Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lawyers for sacked Warrnambool City Council CEO Peter Schneider have issued defamation proceedings against four councillors.

Those four councillors are Cr Mike Neoh, Cr Kylie Gaston, Cr Sue Cassidy and Cr David Owen.

This partly explains the flurry of confidential business happening behind closed doors at the council meeting last night.

The second matter, according to sources, is believed to relate to lawyers for Mr Schneider arguing that he be reinstated as CEO: in other words, he gets his job back.

There is a precedent for such a thing, with a sacked CEO of Logan City Council, in Queensland, being given her job back after challenging the motives of the seven councillors who deposed her.

Wouldn’t that be a turn up for the books!

With the council elections just two months away and a new council to be elected, it may not be as unthinkable as it sounds.

And the third matter, twisted up in all of the above, is understood to be a heated, ding-dong, hair-pulling (except for Cr Sycopoulis, no offence to him), full-blooded barney over who should pay for the legal expenses racked up so far and those yet to come.

Should it be the individual councillors involved in the coup? Should it be ratepayers?

Discuss.

I emailed all seven councillors today to ask for comment on the legal action, whether ratepayers would be footing the bill, and how much had been spent so far on council lawyers.

Only three replied by deadline and no prizes for guessing who.

Here are their statements in full:

Mayor Tony Herbert:
“Thanks for your email.

As you are aware I am unfortunately unable to confirm most of your queries although some of the info might be able to be sought through channels of FOI. We lost the resolution on the night of the 13th July regarding confidentiality.

It is a very unfortunate situation the council has decided to thrust itself into especially in light of the further and greater impacts of the pandemic on council, staff, council budgets and our community ongoing.

I certainly would have preferred when such significant costs have been incurred, to have spent funds in a more productive and positive way…as a stimulus for our community post COVID for example.

I also implored councillors on a number of occasions to take alternative actions to manage our CEO  through discussion and negotiations rather than this drastic and expensive action as our only management tool!

As far as legal costs questions, I’m unable to comment at this time.

Hopefully things will become clearer.

One thing I will add further, is that personally,  I feel the community has a right to know what happened in the lead up to the sudden termination, reasons for  the termination and also the costs.”

Cr Robert Anderson: 

“Thank you for your email Carol, unfortunately because of the confidentiality on the above subject I am unable to make any comment.”

Cr Peter Sycopoulis:

“Thank you for your enquiry. Due to confidentiality requirements, I am not at liberty to provide an answer to your questions. What I can confirm however, is that I personally have not received correspondence from any law firm in relation to this matter.”

So the council is about to enter a legal shitestorm, to be frank, and – so far – we are officially being told nothing.

Please keep this in mind when we all vote in October.

Think about integrity, transparency, openness, honesty, accountability and the-right-to-know: these, to me, are now the key themes of election 2020.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Sooo, as has been reported by the ABC and The Standard earlier today, our Mayor Tony Herbert will remain Mayor, having not offered his resignation, despite his recently breaking one, two, three…no, four, laws, and taking a hit for the biggest fine, which was breaching the C19 distancing rules.

Cr Herbert was also not officially challenged to step down by Cr Sue Cassidy despite some tub thumping at the weekend.

There are no real surprises here, because:

1. the Mayor was never going to step aside (having come up with a palatable reason for his brain fade);

2. he was never going to be asked to resign (as the majority of his fellow councillors were happy to let this one slide) and;

3. his only challenger – Cr Cassidy – had two votes at best in herself and maybe Cr Robert Anderson.

 

(Crs Gaston, Neoh and Owen were never on board and Cr Sycopoulis and Cr Herbert are politically close as a part of the same faction in the Liberal Party.)

The W’bool City Council also craves at least some modicum of stability, in what are unstable and uncertain times and not just because of the C19.

As was drawn to my attention today – by a reader who runs a forensic eye over such things – there are FIVE senior management positions on the council that are either vacant or have ‘acting’ staff in the role, starting with the Manager of Governance, that reports directly to the CEO.

The head of tourism – remember him? – has seemingly not been replaced since he resigned last July.

The Manager of Community Planning and Policy, who resigned last year, is still listed as being in that role.

So is the Manager of Economic Development and Investment, who resigned in January.

As the reader pointed out, how does this affect the council’s ability to do its day-to-day business?

Well one area, I can tell you, is updating its policies, some of which are years out of date.

One example, again offered by this astute reader, is the council’s whistleblower policy, you know, that little thing that should have protected people like Dr Bernadette Northeast from speaking up about bullying within council.

The document was supposed to be updated in 2016.

The anti-corruption guidelines from IBAC posted on the WCC website are from 2013.

Jeeps. As we know, it is the small stuff that affects the big stuff. You let one thing go, then the next thing falls over, and then the next.

It’s a bit like how one coffee on the council credit card morphs into eye fillet and bottles of cab sav.

Or stuffing up the way people have to pay their pet registrations, which I hear is still causing grief for pensioners who now have to go to great lengths involving forms and Centrelink (two things that are enough to make me want to take to the couch) to prove they’re eligible for a discount.

Let’s not forget that it’s only a couple of months since Cr Mike Neoh went rogue and declared to The Standard that he had “had a gutful of raising issues and not seeing any progress.”

What this means in plain speak is that certain councillors wanted the CEO gone.

Before the C19 descended, I doubt the CEO would have survived a no confidence vote.

So the Mayor will stay on as the figurehead, but the wheels were wobbling within the council itself well before this detour.

The real work starts once the virus lifts and we have to get back out onto the highway. Strap yourselves in.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Every now and then something slips out of Warrnambool City Council and we catch a glimpse of what really goes on.

This is when we learn what councillors really think, unplugged and unfiltered – this is one of those times.

The words of one councillor, former mayor Kylie Gaston, recently leaked through the solid wall of control via an email and I must admit that it made my jaw drop.

Cr Gaston didn’t expect these words to escape and she was not happy about it, but the non-confidential email she wrote to her fellow councillors (except Cr Peter Hulin) has crept through a crack and run free.

The email was sent by Cr Gaston the night before the September 2 council meeting at which councillors were still battling the raw flames of the credit card scandal and desperately trying to regain public trust.

As part of rebuilding this trust, Cr Hulin wanted the council to ask the Local Government Minister for a full review into all council spending for the past seven years, provided it wouldn’t cost ratepayers any more money.

Cr Gaston did not like this move at all and she told her fellow councillors as much, while at the same time revealing what she really thought about the whole issue.

Here is her email from 1 September in full:

“Hi everyone,

I am only writing this email to councillors, not including Peter Hulin as he is putting the motion forward.

I will be blunt.

This is a political notice of motion. Who is going to second it? Why second it when it is only going to add to the political fire, no matter what the outcome.

I think we all believe, as Thommo said, this is an iceblock not an iceberg. If the Standard reporters are working this out, why would we fuel the fire?

Let the motion lapse. Let the gallery yell at us. And let’s get on with what we are elected to do without unnecessary cost to ratepayers.

This is a blip. It will pass. We need to focus on our values and keep moving our city forward.

Kylie.

 

Did a word leap off the page for you? A tiny word that says so much: “blip”.

A blip.

We are talking here about the blatant misuse, abuse and unjustifiable spending of ratepayers’ money by senior council staff and a potential cover-up, all of which is now the subject of three inquiries.

I can’t un-see that word, “blip”, despite Cr Gaston’s explanation, which I have also published in full below.

And then there is this zinger: “let the gallery yell at us”, which is exactly what they did, and some paid the price for it.

Cr Gaston expected a rowdy meeting, but now anyone who shouts at meetings in the future could be fined.

In this email we also learn Cr Gaston looked to the Warrnambool Standard to gauge whether credit card abuse was a problem for the council.

If the sole newspaper wasn’t worried, why should councillors be?

Good grief.

And, lastly, it shows Cr Gaston, who is an experienced councillor, trying to line up councillors like ducks in a row, rather than free-thinking individuals.

So this is how it works when we aren’t watching. How fascinating.

I asked Cr Gaston a number of questions about this email and this is her response in full:

Hi Carol,

I will certainly be interested to see how you frame my response.

I believe the NOM (notice of motion) was political rather than useful and wanted to clarify that with my fellow Councillors and not make it personal with Peter Hulin.

This has certainly been a distressing and unfortunate episode at Council. Personally I am disgusted with the inappropriate use of monies and I believe most people are honest.

We need to  learn from it and move on. I did not intend the word blip to imply something small but rather in the history of Council this is an unfortunate episode which we need to deal with responsibly and I believe we had already put appropriate actions in place.

At the time of the Council meeting the Ombudsman was involved  and two weeks prior, Council had called a Special Meeting to appoint an external and independent auditor.  The scope will certainly include a review of our corporate governance and how we arrived at this point.

As it stands, the Minister is waiting the outcome of the Ombudsman report, so in fact the Notice of Motion achieved no more than what is already happening.

There is not much more to it than that.

Kind regards,

Kylie

I ran this response past Barry the Bullshite Detector. He gave it a 9/10, saying it contained more spin than a whirling dervish dance party.

Last Thursday, I asked Cr Gaston a follow-up question on why she was so confident this whole issue was an “iceblock”, after all, the official inquiries had only just begun.

Her answer arrived a few hours ago:

“In my view, the subject of further investigation had been dealt with at the special meeting and the (motion) was not going to add value.

What it was going to achieve was keeping the issue burning (so to speak) in the public domain when we had already dealt with it.

Bringing in the minister was only going to be political and, as it eventuated, the minister did indeed say it was already being investigated.

At this point I’ll wait to see if there is any further information of which we are unaware.

I don’t believe corruption is systemic at WCC and through transparent external investigation we will review our policies to ensure this does not happen again.

There are always some people who will try exploit systems for their own gain, I detest this, however, I believe most people are honest and our staff are hard working and trying to do the right thing.”

 

Nobody has ever suggested corruption is systemic at the WCC, but boy, wouldn’t you want to turn over all the rocks to see what might crawl out?

That is how to restore public confidence, bit by bit, and without a “blip” in sight.

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