Carol Altmann – The Terrier

JUST IN: This is a shock – the W’bool City Council has voted 4/3 tonight to ask the Local Government Minister to look at ALL aspects of the council’s financial performance and governance for the seven years up to 31.12.2018.

Cr Peter Hulin’s motion was supported by Mayor Tony Herbert, Cr Sue Cassidy, and Cr Robert Anderson.

Such a review, if the Minister agrees to it, would be at no cost to council.

Wow. This a true win for people power. An absolute win.

Meanwhile, Cr Kylie Gaston – who voted against this move – was ropable that The Terrier was exposing all sorts of things and made sure that we knew it. My hair was on fire by the end of that blast!

In particular, my reporting on the business links between the council’s economic development manager Shaun Miller and private businessman Ravin Merchandani really grated Cr Gaston’s wick. Why?

I must be on to something, so you know what that means, don’t you? On. We. Go.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Today is the final episode of Season One of House of Cards meets Warrnambool City Council meets Game of Thrones, where all the lines in the ever-thickening and outrageous plot come together and I lay it all out on the table.

The opening scene in this special, double episode is yet another corporate credit card – we are now up to number four – which has the same pattern of spending on the backs of ratepayers that has become so depressingly familiar: the dinners, the drinks, the endless coffees, the lunches, on and on and on.

I have been sitting on all of this information for a very, very long time, hoping the council would eventually throw open the windows, but it hasn’t and it won’t, so I am doing it for them.

I will start with credit card #4 and a snapshot:

Exhibit A is $98 worth of drinks at the Hairy Goat on a Friday night on 21 September last year, which is around the time when, supposedly, the council was cracking down on its credit card use after “discovering” the inappropriate and over-the-top spending of former tourism chief David McMahon.

Exhibit B is a $163 dinner for two people at the Warrnambool Hotel on a Saturday night, 26 May last year, which included a dozen oysters au naturale and, wait for it, a plate of eye fillet. (Whoever gets to play the eye fillet in the eventual movie of this saga is going to become a star).

And then there is Exhibit C, a receipt from 10 December last year – after the council re-wrote its floppy credit card policy – where two people spent $105.30 on dinner at the Japanese cafe Gyoza Gyoza in Melbourne, of which $44.90 was soaked up by a bottle of pinot gris (with two glasses).

This outing was enjoyed just a week after the council decided to apply to break the rate cap and bump our rates up by 4.5% this year and the next.

What a ****** cheek.

Like you, I have had a gut full of the excuses and the ducking and weaving and hiding behind Utopia inspired spin that does nothing to comfort ratepayers that this long age of entitlement, slack governance and lack of accountability is well and truly over.

It needs to be rooted out and that’s why it’s time to name names.

Credit card #4 is held by the Manager of Economic Development and Investment Shaun Miller, he of the two jobs and who, after being named in relation to those two jobs, prompted an email from CEO Peter Schneider asking me not to name staff.

I tried that tack, but the council has done nothing since to convince me that it intends to get to the bottom of the rot which runs so deep. (#notAllstaff)

In fact all the signs point to yet another cover-up, so the gloves are coming off, because my only motivation through all of this is to expose the truth. So here are some truths.

Mr Miller travels around a lot. I can now reveal he is the mystery man who, you may recall and according to an invoice paid for by his former colleague, Mr McMahon, arrived two days early, on a Saturday, for a conference in 2017 that was held at the Flemington Racecourse which, on that Saturday, was hosting a major racing event.

A coincidence? Maybe, because our council thrives on coincidence.

Certain people don’t like me naming Mr Miller. When I wrote about his two jobs, there was a barrage of abuse and behind-the-scenes threats, perhaps because these people suspected that I knew more than I was writing about publicly. They were right, I did. More about that shortly.

I have not had any direct response from Mr Miller about his credit card use, however I did get another polite email on his behalf from Mr Schneider last Friday night, but it said nothing new and provided no explanation for the receipts above.

Mr Miller’s spending is signed off by his superior, Director City Growth Andrew Paton.

Mr Paton is the owner of credit card #3.

This is the card that was used, among many other things, to pay for the $1476 dinner at Pippies, and the $700 dinner at the Myrtle Kitchen which included five bottles of wine at $79 a bottle.

Mr Paton was very polite in his response to my emailed questions last week, but he is gagged from answering me directly, such is the council’s tight grip around the throats of those who might wish to talk to journalists.

If he could have spoken to me, Mr Paton might have explained the purpose of the boozy Myrtle Dinner which was attended by four people, including himself and Cr Sue Cassidy.

Cr Cassidy is another name that is significant to this story because Cr Cassidy is one of two councillors on the council’s Audit and Risk Committee. This committee is important because, well, it is designed to keep an eye on audit and risk, ie. the use of public money.

This is the committee that has just been put in charge of the external audit into the use of council credit cards.

You guessed it, Barry the Bullshite Detector has been having a meltdown.

So let’s paint the picture: Mr Paton is the boss of Mr Miller and was the boss of Mr McMahon and was the manager responsible for signing off on all the questionable spending on their credit cards, while at the same time using his own credit card to pay for a long, boozy dinner attended by Cr Cassidy who is a member of the council Audit and Risk Committee that will now oversee the investigation into those cards.

The House of Cards ain’t got nothing on this.

And rolling along behind the scene of this car wreck are three specific side stories that I also want you to know about.

(Intermission. Lights up. Toilet break. Grab a choc top. Right, away we go…)

Side story one: Freedom of Information. As you know, none of this – none of it – would have seen the light of day had it not been for a Freedom of Information application that I lodged almost a year ago, asking for Mr McMahon’s credit card receipts.

The council did everything it could to stop me getting that information fully and efficiently and the whole process took nine months and a lot of money (#thankyouTerrierTipJar).

Even after the nine-month wait and all that money, we would not have known about the secret repayments and behind-the-scenes deal between Mr McMahon and the then CEO Bruce Anson last November, had it not been for sources.

That whole, disgraceful cover-up was only exposed, here, in July.

And who in the council was in charge of responding to my Freedom of Information applications about the credit cards?

The CEO’s executive assistant, Wendy Clark.

So, to try and find out information that ultimately involved the actions and decisions of the former CEO, I had to go through the former CEO’s executive assistant.

And if I wanted to dive deeper and detail the tens of thousands of dollars of credit card spending on behalf of Mr Anson – he didn’t use his own corporate card to buy, for example, the cases of wine enjoyed after council meetings  – I would need to go through the same executive assistant.

Does that pass the pub test?

And just to tangle that web a little more, Ms Clark, the CEO executive assistant, is the senior staff member who has lived in a council-owned CBD apartment for more than 30 years and for most of that time has leased it on nothing more than a handshake deal.

That suspect arrangement existed until I started asking questions and learned, wait for it, a written lease had been miraculously signed just a few weeks before my probing.

This is the rotten culture I am talking about.

It stinks and it has to end.

Side story two: former tourism chief Mr McMahon was a bully and made life hell for a lot of people, especially women. He came to the council with a reputation as a bully that somehow escaped the attention of those who hired him, but which I have since substantiated.

This is how this whole story started, not from people contacting me to talk about his credit card abuse – although that was raised too – but because of Mr McMahon’s foul-mouthed bullying and a desperation to be heard, because nobody in council was listening.

I told  Cr Tony Herbert about this bullying when we met last August in the meeting that he now fails to remember much about at all. Cr Herbert did nothing. The council did nothing. #goodbloke #heLikesAdrink

Nothing happened to Mr McMahon – he stayed in his top job while so many around him fell away, distressed and exhausted, and he stayed there right up until his dishonesty around his credit card expenditure finally caught up with him last July.

How was Mr McMahon hired in the first place? Why was he allowed to get away with all that he did? And why on earth – why on earth – did current CEO Mr Schneider praise him upon his departure?

This is how the council boys’ club works and it is part of the rotten culture that I am talking about.

It stinks and it has to end.

Side story three: Mr Miller has two jobs. One is full-time with the council and the other, as I reported recently, is with a start-up called Acusensus, which Mr Miller joined in March this year as International Business Development Manager and for whom he works 7.6 hours a week.

The chairman of Acusensus is a smart, charismatic guy called Ravin Mirchandani.

Before Mr Miller joined the WCC in 2016, he and Mr Mirchandani were in upper level management at a company called Mack Valves, which makes valves for things like hydrogen pumps.

Mr Mirchandani is still the director/chairman of Mack Valves and is now also the Australian representative of a group called Nilsson Energy, based near the regional city of Mariestad, Sweden.

Mr Mirchandani became the Australian rep of Nilsson Energy after going to see its work in Mariestad in June last year and, it seems, came away very impressed.

Ten months later, in April 2019, Mr Mirchandani was part of a delegation from the city of Mariestad and Nilsson Energy that was invited to visit Warrnambool and talk about using hydrogen electricity, which is the next big thing and has companies jostling for a slice of the action.

Mr Miller was a key driver and organiser of this Warrnambool visit, which saw Mr Mirchandani share the stage at Deakin Uni with government reps.

As a result of that April trip, Warrnambool CC and the city of Mariestad signed an MOU to share ideas and information and keep the momentum moving.

Tomorrow night’s council meeting (2/9) will decide whether to send our Mayor, CEO and a council staff member – I wonder who that might be? – to Sweden to visit Mariestad before the end of the year. The public will help pay for the cost of that trip.

And this is the nub: nowhere, at no time, has there been a public declaration by the council of Mr Miller’s active business links to Mr Mirchandani and any potential conflict of interest that may arise from the Mack Valves/Nilsson Energy Australia/Acusensus connection.

In fact Mr Mirchandani’s name is missing from the list of names in tomorrow night’s council agenda of those who visited Warrnambool with the Mariestad delegation in April.

Zero transparency.

This is the rotten culture that I am talking about.

It stinks and, despite hundreds of hours of investigation into all of the issues above, I am still only just touching the surface.

Curtain falls. Lights up. Credits roll.

Credits: all of the brave people who have trusted me to tell the truth, I see you and I want to thank you. And Dad, as I write this on this Father’s Day, I see you too, even though you are long dead. My Dad was a bricklayer who got up at 5am every morning to make the money to pay his rates. I have done the best I can to get the fresh start in Warrnambool that we all deserve; it is now up to our elected officials, and our leaders, to press the reset button. On we go.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here is a story of two lavish Warrnambool dinners, held two months apart, costing more than $2000 and paid for via another Warrnambool City Council corporate credit card.

“It’s just one credit card,” Mayor Tony Herbert keeps repeating, “just one”.

No, not one. Not two. Now three, and it’s not over yet.

I have to keep rolling these out, because two months’ after the first bombshell hit, the WCC still refuses to accept it has a deep-seated culture of entitlement and secrecy that has seen questionable spending of public money for years (#notallstaff).

This time it’s a dinner at the Myrtle Bar and Kitchen last July for perhaps three or four people, including a current councillor, who between them spent almost $700 on servings of eye fillet, five bottles of shiraz (@$79 each) and more wine by the glass before things wrapped up a few minutes before midnight.

The guests, I am guessing, must have had a decent old hangover the next day.

But wait, there’s more. There always is.

Another dinner, costing an eye-watering $1476, but for more people – maybe 10 – was held at Pippies By the Bay restaurant in late May last year and included dishes of eye fillet with crayfish tail, abalone entrees, yellowtail kingfish, duck breast, fresh oysters and desserts.

The food was washed down with five bottles of wine and six glasses of champagne, with several more wines bought by the glass before everyone piled out the door and into the night.

Both of these dinners were paid for by a senior council manager using a WCC credit card and were held less than two months apart.

I don’t know what these dinners were for and perhaps they were of enormous benefit to Warrnambool, so on Monday I asked the senior manager and the councillor three simple questions:

i) the purpose of each dinner?

ii) the demonstrable outcome for Warrnambool as a result of each dinner?

iii) who signed off on the cost of each dinner?

I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but you can read the response today from the WCC media adviser in full here.

I don’t want to incite a riot and this is a truth I hoped I wouldn’t have to expose, because I trusted the council would be in full blown action mode by now, but it just doesn’t get it.

All the council hopes to do is tweak a few internal policies and pray the whole thing goes away: it won’t.

Because this is not about catching people breaking the law – which is what Cr Herbert fails to grasp – but exposing the steaming pile of inappropriate and unjustifiable spending that gives so little return to the ratepayer.

It’s this unjustifiable spending – via poor governance – that people want independently audited, cleaned up and cleaned out.

There was the perfect chance for the Mayor, CEO Peter Schneider and the councillors to stand before the public at at last Thursday’s emergency meeting and say we are so sorry for allowing your money to be wasted. We are on to it. We are taking it very seriously and we are doing all we can to flush it right out.

Instead, they all – bar one in Cr Hulin – behaved like kids dragged before the headmaster, twitchy and testy, as if they didn’t want to be there, because they didn’t.

Local MP Roma Britnell recently confirmed to a resident that both she and the Local Government Minister were poised to intervene: “The opportunity was provided to the city council, by both myself and the Minister, to conduct an independent review, they have chosen a certain way to proceed,” she wrote.

So the council was dragged kicking and screaming to the table and it showed.

Cr Herbert stuck to his mantra. Cr Anderson sat there and said nothing. Cr Neoh – briefly – lost his temper, while Cr Gaston stood up and announced she was “very confident” all was well.

No, Cr Gaston, all is not well.

Let’s not forget that this council first talked about breaking the rate cap in 2017, yet throughout 2018, the unbridled spending on food, drinks and alcohol rolled on.

Nothing changed.

And because nothing changed, we are now picking up the bill through higher rates.

It is outrageous and yet we know it is just one part of a much bigger picture where so much waste was and is allowed to happen.

There was nothing illegal about a senior manager buying a shed for $100,000 and the council selling it for $2000. There was nothing illegal about throwing $3 million of taxpayers’ money into Flagstaff Hill and it now costing ratepayers $750,000 a year to prop up. There is nothing illegal about building an unnecessary roundabout outside the Warrnambool Bowls’ Club where Cr Anderson is a member.

And there was nothing illegal about council staff spending hundreds of dollars on food and wine, because it was happening in plain sight and approved by those in charge.

I have now reported on three council credit card holders who have indulged in questionable spending, and there are more (#notallstaff).

If our councillors don’t know about all of this by now, then our CEO is not doing his job for his $320,000-a-year package.

I know Mr Schneider is a busy man, but he did find time to email me last week, not with any answers or insights, but asking me to refrain from naming council staff.

As a journalist, I never publish a name without it being relevant, but I will wait and see – in this case – if the senior manager and councillor involved will step out and name themselves.

In the meantime, those of us outside the tent will continue to dive deep, down to the very bottom of this culture of entitlement and waste, and use every muscle we can to turn it around.

We still have some way to go.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

These were my questions about the two dinners:

i) the purpose of each dinner?

ii) the demonstrable outcome for Warrnambool as a result of each dinner?

iii) who signed off on the cost of each dinner?]

I will let the Warrnambool City Council response speak for itself. Here is it in full:

“We are aware you recently emailed questions relating to credit card expenditure to a councillor and Council officer.

This is Council’s response to those inquiries.

As we have previously advised, Council is fully aware of its reporting obligations to referral authorities and any actions that are required.  Those obligations are taken very seriously. The regulations around reporting responsibilities mean that Council cannot confirm whether a referral has been made and nor can Council provide publicity or commentary on the process.

The constraints on Council around the referral process have been made known to the media on several occasions in recent weeks.

The questions you have asked are also part of a current FOI inquiry initiated by you. Given these matters are yet to be finalised, it would be inappropriate to provide further detail at this time.

In addition to the above, at the recent Special Council meeting the following resolution was passed:

1a)       That Council, via the Audit & Risk Committee, immediately (Audit & Risk Committee Meeting of the 27 August 2019) engage an External Auditor to undertake an audit to review and assess the adequacy of:-

• Existing policies, governance, reporting and investigation processes/procedures in the handling of the current credit card misuse issue that was identified in September 2018.

1b)       The scope of the audit to include:-

            SCOPE

Review the adequacy of Council policies, procedures and processes in relation to:-

• Dealing with expenditure authorisation and delegation;
• Trigger points for reporting (unusual transactions and/or misuse and/or fraud) to the Audit & Risk Committee (via confidentiality reports or meetings);
• Trigger points when an auditor should be brought in (i.e. the period after unusual/misuse has been identified to when possible fraud is suspected);
• Guidelines on “taking face value explanations” vs “appropriate inquiry”;
• Guidelines to ensure there are procedures to mitigate and prevent the acceptance of face value assumptions;
• Adding another layer of probity and transparency by providing trigger points for the use of an auditor.

1c)       Should the External Auditor require clarification of the scope of the audit, as outlined in 1b) then the Auditor shall communicate directly with Cr Neoh and Cr Cassidy and the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee.

1d)       Once appointed, the External Auditor to meet, in camera with Cr Neoh, Cr Cassidy and the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee, to outline the scope (in accordance with 1b).

1e)       That the External Auditor report directly to the subsequent (post 27 August 2019) Audit & Risk Committee Meeting or early if called by the Audit & Risk Committee Chairman.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

It isn’t pretty, but this old shed speaks volumes about the waste that has gone on within the Warrnambool City Council (#notallWCCstaff) over the past decade.

Long-time followers of this site may remember that this shed cost the council more than $100,000 in 2015: $40,000 to buy it and $63,000 to pull it down and relocate it from Wangoom Rd to west Warrnambool.

It is my understanding that it has since been sold off by the WCC for $2000.

$2000.

It has basically been reduced to scrap metal, at a loss of $101,000 to ratepayers.

That is $101,000 that could have been used far more productively elsewhere.

The back story to this shed is that it was supposed to become part of the WCC depot, but the cost of reassembling it, and its poor, rusty condition, saw that idea tossed out the rollerdoor before it had even rolled.

The WCC tried to cut its losses early by auctioning off the shed before it was moved from Wangoom Rd, but it was passed in at $20,000 after failing to attract a single bid: nobody wanted to pay good money for a rusty old shed that would cost a mozza to move and re-assemble.

We – the poor old ratepayers – were stuck with it and have since taken a $101,000 hit.

How does this sort of waste happen? (#notallWCCstaff)

This is the question underpinning the push for a forensic look at all council spending from the last 10 years and the decision making and policies around this spending, because it is this decade of waste that is now coming home to roost.

It goes beyond the council’s 81 corporate credit cards, even though credit card spending is a full-colour, big-calorie category that leaps off the page.

It extends to rusty sheds, and roundabouts, and toilet blocks, and Flagstaff Hill upgrades, and $3 million blowouts on Liebig St, and trips to China, council marquees at the racecourse, endless conferences, blowouts on the Simpson St tunnel, the exorbitant contract to run the pound….you get the picture.

Ratepayers expect to pay rates.

But what ratepayers also expect is a clear return on their investment.

We want to see the council spend our money wisely and cautiously: every cent of it.

It doesn’t matter if the dollars are coming from ratepayers or taxpayers – it is all public money and this is why Ratepayers Victoria is taking such a close interest in what is happening in Warrnambool right now.

Ratepayers Victoria has written again to the council this week, in light of Mayor Tony Herbert saying he didn’t believe there was a need for an independent audit into the council, even though all the other councillors now agree that there should be one.

RV is joining the call for a full review of council spending, going back 10 years:

“We would respectfully suggest that unless council conduct a 10-year retrospective audit of all council staff and councillor expenditure and publish it fully and frankly then you will not sufficiently address the groundswell of community anger,” the letter says. (Read the letter in full here).

RV is spot on there.

 

At the end of the day, all ratepayers are asking for is transparency and accountability: two little words that roll off so many councillors’ tongues and turn up in so many council reports.

Transparency, accountability…and showing us value for money.

It’s not much to ask for, and the community is asking for it now.

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