EXCLUSIVE: Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village in Warrnambool is under formal investigation by Heritage Victoria over missing items from its collection and damage to relics from the wreck of the Loch Ard.

As recently reported in Bluestone Magazine, two of the 10 copper sheets from the Loch Ard (1878) that were loaned to Flagstaff Hill by the Federal Government have been cut.

It is believed that a large slice was taken from one of the sheets in recent years for use as a sculpture or trophy, while the other has had a 10 x 10cm piece removed.

The Loch Ard, arguably Australia’s most famous shipwreck, is listed as a wreck of state and Commonwealth significance.

It is an offence under Section 13 of the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act to “destroy or cause damage to a historic shipwreck or historic relic” and can lead to a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for an individual, or a $5000 fine for a body corporate.

In addition, Flagstaff Hill manager Peter Abbott recently confirmed in a letter to the local newspaper that the museum had lost track of at least 129 items from its collection, including the brass ship’s bell from the wreck of the Newfield (1892) that was once displayed in the Great Circle Gallery.

Heritage Victoria told Bluestone Magazine late Friday that, as a result of the revelations, it had opened an investigation into the collection practices at Flagstaff Hill.

“Tim Smith, Executive Director, Heritage Victoria confirmed Heritage Victoria is investigating the care and storage of items at Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum,” a spokeswoman said via email.

Mr Smith was unavailable for further comment.

Heritage Victoria is responsible for the initial investigation into any potential breaches of the federal law governing historic shipwrecks. It is also responsible for investigating if there have been any breaches of the Victorian Heritage Act, which carries its own penalties.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] F [/dropcap]lagstaff Hill, which is accredited by the museum governing body, Museums Australia, has had the spotlight turned on its collection management processes after questions late last year by Warrnambool City Councillor Brian Kelson.

Mr Kelson’s probing about gaps in the museum’s online collection database led to revelations that 220 lead ingots from the Loch Ard could not be accounted for.

Flagstaff Hill was given custody of 872 lead ingots in 1984 as part of the same federal loan agreement that governed the copper sheets.

Mr Abbott and council chief executive officer Bruce Anson have both since given assurances that the bulk of the missing ingots are in the hull of the derelict Rowitta ferry, although there has been no official count due to the poor condition of the vessel.

The ferry, which sits on the pond at Flagstaff Hill, is scheduled for demolition later this year.

Mr Abbott has recently been caught up in a separate scandal, after he was named by the local newspaper as the author of several anonymous comments made to its online forums, in which he made personal attacks against Cr Kelson and Cr Peter Hulin.

Cr Hulin has since indicated he will move a motion of no confidence against CEO Mr Anson at the first council meeting of the year on February 2, citing his handling of Mr Abbott’s behaviour as an example of why the Local Government Minister should be asked to intervene.

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OPINION – Carol Altmann

The exposure of senior Warrnambool City Council manager Peter Abbott as the author of anonymous comments to the local newspaper attacking some councillors has revealed a toxic culture developing within its walls.

The local newspaper has today named Mr Abbott, who is the head of the council’s tourism services and manager of the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village, as the author of a string of comments to its online forum in which he regularly targeted Crs Peter Hulin and Brian Kelson while hiding behind a pseudonym.

This is not the actions of some junior staff member, over-excited by the opportunities of social media to air his spleen anonymously.

It is the actions of an experienced, highly-paid council manager who has set out to systemically discredit two of the people elected to represent ratepayers.

Mr Abbott cannot claim to have had a single rush of blood to the head.

Instead, he has carefully differentiated between commenting under his real name and making up a string of names such as Robinhood, Trash and Smallman to accuse Cr Kelson, in particular, of making false claims, getting his facts wrong, and failing to attend meetings.

These are highly personal attacks, designed to diminish the public’s view of elected members that – as representatives of the people – Mr Abbott is paid to serve.

If he was a senior public servant within the state or federal government making anonymous, critical attacks on MPs, he would have been dismissed for behaviour that is unethical, unprofessional and totally inappropriate.

The question is, how did Mr Abbott come to think that his behaviour was acceptable and, now that it has been exposed, how has he survived in his position?

Mr Abbott’s actions are indicative of a toxic culture that has been allowed to flourish within the council that considers some people – in particular Crs Kelson, Hulin and Sycopoulis – to be fair game.

It is a culture fed by a misguided belief that a council should be passive by not asking too many questions, not rocking the boat and agreeing to every decision as a united front.

Those who refuse to fit this mould are considered troublemakers who need to be discredited or, even better, removed from council altogether.

With this in mind, Mr Abbott no doubt thought that he was doing his bit.

The council’s chief executive Bruce Anson knows a lot about the potential problems of attacking councillors behind pseudonyms when he was scrutinised – and cleared – of any involvement in a series of letters to the newspaper written by his son under the pseudonym of Wilma Wright.

These letters, written over a period of four years, included personal attacks on Crs Sycopoulis, Hulin and then-councillor Jennifer Lowe during the 2012 election campaign.

Given this recent history, I would have expected Mr Anson to come down heavily on a senior staff member who has been exposed for such extraordinary and unprofessional behaviour.

Instead, Mr Anson has backed Mr Abbott to the hilt.

In his statement to the paper, Mr Anson said while “staff” should not engage in political debate online, he stood by “the excellent work” Mr Abbott had done at Flagstaff Hill and that he would  “be heavily involved” in the upgrade of the site.

Indeed Mr Anson even feels sorry for Mr Abbott: “It’s always a challenge, when you work as a public servant, to weather the criticism that comes with the job.” (I am sure the people who Mr Abbott has attacked would agree).

So Mr Abbott is going nowhere and will suffer no professional consequences for his actions.

I am trying to imagine the CEO’s response if Mr Abbott’s anonymous, public criticisms were aimed at Mayor Michael Neoh or, indeed, himself?

Would it be considered okay to continue in your position if you publicly criticised the two top civic officials you worked for?

Or what if Mr Abbott had used his anonymous comments to undermine the two women councillors, Crs Gaston and Ermacora? Would he (quite rightly) be taken to task then?

This should not be about individuals, but standards. Unfortunately what we have seen unfold today indicates that our local council has a long way to go in not only setting the highest standards for its staff, but enforcing them.

Note: It was Cr Brian Kelson who exposed the extent of the problems with the collection management system at Flagstaff Hill that has since revealed more than 130 missing artefacts, damage to Loch Ard relics and inadequate to non-existent record keeping. You can read our two earlier pieces on this issue here and here.

OPINION – Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #5C747D;”] H [/dropcap]ow did Warrnambool’s Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village lose track of more than 200 lead ingots that were part of the most famous shipwreck in Australia – the Loch Ard – given to it by the Federal Government for safe keeping?

This is a question that has the Warrnambool City Council scrambling for answers but – so far – the explanations have only raised even more questions about how the maritime collection has been managed and whether more irreplaceable items may have fallen through the gaps. (*Update: Flagstaff Hill has since confirmed more than 130 items are missing from its collection, including the Newfield bell from 1892.)

Cr Brian Kelson started asking about the location of all the Loch Ard (1878) ingots late last year and the information that has been provided since has been surprising, in terms of how loose the record keeping and storage has been around relics that should be considered precious.

In a written report to council at its December 1 meeting, the Flagstaff Hill advisory committee revealed that 872 lead ingots and 10 copper sheets from the Loch Ard were loaned to the village by the Federal Government in 1984.

They have a written agreement to prove it, but unfortunately it would be almost 30 years – yes, 30 years – before Flagstaff Hill did a full count of the ingots, each of which weighs around 60kg but, because of their French-stick shape, can be carried by two people.

That count was in 2012 and they could only find 728 of the 872, meaning 144 had somehow vanished, which is not surprising given there was no proper audit for almost three decades.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #5C747D;”] T [/dropcap]he advisory committee admits that this number – 728 – wasn’t cross-checked, but it was still added to the Flagstaff Hill database.

Another count was done in 2014 and could only locate 652 of the 728, meaning another 76 ingots were added to the already missing 144, bringing the total now missing to 220.

Oddly, however, Flagstaff Hill has brushed off the missing 144, saying it could have been an error in the original loan agreement, which I would say is unlikely, given it was an official government document that was dealing with maritime treasures. (Update: see former FHMV director Peter Ronald’s comment at the end of this piece, confirming the initial intake.)

There has also been no mention of the 10 copper sheets – does Flagstaff Hill still have them?

The copper sheets were listed as item no. 3078 on its public database – that was until last November, when the listing disappeared. (Update: the copper sheet listing has been reinstated, together with a copy of the federal loan agreement. You can see both here.)

The council’s focus has been narrowed to finding the 76 ingots missing from the 2012 count, and this is where things have become quite bizarre.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #5C747D;”] F [/dropcap]irst, at the same December 1 council meeting, council CEO Bruce Anson gave a verbal update to Cr Kelson in which he said that another count had been taken and 64 of the missing ingots had been found in a false floor of the Reginald M: one of two boats in the Flagstaff Hill lake.

A false floor? We took a look inside the Reginald M at the weekend and counted 286 ingots – the same number in the advisory committee report – and there were no signs of any ingots in a false floor (but, as an aside, plenty of signs of a rotting floor filling up with water).

Mr Anson went on to say that any remaining missing ingots were inside the hull of the nearby derelict Rowitta.

This reassurance was repeated in the local newspaper on December 23, although Flagstaff Hill manager Peter Abbott said it was too unsafe to actually count the ingots in the Rowitta, but his people could “peer in”.

Mr Abbott then revealed that some ingots could also be in the mud at the bottom of the lake, thrown there by night-time intruders. What? When did this happen and were police notified of a break-in at Flagstaff Hill?

More slivers of the puzzle came to light at the weekend when the local newspaper reported that some ingots were being used in Port Fairy while another, not necessarily from Flagstaff Hill, may have been sold at a local clearing sale.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #5C747D;”] S [/dropcap]o how many Loch Ard ingots have we actually got on display, in storage and in the mud at Flagstaff Hill?

I don’t know, I am lost, but I counted a total of 647 when I was there on Saturday.

To throw a final curve ball into the mix, the council’s director of city growth, Bill Millard, who sits on the Flagstaff Hill advisory committee, sent a memo to all councillors on December 10 saying that “the most recent count” identified the location of 802 ingots and he was “confident” that the ingot collection was intact.

Mr Millard may be confident, but the rest of us have a right to be utterly confused.

By any account, the audit of the Loch Ard ingots is an embarrassing mess caused by years of inaction to update the paper-based (yes, paper-based) collection system at Flagstaff Hill.

It is now being left to Peter Abbott – who, in what must be a vast role, is also head of council’s tourism services – and his team of largely volunteers to untangle it.

Perhaps most troubling, however, is how many more precious objects have “gone missing” from the thousands collected by or donated to Flagstaff Hill over the last 40 years?

There are already rumblings about items such as Newfield bell, which once hung in the Great Circle Gallery at Flagstaff Hill, but no longer even appears on its collection database.

While the analogy may be more suited to the Titanic  than the Loch Ard, I fear that the missing ingots may prove to be just the tip of the iceberg.

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OPINION

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]P[/dropcap]lans to hit traders with a compulsory levy to raise $3 million over five years for Commerce Warrnambool are headed for court unless the Warrnambool City Council puts a stop to the levy immediately.

Commerce Warrnambool and the Warrnambool Traders Action Group agreed to not talk publicly about the levy while negotiations were underway between the two, but don’t think for a moment they have struck a deal.

In fact, it is the opposite.

In a hard-hitting letter sent to all councillors and council Chief Executive Officer Bruce Anson last week, the traders are asking the council to withdraw the levy proposal at its meeting next Monday (21/7), or it will take legal action against Commerce Warrnambool to prevent it from acting outside its legal powers.

The first step in that process is an injunction issued by the Magistrates’ Court.

Before delivering this ultimatum out of sheer exasperation, the W’bool Traders Action Group spent a lot of time identifying where it believes Commerce Warrnambool has breached its legal requirements as an incorporated body and hoped that something would be done to address these concerns.

It also, despite weeks of discussion between the two groups, is still waiting for answers to its questions about how the levy has been justified.

It appears the traders have finally run out patience.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]W[/dropcap]ith their gloves firmly off, the traders have, in their letter, accused Commerce Warrnambool of making “false and misleading” claims about the level of support for the levy, which would raise $600,000 in its first year and rise by 5 per cent each year.

In arguing why the levy should go ahead, Commerce Warrnambool said its consultant, Peter McNabb, had visited more than 900 businesses to explain how the levy would work and that this resulted in signed support from more than 150 traders.

The W’bool Traders Action Group says it has since spoken to more than 300 businesses and found less than 20 who were formally consulted: most found out about the levy through the media.

(As an aside, Bluestone asked the council if it had seen the 150 signed forms of support and was told that they had been “viewed by council staff”, but presumably not the elected councillors.)

Similarly, Commerce Warrnambool said its consultant received verbal support (ie. via telephone) from 150 corporate businesses who have their head offices outside of Warrnambool – a claim the traders describe as “fanciful” because finding the right person to speak to in corporations is difficult, let alone gaining their “verbal support” for anything.

And it doesn’t stop there.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]T[/dropcap]he Traders Action Group goes on to reveal in its letter that the “purpose” of the Commerce Warrnambool Strategic Business Plan – as stated in the business plan – is actually the “purpose” of the Swan Hill Incorporated plan (which Peter McNabb and Associates also developed) and has nothing to do with the objectives of Commerce Warrnambool.

There are also allegations of threatening, potentially libelous emails being sent from a member of Commerce Warrnambool to two members of the Traders Action Group.

Put simply, the levy proposal is a mess and, as a result, Commerce Warrnambool is in a mess.

This is a shame, because the city needs a robust Chamber of Commerce – something the W’bool Traders Action Group also agrees on – but how that body is funded, and what it does, needs more investigation and discussion.

I have written previously about how chambers of commerce in other regional cities use memberships and corporate sponsorships to survive and how they are primarily focussed on lobbying, networking and professional development: not things like Christmas decorations, ‘buy local’ campaigns and promoting the local football finals.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]I[/dropcap]n addition, we still don’t know – if the levy was to go through – what Commerce Warrnambool will deliver in its first year, beyond some very broad-brush goals that require a huge leap of faith that the $600,000 will be well spent.

Our elected officials have an opportunity, next Monday, to put the brakes on the whole levy proposal and Commerce Warrnambool has an opportunity to start over, with a view to building a robust plan for its future that has solid – rather than fractured – support.

The most likely result, however, is that the council will vote to defer the levy process until later in the year, which really helps neither side and only extends the war.

The council might prefer to stay in limbo, but the traders have made it clear that they will not.

This time, time has run out.

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OPINION – CAROL ALTMANN

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] P [/dropcap]lans to introduce a new trader levy to raise $3 million over five years for Commerce Warrnambool have taken a dramatic twist.

A Facebook post by Commerce Warrnambool (CW) president Tony Herbert has revealed that CW is no longer seeking $600,000 a year from the trader levy, but $300,000 – with the remaining $300,000 to come straight from the Warrnambool City Council coffers.

This new idea is central to the negotiations between CW and the Warrnambool Traders Action Group – with Mayor Michael Neoh sitting in the middle – to try and reach a compromise, after the initial levy proposal sparked an angry and rolling protest.

It might look like an attempt at a compromise, but to me it sounds like policy on the run and former Labor leader Kevin Rudd is living proof of where that can lead: disaster.

Commerce Warrnambool no doubt has noble intentions in trying to raise funds to spend on promoting Warrnambool, but its proposals continue to raise more questions than they answer.

Shifting half of the cost burden from traders to general ratepayers does not change the need for a full and robust discussion on how the funds will be spent.

It also raises the question of whether this is the best use of $1.5 million of public funds. (Especially when the council is already spending close to $1 million a year on propping up Fun4Kids and Flagstaff Hill).

Indeed this new idea, if it is accepted, only widens the discussion – from traders to the general community – and we should now all be invited to have a say.

Bluestone Magazine is not alone in its concerns.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] A [/dropcap]s it so happens, not only did we stumble across Mr Herbert’s Facebook post today, but the council sent us a wad of documents in response to a Freedom of Information request we lodged in late May regarding the levy.

We are still working our way through these documents and will reveal more over time, but email correspondence between the council’s Director of City Growth, Bill Millard, and Commerce Warrnambool as recently as April this year indicates that both councillors and Council Chief Executive Officer Bruce Anson wanted to see much more detail on how the first $600,000 would be spent.

“I think one of the things you guys do need to work on is answering the question that Bruce asked Richard (Montgomery, from CW) ie. what is the $600k going to spent on in year one, remembering that council needs to sign on to the quantum and the KPIs,” Mr Millard wrote on March 6.

“Personally, I think you need to be definitive here. It will hurt your overall push if the councillors don’t know what the money will be spent on.”

You were not wrong there, Bill!

Mr Millard wrote another email dated April 1 – just weeks before the levy process was approved by the council – indicating councillors were still seeking critical details.

The email is too long to reproduce in full here, but it summarises the questions from councillors, including, again, the need for some firm details on how the money will be spent in the first year, how Commerce Warrnambool decided on the figure of $600,000 as an annual total, and what was the level of support for the levy among traders.

I would strongly argue that these questions still stand.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap] spoke to Mr Herbert today and he said he was hopeful of reaching some middle ground, although he did not wish to go into any further detail because the negotiations were at a critical stage.

“Members of Commerce Warrnambool and Warrnambool Traders Action Group are working together with the council to try and get an outcome that is hopefully more suitable,” he said.

The trader action group has put forward a compromise of their own which, I understand, has already been knocked on the head by Commerce Warrnambool.

Their suggestion was to withdraw the levy proposal, have key members of the action group join the Commerce Warrnambool board and start from scratch as a united group.

This united group would review the business plan, look at how other towns run their Chambers of Commerce and come up with a fresh approach to council by November.

Perhaps that would provide the breathing space that this whole messy proposal so desperately needs.

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