Carol Altmann – The Terrier

It’s fascinating to see the conversations that go on behind the scenes between the powerful, like an exchange between the former CEO of the Warrnambool City Council, Bruce Anson, and the former CEO of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Peter Downs.

It is a brief exchange – and released only through Freedom of Information of course – but it says so much.

It reveals that Mr Downs met with Mr Anson on Thursday 8 February 2018 with a problem.

The problem was that racehorse training along a section of Port Fairy’s East Beach was no longer possible because, wait for it, those pesky Hooded Plovers had turned up and made it “unworkable” for the racehorses.

But Mr Downs had an idea, which he put to Mr Anson in writing after their catch up: what about giving permission for 50 racehorses to use Lady Bay from Monday 12 February, from dawn until 8am?

Under the council rules, racehorse training at Lady Bay did not normally start until 1 March.

There is a very good reason for this, as Mr Downs acknowledges:  “We understand that there are other beach users using this area at this season of the year”.

(That season of the year is called summer and funnily enough there are loads of “beach users” who like to use Warrnambool’s main beach in summer.)

Not only did Mr Downs think having 50 racehorses training on Lady Bay in summer was a great idea, he also hoped the council could make it happen with just four days’ turnaround from his meeting with Mr Anson.

How? Well, “a circular resolution via email” to councillors.

Excuse me?

No meeting of councillors? No discussion with the public? Not even a notice in the Saturday newspaper?

Was Mr Downs seriously suggesting the council could change the rules by flicking an email around to councillors for a “yes” or a “no”?

You would expect Mr Anson, as CEO, to have clutched his belly, laughed out loud and spluttered “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous Peter!”

But no.

Mr Anson got straight on to it, to see if it could be done.

Within 24 hours Mr Anson had replied to Mr Downs, having done something that the council should have done when the WRC also wanted to access Levy’s Beach for racehorse training – he checked the council laws.

Lo and behold, it is illegal under local laws to bend the rules around racehorse training at Lady Bay without consulting the public.

Who would have thought? Fancy not being able to change a local law via Snapchat or WhatsApp, how inconvenient.

“Sorry I cannot assist in this instance,” Mr Anson wrote in his reply to Mr Downs via his ipad.

In this instance.

Ah, the power of three little words.

Mr Anson is no longer CEO, but the councillors are due to vote again on large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach/Spooky’s Beach which, you may recall, was also found to be illegal under council laws and saw the Planning Minister step in to make it legal.

A sunset clause on the whole mess lapsed on 30 November last year, so each councillor will once again have to decide where they stand on the issue which continues to divide the community.

The first council meeting of the year is next Monday…and the election is in October.

Stay tuned.

The story would not have been possible without a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Horse racing is all about numbers and here is a set that reveals just how dominant disgraced trainer Darren Weir and his suspended side-kick Jarrod McLean were in turning our beaches into racehorse training tracks.

The figures, released as part of a Freedom of Information application to the Warrnambool City Council, relate to the number of trainers and racehorses that used Lady Bay each month from the first day of Autumn to the first day of Summer in 2017 and 2018.

The numbers, collected by the Warrnambool Racing Club, show that more than 1000 racehorse workouts a month were happening up and down Lady Bay, spread out between 21 trainers.

The reality is, however, that the vast majority of horses were from the stables of just two of the 21 trainers: Weir and McLean.

Here is a snapshot:

In August 2018, when Weir was at the height of his powers in Warrnambool, 1141 racehorses ran up and down Lady Bay and 877 of these – or 76 per cent – were workouts by horses trained by Weir or McLean.

In September 2018, there were 1123 horse workouts on Lady Bay and 838 – 74 per cent – were trained by Weir or McLean.

In October, there was a whopping 1299 horse workouts, of which the pair trained 951 – 73 per cent – and in November 2018, there were 1339 horses and their share was 909 horses – 67 per cent.

Between them, Weir and McLean had almost 1000 horse workouts a month at Warrnambool’s main beach, for a mere cost of $1.50 per horse (no GST) paid to the council for the privilege.

Such was Weir’s dominance and influence that, as we know, the quivering council voted 6/1 in December 2018 to open up Levy’s Beach to racehorse training because Weir threatened to go elsewhere unless he had access to Warrnambool’s beaches 365 days a year.

The threat, of course, was that without Weir, Warrnambool’s racing industry would collapse and, without access to the beaches, all the other trainers might pack up and leave too.

Neither has happened.

Levy’s Beach has been closed to racehorse training since late 2016 and remains closed as the WRC continues to work through various approvals.

I had a look through the list of the other 19 trainers using Lady Bay and not one of them, from what I can see, has left Warrnambool because they haven’t been able to access Levy’s Beach.

(Both Weir and McLean have gone as they, between them, face a raft of serious charges for animal cruelty and other offences.)

In the meantime, the Ballarat Turf Club is forging ahead with investing millions in state-of-the-art, all-weather training facilities at its racetrack, making it a magnet to top trainers moving out of Caulfield and Flemington.

The State Government has decided both Caulfield and Flemington need to hand over more of what is actually public (Crown) land for public use.

Our public beaches, meanwhile, remain a battleground. Ah, the irony.

I will be writing more from the results of this FOI request, which sought all correspondence between the council, the Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Victoria for the period September 1, 2016 and March 14, 2019, relating to racehorse training at Levy’s, Spooky’s Beach and Lady Bay. It took nine months and produced more than 500 pages of documents (including lots of spreadsheets) at a cost of $292.

The FOI would not have been possible without a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I always suspected it was the case, but now it’s been confirmed – for almost three years, the Warrnambool City Council did virtually nothing about racehorse trainers breaking the rules at Lady Bay.

Early last year I lodged a Freedom of Information application for all of the correspondence between the council and Warrnambool Racing Club about breaches and alleged breaches of the training rules at Lady Bay.

I asked for everything from 1 December 2016 – which is when the new rules began – right through to 14 March 2019: all letters, emails, the whole lot.

The application took nine months, with the council making me jump through multiple, mind-screwing hoops to narrow down such things as what I meant by “members” of the WRC, what email addresses they should search for, what names they should search for, what keywords they should search for….

On and on it went, at an eventual cost of $216.75 (funded, thankfully, by a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism).

And at the end of all that searching and all that money, the result was just two letters:

Two, brief letters from the WCC to the WRC in 27 months: one written in March last year and one from November 2018.

This was the total sum of all written correspondence between those in charge, despite the steady stream of complaints (and videos and photographs) from the public during this time showing near misses, a racehorse that had thrown its rider, trainers riding fast past walkers, and numerous other safety issues. (See footage below from 2017.)

Apparently none of this warranted even a single email from the WCC to the WRC.

Perhaps they rang or texted each other, leaving no paper trail, I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that when it comes to cracking down on errant trainers, the council has been extraordinarily weak. 

Let’s be super clear here: asking for the rules to be enforced does not mean we are instantly “anti-horse racing” or that all trainers are running amok. #notalltrainers

Instead, it’s a reminder that a public beach is just that – public –  and members of the public have every right to be asking the council what happens when things go wrong, especially when it comes to racehorses on Warrnambool’s main swimming beach.

Until last November, not one trainer had been suspended or fined.

The council says it has since cancelled the permit of one trainer for breaches, although we don’t know who, or for how long, or why, or whether – to be frank – if this actually happened, as some within the industry are unaware of it.

Professional racehorse training at Lady Bay is now the new normal and despite claims that it has “always” been this way, it hasn’t.

A second FOI, which I will write more about soon, revealed there were regularly more than 1000 horse workouts a month at Lady Bay until disgraced trainer Darren Weir fell off his perch.

This is not how it used to be, but this is what our council happily signed up for: up to 96 horses running each morning until 10am, seven days a week, from the first day of Autumn to the first day of Summer, including public holidays.

And they did this with a promise that officers would keep an eye on things – the FOI results show that they didn’t.

In fact Mayor Tony Herbert has recently taken things one step further and suggested that people who are worried by the racehorses at Lady Bay should go to another beach.

Good grief.

This is an excerpt of what Cr Herbert recently wrote in an email to one resident:

“I have spoken to many people over the past few years and some of them avoid the said beach when training of horses is occurring.  Some find that unacceptable, others find that ok.  WCC approach is trying to achieve a balanced approach.

We are so lucky in our city and region that we have a number of alternatives, if sharing the beach with horses is unacceptable to you in the mornings. During the winter months if I’m walking my dog, I choose to use other beaches and there is a number of them.”

In other words, if push comes to shove with “sharing” our main beach, it is the general public that gets shoved.

More on the results of these FOIs soon.

The FOI would not have been possible without a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism.

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.]

Terrier Tip Jar

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Isn’t it astonishing that our elected councillors, while pushing for a rate hike, knew nothing about the thousands of dollars being racked up on Warrnambool City Council corporate credit cards for meals, alcohol, travel, accommodation and coffees?

They apparently had no idea. None.

I don’t think our councillors even knew that the council has 81 corporate credit cards floating around – one for every four, full-time equivalent staffers.

And worse, when it was discovered that at least one of these cards was being used to buy excessive amounts of booze, and car washes, and unauthorised dinners, they didn’t know about that either.

No idea. None. Nobody told them.

(I am still waiting for a formal statement on behalf of all councillors from Mayor Tony Herbert on the simple question of who was told what and when. Hopefully I can run it in full tomorrow.)

We now know that more than one card was being used in this way, thanks to my asking questions, sources who have a strong moral compass, and documents released through Freedom of Information that I lodged on 30 October last year.

And yet the very councillors who agreed to jack up our rates by 4.5% for the next two years didn’t know a thing about it, and nobody bothered to ask.

Even the Audit and Risk Committee, which includes Cr Sue Cassidy and Cr Michael Neoh, didn’t know.

According to a statement from Crs Neoh and Cassidy, the committee only gets notified if there is suspicion of fraud. Well, guess what…..

If this is what passes for scrutiny of ratepayers’ money at a time when every dollar counts, we are being ripped off and no wonder – no wonder – the big party going on behind the scenes in some quarters of council went unreported for so long.

Which brings me to a new feature in The Terrier – the Big Barry Boolshite detector.

Big Barry is a Bull Terrier and he can sniff out Boolshite at 100 paces, so tonight I am unleashing him for the first time and I am sure it will not be the last.

I gave Big Barry a sniff of the council’s claim that it, miraculously, discovered Mr McMahon’s over-the-top credit card spending in September, just a few weeks before I lodged my FOI on 30 October.

Big Barry’s meter went into the red zone! Bool-shite detected!

Because I have since sifted through my emails to council, and I discovered that I first asked about their credit cards on, wait for it, 20 September last year!

Why did I ask them? Because journalists in South Australia and Tasmania were exposing credit card rorts within councils.

Such was the flurry of excitement within council about my questions, it put a whole response on its website, buried where nobody would find it, a week later on 27 September last year.

And then on 30 October I lodged my FOI on Mr McMahon’s spending, having received a tip off about a big booze up that went onto the corporate card and was paid for by you, me and Barry via his exorbitant dog rego fee.

And coincidentally, a few days later in early November, former CEO Bruce Anson sits down with Mr McMahon and sorts out how much Mr McMahon needs to repay.

(Barry, Barry, calm down…it’s okay, we all know its Boolshite).

A big slab of what Mr McMahon had to repay – $1600 worth – was for a big knees up at the Cape Schanck resort in July where Cr Tony Herbert and Cr David Owen were among the council representatives.

Despite being there, at Cape Schanck, Crs Herbert and Owen apparently saw nothing untoward that made them think, “hang on, who is paying for all this?”

And this is why we have lost faith and heart and trust in the very systems and people that should be protecting us from being exploited.

The new CEO Peter Schneider is holding his internal review, all of the 81 credit cards are now being checked – at long last – but, sorry, for those of us now paying higher rates and fees, it is all too little, too late.

Our local MP Roma Britnell is the only one in authority who, so far, has had the spine to take this straight to the top. Straight to the Local Government Minister, Adem Somyurek, who has been swift to act on the rubbish going on down in Gippsland at South Gippsland Shire.

The Minister put administrators in to clean out the joint.

I agree with Roma’s call for a full independent inquiry and so does Barry and I bet you do too.

Thankyou so very much to everyone who has supported The Terrier with a contribution to the Tip Jar: this investigation is the Tip Jar at work. You can be part of it by clicking below.

Terrier Tip Jar