, and who chose not to speak up, but to join in.

By joining in, they thought they might have a tiny slice of power too.

How did that work out?

Mr Schneider walked into a joint that had not had seen a staff review in 12 years.

The WCC had become a place of power plays, backroom deals, favours, payback, revenge, circles of influence, pet projects and political aspirations.

In this culture, one councillor who was on council for 16 years, Michael Neoh, was elected Mayor five times.

Peter Hulin, who was on council for a decade, was not allowed to be Mayor, even once.

Insiders and outsiders.

Mr Schneider was an “insider” for about 23 minutes – having been chosen for the job and relocating his family from across the other side of Australia – only to find he wasn’t an insider at all.

He didn’t fit the plan.

When those who thought they held all the power decided he had to go, they gathered, they plotted, and they ripped his voice out.

As Justice Michael McDonald’s judgment said in no uncertain terms today, Mr Schneider was denied the basic right to defend himself.

He was silenced.

Three other members of council, including the Mayor and a former Mayor, tried to ask questions.

The four councillors who believed they had all the power, stayed mute.

Is there any more brutal example of those who are allowed to speak and those who are not?

We have seen this silencing time and again in Warrnambool: where the cliques have gathered to protect their own and the powerless were ignored.

We see it in the ribbons fluttering on the Loud Fence outside St Joseph’s church in Lava St.

We saw it during the March4Justice rally on 15 March when sexual abuse survivors spoke for the first time.

We saw it in the battle to save Levy’s Beach from the might of the racing industry, where the words of the indigenous elders were lost in the tailwind of Darren Weir’s blazing comet.

We are seeing the same silencing take root in Lyndoch Living right now, in real time, where becoming a member or board member is no longer an opportunity open to everyone, but to a select few.

As a result, we have a situation where more than 1000 people have now signed a petition asking Lyndoch simple questions that it refuses to answer.

Insiders and outsiders: that’s how Warrnambool used to roll.

Mr Schneider’s victory today should send a message to all those who believe the voiceless will stay silent that those days are over.

The days of stepping on heads for personal power – those days are done.

But the cultural clean-out at the council is still not over.

There is an ongoing Local Government Inspectorate investigation that we all hope will provide answers to exactly what happened in the lead up to Mr Schneider’s illegal sacking and afterward.

This includes the “free” legal advice provided to then Cr Neoh, and the appointment of Vikki King as Acting CEO who, before the ink was dry on that deal, was also reappointed for another five years as manager of Community Services.

None of Ms King’s managerial colleagues signed off on that deal, so it was passed to a subordinate – a casual.

I have always believed that the truth rises and it will, and when it does, it comes with a roar.

Find the full judgment here:

Schneider v Warrnambool City Council [2021] VSC 337