Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Foxy the fact checker has barged into the office, panting and sweating, with some freshly baked facts about the credit card spending of former W’bool City Council tourism head David McMahon.

Righto, Foxy, do your thing:

Fact: Mr McMahon repaid a total of $5666.85 to the WCC last year, not around $4000 as I thought from adding up the “missing” receipts released through Freedom of Information.

Fact: This is what has been repaid, not what should have been repaid. That figure is still being worked out.

Fact: This $5666.85 was repaid on Monday 5 November 2018, just six days after I lodged my FOI application with the council.

These two facts, which were released via Freedom of Information, took 5.5 weeks and $54 in fees to find out.

What other facts do you have Foxy? Cut loose!

Fact: Mr McMahon repaid the $5666.85 just a few days after a meeting with then-CEO Bruce Anson.

Fact: The council’s Audit and Risk Committee first learned of the credit card abuse when The Terrier published a story on 3 July 2019.

Fact: The Audit and Risk Committee met in November last year, the month of the repayment, but was told nothing.

Fact: Audit and Risk Committee meetings are attended by the council CEO (at that time Bruce Anson), the Director of Corporate Strategies, Peter Utri, the Manager of Financial Services, David Harrington, the Manager of Governance and Risk, Anne-Maree Neal, and an internal auditor.

Fact: On 20 November last year, after the $5666.85 repayment, the council published a six-month report into strategic risks, the chance of them happening, the impact and how to stop them. The $5666.85 didn’t rate a mention.

Fact: The credit card abuse was not reported to IBAC (Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission) under mandatory reporting.

Fact: Mr McMahon kept his job…and his corporate credit card.

What Foxy can’t reveal is exactly what the $5666.84 was spent on, because if you are of a certain mind, it’s easy to hide such spending, especially if you know that nobody is looking too closely.

Fact: Unauthorised spending was inserted into invoices, wrapped up into “room hire”, covered up in “catering”, or buried under those two little words, “council business”.

Fact: One of the missing receipts is for a 10-course, tasting menu with matching wines that lasted four hours in a local restaurant that Mr McMahon enjoyed with a Fun4Kids supplier.

Fact: Foxy found another little receipt for $78 worth of car parking in Melbourne on Friday 12 October 2018.

This receipt coincided with the 125th birthday celebrations of St Patrick’s College Ballarat, held at the MCG, which Mr McMahon attended as (now former) secretary of the St Pat’s old boys.

Did we pay for the parking? Probably.

Is that it Foxy? You must be truly fact after uncovering all of those facts.

No? One more? Okay, spit it out:

Fact: there was a third council person at the almost $700 dinner and booze up at the Myrtle Bar and Kitchen on 18 July last year, that included five bottles of shiraz.

It was Mr McMahon.

His name, unlike Cr Sue Cassidy’s, was missing from the receipt submitted to council by City Growth manager Andrew Paton.

Well fancy that, Foxy, fancy that.

Barry the Boolshite Detector has just passed me a note:

“Bring on the Ombudsman’s inquiry, signed Barry.”

[Note: the $1476 dinner at Pippie’s was a Sister-City function for people from Miura, Japan. Money well spent? I don’t know. Cr Mike Neoh was part of that event, but says he paid $83 toward the final bill that more than covered his share. He doesn’t drink. Cr Neoh bypassed the usual slog and outlined all of this in an email, two hours after I asked him the questions last Thursday. If only every other question to council was answered as quickly and directly.]

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I want you to meet Foxy. I will tell you more about her at the end of this piece, but we need Foxy, because speaking up is now a crime.

If you raise your voice and shout at a Warrnambool City Council meeting, you face an $825 fine, or, to put it into council currency, one Pickled Pig dinner, six bottles of shiraz and two creme brûlées.

This is a local law that was designed to protect councillors and staff from aggression or violence toward each other, or from the public. It is now being used to shut people up.

Not all people, mind you, just the Neanderthals, as Cr Michael Neoh likes to call them.

These “Neanderthals” include the everyday people of Warrnambool who don’t wear suits and who have callouses on their hands from physical work, or tired faces from holding down two jobs while raising three kids.

According to Cr Neoh and Cr Kylie Gaston and our CEO Peter Schneider, these people now need to be shut down for shouting, like they did at last Monday night’s fiery meeting.

If police need to be called, Cr Gaston is happy to use speed dial.

And yet no police have been called by the WCC for the almost $4000 in ratepayers’ funds that were mis-spent by a former senior manager.

This man was an actual Neanderthal, but he wore a suit and was regarded as a “good bloke” by our Mayor and others while he ripped off ratepayers and bullied a string of council staff mercilessly.

Not a word was raised last Monday night about that Neanderthal’s bullying behaviour.

Instead, within hours, the finger was pointed back on the people who have had a gut full of years of waste and not being heard.

The main agitator, ratepayer Ben Blain, who was facing a fine, was loud, no doubt about it, but he was not abusive, or threatening. In fact he was pleading.

Here’s a theatrical but accurate transcript of the full exchange. Warning: contains foul language like “sack ’em” and “cheat” and “you have not got your house in order”.

——-

Lights up. Agenda Item 5.4: Council decides to increase its carbon footprint by flying 31,000km to and from Mariestad, Sweden, to learn how to reduce its carbon footprint.

Ratepayer Ben leaves his seat, walks to the front of the public gallery, his pants trembling with nerves:

(Cue loud voice….aaaaaaand action!):

“Peter Schneider was the council aware of anyone’s involvement? We have sat here and listened to the council try and hide every single cover up that has happened in this place and we are not going to take it anymore.

We are the ratepayers, we are the ones that have voted you in, and you think it is alright to sit here and lie, cheat and steal. Listen to the ratepayers.

What we want is transparency. That is what we want.

How do you think we are going to put up with this?

(Mayor Herbert: Ben, Ben, I have asked you to leave.)

How do you think we are going to put up with this?

(Mayor Herbert: Ben, I have asked you to leave.)

Have you? I am not leaving.

(Ratepayer chorus: No! No!)

Sack ’em! Sack em’!

(Ratepayer chrous: Sack ’em! Sack ’em! Sack’ em! Sack ’em!)

It is absolutely disgusting. We can’t afford to run the city with the rates we’ve got and then you want more to go to Sweden.

You have not got your house in order. How do you think the ratepayers….

(Mayor Herbert: I have asked you to leave.)

(Ratepayer chorus: Nooooo! Nooooo! Noooooo!)

(Mayor Herbert: Right, councillors, we will adjourn the meeting please.)

(Ratepayer chorus: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.)

Meeting adjourned for 10 minutes while CEO Schneider spoke quietly with ratepayer who had returned to his seat.

Councillors re-emerge.

Meeting resumes and picks up again at item 5.4.

Meeting rolls on for almost another hour with a few jeers and moans and groans.

Subdued crowd reignited fully by Cr Gaston’s speech about The Terrier (aka Fox Terrier News), during which Cr Gaston reveals her preference for media that behaves like a toothless tiger, rather than a blog that bites.

Lights down. We all go home.

This is democracy in action and I am determined to keep fighting for it.

As part of that, and because Cr Gaston said she would like my fact checking to be public, I have hired Foxy the Fact Checker. She works 7.6 hours a week alongside Barry the Bullshite detector and she will have her first outing shortly.

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