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

For weeks now, I have been asked one question about the Warrnambool City Council credit card scandal: is there more?

The answer is yes.

Yes, there is.

From the very beginning, this investigation into credit card use at the Warrnambool City Council has never been about individuals. It is not personal.

This whole investigation has been about exposing an attitude of entitlement and ways of behaving that have operated within certain sections of the council for years, particularly around the office of the executive.

It has been about again exposing a lack of accountability and transparency, coupled with doses of intimidation, that allowed this culture to develop.

So tonight I can tell you that, yes, the issue of credit card spending and the use of public money goes beyond one individual.

It goes beyond the council’s former head of tourism, Mr David McMahon, who as we know resigned as a result of this investigation.

But because of recent threats that have been made against me privately, and against members of my extended family which worries me more, I am not going to name names.

I can tell you, however, that it goes beyond one individual, because I have receipts.

I am now calling upon the Warrnambool City Council to tell ratepayers and residents the whole truth.

It cannot just keep covering up a cover up.

What ratepayers and residents deserve to know is what the council has done since this whole credit card scandal was first uncovered late last year, how much credit card spending has been scrutinised since, what has been found and what is being done about it?

Remember, this is our money – public money.

In light of the recent report by the Victorian Auditor General into fraud and corruption control, the Local Government Minister has called on all 79 councils to review their policies and procedures and report to him by September 1.

There is no more hiding behind closed doors.

We want to know the full story about the 81 credit cards that have been in circulation at the WCC.

What are the spending limits? Who holds them? Have they been used to purchase big dinners, alcohol, lunches, coffees, gift vouchers? For what reason?

I am calling upon the council to tell you what is going on and what has gone on – fully and frankly.

And if it doesn’t, then I am calling upon the good citizens of Warrnambool who may be in a position to whistleblow, to do so loudly.

In pursuing this issue, I have not had a personal axe to grind or any hidden agenda. I am simply doing what journalists do, in trying to get to the truth.

Between us, will get there and – eventually – we will have that truth.

Thankyou to everyone who has made a contribution to the Tip Jar to help keep The Terrier digging. You can be part of it by clicking below.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here’s something I have been wanting to tell you for a while.

Warrnambool Mayor Tony Herbert was alerted to the big spending by former council tourism manager David McMahon months before he says he was – not in November, but August last year.

How do I know? Because I told him. And he did nothing.

Here’s how things unfolded:

This time almost a year ago – on 22 August 2018 – I asked to meet with Cr Herbert to talk about two very serious things.

The first was an alleged spend-up on a lunch by Mr McMahon using his corporate credit card, and the second was allegations of bullying behaviour by this same person.

The reason I remember this meeting so clearly is that Cr Herbert confirmed he had heard “something about” the big spend up and that it “had been repaid, or was going to be repaid”.

This, to a journalist, is a chunk of gold.

I realised I was on to an important story and so my digging began and it would last almost a year.

Why am I raising this now?

Because the now Mayor Herbert recently made a formal, public statement that he first heard about the credit card mis-use in November as part of mayoral briefing with former CEO Bruce Anson.

The briefing, he said, followed Mr McMahon’s unauthorised spending being picked up by the council in September.

I was somewhat stunned by this version of events and have been waiting to see if Cr Herbert moved to correct the record, maybe even at last Monday’s council meeting, but that hasn’t happened.

Instead, Cr Herbert says he has no recollection of this part of our conversation.

 

(By the way, I will cover the bullying allegations in a later story, because that deserves an entire piece on its own.)

I now consider the 22 August meeting a critical part of the puzzle as to who knew what, when, and most importantly, what was done about it.

Cr Herbert’s version of events is that he called the meeting with me, not the other way around, so we could talk about my writing “more positive stories”. (You can read his response in full at the end of this piece).

The crux of the issue is that last August I raised a serious concern about Mr McMahon’s spending and Cr Herbert – it appears – did nothing about it.

He didn’t raise it with the CEO. He didn’t alert other councillors or the council’s Audit and Risk Committee.

For whatever reason, Cr Herbert didn’t consider this big, red alarm bell worth following up.

 

Mr McMahon’s unauthorised spending was apparently uncovered internally by the council a few weeks later, just by sheer chance.

This whole thing reeks.

And it reeks even more when you consider that once Cr Herbert was told in November – officially – about the credit card misuse, he was dead against my investigating it further.

Readers may remember Cr Herbert’s long Facebook post on Valentine’s Day, February 14, berating me for wasting council’s time and resources:

“All you seem to want to do is tear people down, with unresearched accusations,” he raged.

No, Cr Herbert, I was doing what you were supposed to be doing as an elected official of the people of Warrnambool.

A fortnight ago I notified the other six councillors of my August conversation with Cr Herbert.

There has been not one word in response. Nobody seems to care that Cr Herbert’s public statement is wrong.

A few weeks ago I dropped the f-bomb here: fraud.

Tonight I am going to use the c word: cover up.

Because from go to woah, this whole credit card mess reeks of a cover up.

 

It is now up to the powers-that-be to decide what happens next, because I have done all that I can to open up this particular box of bullshite around Mr McMahon’s credit card use.

Today I submitted a report to the Warrnambool Police. I have already submitted a report to the anti-corruption body, IBAC.

Who knows where those two reports will go?

But the wider credit card scandal doesn’t finish here, because I believe there is more to be exposed, beyond Mr McMahon, even though –  I have to stress – the majority of council staff work hard at saving ratepayers’ money.

What needs to be exposed is the excessive or unjustifiable spending that was signed off by those in charge.

The new CEO Peter Schneider says he is looking at this. The Terrier is too.

It will be a slow burn, but it’s the only way to well and truly clean out the trough.

---

Mayor Herbert’s response to my questions about our 22 August 2018 meeting:

Dear Carol,

Thanks for your email.

I remember the meeting too, which I arranged. 

I had hoped during our meeting to plant the seed/notion, as it were, that “positive leaders can create a positive community and positive communities can accomplish anything”.  I was hoping to encourage you to be that leader.  That was my single aim of the meeting.    

I recall suggesting that people in Warrnambool would prefer more positive stories and those of a community-building nature.  I discussed the relatively negative prior decade on Council and that I was now trying to be part of a team building a more positive council.   

We chatted about what was good, what was coming up with some major projects – since announced in the Reid Oval and the library/learning hub at TAFE. 

As we talked it became clear you were not interested in considering my feedback. 

As the meeting concluded, we laughed and you said that the type of writing I was referring to was best left to The Standard and others and that you had a niche market writing in your particular style and to a particular audience.

Then you left.  

On the matter of the council officer, I don’t recall this being part of our discussions. At that time I would not have had any information about money that had been paid or was to be repaid. Even though I attended the VTIC seminar, I did not know any information on officer spending, councillor spending or spending by others.  I believe that the council credit card statements for August would have come through in September.   You and I met on August 22. 

For your further information, I have checked with the Finance Department today: Councillors/Mayors have never had credit cards at WCC.    

I was unaware of the said officer either having a credit card or not having a credit card at the VTIC seminar.  As Councillors, we have not been presented with a list of all credit cards in the organisation. 

I trust this answers your questions and I look forward to you moving onto more positive stories for our community.

Regards,

Tony Herbert

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Yet another layer has been added to the Warrnambool City Council credit card scandal, and this time it involves former CEO Bruce Anson.

You are not supposed to know this, but Mr Anson and tourism manager David McMahon last year spent $185 on a lunch, paid for by ratepayers via Mr McMahon’s credit card.

The lunch at the Pavilion on Tuesday 9 January was – it appears  – also attended by others, but who was there and why, remains a mystery.

The place was very public, but the public didn’t know that it was paying the bill.

That was kept under wraps. Until now.

The lunch receipt, with bits removed, was included in documents released after nine months and almost $200 in fees via Freedom of Information which has blown open thousands of dollars spent on Mr McMahon’s credit card on meals, coffees and drinks over 18 months.

I am starting to wonder if there was anyone within the upper levels of council who didn’t eat or drink with Mr McMahon at some point.

In this case, Mr McMahon wrote on the Pavilion receipt “Lunch with” but the council removed what followed because it was consider “not relevant”.

What I have since learned is that this lunch was with Mr Anson.

That is not relevant? Are you kidding me?

 

When the person at the table is the CEO of the council that is subject to a FOI application to scrutinise credit card expenditure, it is absolutely relevant.

Just ask the Victorian Auditor General who recently wrote an entire report on this very thing and exposed major flaws at Strathbogie Shire Council, which led to the resignation earlier this month of its CEO.

Mr Anson retired from the council in January this year.

Maybe the council FOI officer – who decides these things – thought because Mr Anson was now retired, he should be treated as a private citizen.

Sorry, but that just doesn’t wash.

Mr Anson was still CEO when the lunch happened and he was still CEO when the FOI into the credit card usage was lodged last October.

The big question is: what is there to hide?

What I want to know, as I am sure you do too, is why Mr Anson and Mr McMahon were having a $185 lunch on us, who was there, and did we get value for money in return for a spread including calamari and a grazing board?

(I asked the council these questions yesterday morning and it replied at 5.29pm tonight, not with the answers, but asking for a copy of the receipt I am referring to.)

The only reason I can see for Mr Anson’s details being removed is to avoid these exact questions.

I also want to know why Mr McMahon’s credit card was used to pay for the lunch and not Mr Anson’s? 

This is also important.

As was pointed out by a savvy reader (thankyou, Adrian), in business, the most senior person at the table usually pays the bill. Why?

Because it stops a senior person from hiding their credit card expenditure behind a more junior person.

It also stops potential collusion (ie. you pick up the bill on your credit card and I will sign off on it).

I am not suggesting for one minute that this has happened here, but it exposes – yet again – the way things have operated within the WCC when it came to the use of corporate credit cards.

We have already seen how loose that goose has been with Mayor Tony Herbert and Cr David Owen being caught up in hundreds of dollars worth of breakfasts paid for by Mr McMahon’s card.

And now we have the former CEO himself making at least a cameo appearance in the rot.

This cameo might explain why when I lodged an FOI for Mr Anson’s credit card usage several years ago, only a sprinkling of transactions showed up.

Things were being paid for by other means.

I have to tell you, the council fought tooth and nail to have chunks of information removed from this current credit card FOI before it was released.

One of the reasons given was because some of the bills had been repaid, they believed it no longer mattered: “move along, nothing to see here…”

As we know, Terriers don’t give up that easily.

 

I also fought tooth and nail, all the way to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, to have these receipts included.

Why? Because the amounts could have been repaid after I lodged my FOI, to avoid public embarrassment.

And even if they were paid before I lodged my FOI, I believe the public still has a right to know what had gone on and why.

I now know that between $5000 and $6000 was repaid, but, as it stands, the council has still not released the missing receipts.

Under the rules, if I want those missing bits, I have to lodge another FOI.

And if I don’t get them a second time around, I can ask for a review via the commissioner.

It is exhausting and expensive and enough to make you give up.

But we don’t, do we? No, we don’t.

I have two more stories to come.

Again, I want to say that this is the Terrier Tip Jar at work. Every cent you throw into the jar goes toward fighting for transparency and the occasional packet of Panadol. If you would like to be a part of it, you can find the Tip Jar here.

 

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Isn’t it fascinating how most of the W’bool City councillors take zero responsibility for whacking us with more rates, as if it all just happened around them?

Like a dog that destroys the couch, the councillors are anguished and tormented once the damage has been done, but did nothing to stop the damage in the first place.

Instead – they plead – the problems that have led to us paying 4.5% more in rates for the next two years were “inherited”.