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.
WCC credit card scandal: why the whole thing reeks
Warrnambool City Council Mayor Tony Herbert. Image: WCC.
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.)
My setting up a meeting with Cr Herbert last August to talk about allegations around Flagstaff Hill management.
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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The impromptu mural by Rolf Harris in the loading dock at Lighthouse Theatre – it has since been covered by perspex. Image: ABC Radio South-west Victoria – Jeremy Lee.
OPINION – Carol Altmann
[box] A warning: this piece contains details of Rolf Harris’s crimes which some readers may find distressing.[/box]
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap]t is more than two months since the Warrnambool City Council promised a discussion about the future of the Rolf Harris mural in light of his convictions for molesting children but, until now, we have not heard a word.
As readers will recall, an impromptu mural by Harris in the loading dock of the Lighthouse Theatre was covered by painted perspex after he was convicted on 12 counts of sexually abusing four girls aged between eight and 19, with the community split over whether the work should be retained or painted over.
Mayor Michael Neoh, at that time, said there was no room for a “knee jerk reaction” and the future of the work needed a considered response – perhaps it would be reinterpreted by adding a white ribbon over the perspex or some other symbol of denouncing violence against women. (Except Harris’s crimes were not about women, they were about sexually abusing children.)
Then the discussion fell quiet as if, by keeping the mural out of sight and out of mind, we might all just forget about it.
But survivors of child sexual abuse never forget, and neither do we.
Mayor Michael Neoh. Image: ABC.
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]W [/dropcap]hen Bluestone emailed each councillor for an update on their personal view about the mural, Mayor Neoh initially sounded annoyed that he was being pressed to “act in haste”.
“Council will discuss the matter as a group. I would respectfully say that it is appropriate to address issues in a considered manner and not to not act in haste to meet external deadlines,” he wrote.
When asked what deadlines he was talking about, Mayor Neoh replied:
“As you would be aware the painting has been fully covered and we were awaiting for any indication of an appeal processes which seems unlikely now. The acting (Chief Executive) and I recently discussed raising it in a future briefing and I assume it will be an item, like many others, on a briefing agenda in the near future.”
So does Mayor Neoh still want the mural retained or not? We don’t know.
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] O [/dropcap]ur view on the mural is unequivocal – it should already be gone and you can read our reasoning in our earlier opinion piece – but the councillors are divided.
The full responses from councillors can be found here, but, in summary: Cr Kylie Gaston and Cr Peter Sycopoulis said they wanted the work retained – but covered – and with some form of educational message added, such as the white ribbon symbol or an explanatory plaque.
Cr Peter Hulin said that unless Harris successfully appealed his conviction (which appears unlikely), the mural should be painted over. While Cr Jacinta Ermacora said there was no right answer, she believed the fate of the mural should be decided by the community and “relevant stakeholders”. “I believe that the voices of victims aught be given significant weight in this matter,” she said.*
We did not receive a response from Cr Brian Kelson or Cr Rob Askew.
Rolf Harris was earlier this year convicted on 12 counts of sexual offences against children. Image: The Guardian
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] W [/dropcap]hat I wonder is this:
Would the council still be tip-toeing around this issue if the mural had been painted by a Warrnambool man who had since been found guilty of the same crimes as Rolf Harris?
[learn_more caption=”You can read details here: contains explicit content”]Harris’s crimes include touching an eight year old girl’s vagina, digitally penetrating a 15 year old girl on multiple occasions, and licking the vagina of a 15 year old girl while she was asleep and her parents, whom Harris had been visiting, were downstairs.[/learn_more]
These are among the crimes which the judge outlined in his sentencing of Harris and they need to be named up. (You can read the full remarks here).
The celebrity status that Harris used to cover up his crimes (including in 1986, when he painted the Warrnambool mural), is the very same status that is protecting him now.
We don’t need white ribbons and plaques and educational reinterpretations to remind us that this man is a predator and, to this day, has shown no remorse: he typifies so many sexual abusers, including those who still walk free in our community.
“But it is art”, is the most common response from those who find it impossible to accept that this mural must go.
It is a painting, to be sure, but in my mind not all art is created equal.
Melbourne paint shop owner Frank Penhalluriack took one of the “most important stands” of his life in rolling over a Rolf Harris mural after the artist’s conviction. Image: Herald-Sun
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]P[/dropcap]ublic murals, by their sheer nature, are transitory: they fade, they are painted over, they are removed.
We know this because about 12 years after Harris spontaneously created his mural from an errant paint splodge, another commissioned mural less than 400m away was bulldozed to make way for a string of soul-less apartments in the Ozone carpark without so much as a whimper.
This was a work by local indigenous artist Fiona Clarke.
Harris’s work will remain in dozens, if not hundreds, of private art collections around the world – he was nothing if not prolific – and had this mural been treated the same way as Fiona Clarke’s when the Lighthouse Theatre was upgraded, it would already be gone. (Apparently the plans were modified to accommodate the mural, such is the power of celebrity.)
If only we, as a city, had the courage and fortitude of Frank Penhalluriack, the Melbourne paint shop owner who, the moment Harris was found guilty, rolled a bright-red roller over an impromptu Harris mural painted in his shop in 1990.
“It is one of the most important stands I have ever taken,” he told the Herald Sun.
I wonder how many of us – and our city councillors – could say the same thing?
* Since being contacted by Bluestone, Cr Ermacora raised the issue at last week’s council briefing, which is the first in a series of steps toward opening a wider community discussion.
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