Carol Altmann – The Terrier

As promised, a quick update on the legal fight to bust down the walls around Lyndoch Living and allow the community to become members.

As we speak, a legal firm is now working on a brief for the barrister, which is the first step toward the barrister providing an opinion on how to proceed.

The barrister’s advice will consider the best way to frame a case against the Lyndoch board – both collectively and as individual board members – on whether they have failed in their duty to uphold the original spirit and purpose of Lyndoch.

As we know, the Lyndoch Living board last year rejected every single membership application from 115 lodged by people right across the local community.

Thanks to more than $12,000 raised via crowdfunding, we are now challenging that blanket rejection.

It is a slow and steady process, but the plan is to take Lyndoch Living to either the County or Supreme court.

I will be able to tell you more as the process unfolds.

You will also remember there is a second legal action underway: veterinarian Dr Michael McCluskey is challenging Lyndoch through VCAT, arguing the rejection of his membership application was discriminatory.

Dr McCluskey had his first mediation session via video link on 10 March and while the sessions are confidential, the mediation is continuing and Dr McCluskey is determined to press on.

“The mediation is still ongoing and if I am not happy with the outcome at the end of process, then I will be proceeding to a hearing at VCAT for them to decide on my claims,” he said.

In the meantime, Dr McCluskey has AGAIN applied to Lyndoch to become a member.

You got to hand it to Dr McCluskey; he stands by his belief that Lyndoch belongs to the community and is doing what he can to restore the community to its heart.

Lyndoch doesn’t seem to grasp the motivation behind this campaign.

The powers-that-be at Lyndoch angst over “the hidden agenda” and are fixated on trying to stop “The Terrier” from telling you what’s going on.

It won’t work.

Because this campaign is all about the residents and staff of Lyndoch: we will keep fighting for them, because Lyndoch was started 70 years ago, by the community, for the elderly and vulnerable people of Warrnambool.

They are no longer being cared for in the way they should be. I hear stories every day. You probably hear them too.

As it happens, Dr McCluskey’s elderly father receives some in-home services from Lyndoch Living as well as having a number of ex-Lyndoch staff who provide private carer services.

“I have found both the current and former staff to be lovely and very welcoming and friendly, which is in stark contrast to my experience with trying to become a member of Lyndoch Living,” he said.

Dr McCluskey said this only “further highlighted the importance of keeping Lyndoch Living membership open to the public so that the community can continue to play a vital role in the stewardship of the care of our aged and vulnerable citizens”.

As it sits, Lyndoch has no general members.

Hard to believe, but true.

But thanks to people like Dr McCluskey, Keep Lyndoch Living, the 115 people who applied for membership, all of those who threw $ in to the crowdfund, and the team now managing the legal challenge, the fight to keep Lyndoch a community asset rolls on.

Thanks for being a part of it.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I miss writing posts for you and I miss hearing your thoughts and comments about those posts.

But for now, this is how it has to be.

To be here for the long haul, I need to stay small for now, and I wish I could tell you why, but perhaps you can join the dots.

For those of you who watch what is happening to journalists and the media around Australia, you may see a pattern emerging that is reflected, on a much smaller scale, in The Terrier.

Independent, investigative, analytical and punchy journalism is at a crossroads, especially in the regions.

It is getting so much harder to write stories based on the gathering of discomforting facts.

Lists are so much easier to write: the top ten burger joints, or the top ten bars.

I don’t want to write lists: to me, that is not the heart and purpose of journalism.

So for now I am staying small, curling into a ball, taking the whacks and hoping to continue to tell the stories that need to be told.

Thankyou for staying the course.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Will it be a new face, or an old face? The Warrnambool City Council recruitment of a new CEO has officially begun.

The  job advert has gone out, just four days before a Supreme Court hearing which will decide whether the former CEO, Peter Schneider, could get his old job back.

The advert was posted online yesterday by top local government recruitment firm, McArthur, with applications closing on 15 February.

On Monday, however, the judicial review into Mr Schneider’s sacking begins and will sort out one way or the other whether he was denied natural justice when he was dumped by the former council in July last year.

If the judge rules in Mr Schneider ‘s favour, then the new council will have to decide whether they will rehire him.

No witnesses will be called for Monday’s hearing, with a judge instead deciding the case on the written evidence and affidavits put before them.

We can only hope the judgment is made quickly, for the sake of Mr Schneider, the new councillors who inherited this mess, and the good people of Warrnambool, all of whom have been sitting in the equivalent of a Jetstar flight circling over and over the airport, unable to land because of turbulence.

I asked the council spokesman and Mayor Vicki Jellie today how the council could start advertising for a new CEO, when the former CEO is still yet to learn his fate?

The response was that, under the Local Government Act, the WCC is legally bound to get things moving and must “…make a permanent appointment to the position of Chief Executive Officer as soon as practicable after a vacancy in the position occurs”.

“Given the then impending elections, and the intervening caretaker period, an earlier appointment was not a feasible option,” the statement said.

But, the statement added, ” the appointment of a CEO is a priority for the new councillors”.

I bet it is.

The whole process from here will be overseen by the council’s  CEO Employment Matters Committee, which will also have all new faces at the table, including Mayor Jellie, two councillors and an independent chair.

This chair is being recruited as we speak and will be in place after the 1 March council meeting.

Monday also marks the first council meeting for 2021 and, I feel, when the real work begins for this new council.

They have a lot to clean up: appointing a chief who can finally land that plane, get us all through customs, and get Warrnambool out into the fresh air is the first of them.

Only then can our city move on.

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

Your right to know: Two weeks ago, I received a letter from my union-appointed lawyers who informed me Lyndoch Living has been monitoring my two Facebook pages, one being my private page and one being this page.

They attached a number of screenshots provided by Melbourne lawyers K&L Gates on behalf of Lyndoch, showing comments by followers and readers of The Terrier.

Those commenting were Warrnambool people expressing their opinion on how every membership application lodged with Lyndoch Living had been rejected.

These comments related to stories I had published on February 16 and 23.

My lawyers also attached a number of quotes from those stories that were highlighted by K&L Gates on behalf of their client.

The recommendation in response to this legal letter from K&L Gates was that I remove the articles and the comments in the screenshots.

The past two weeks has been a time of enormous worry for so many of us because of a resurgence of Covid-19.

It has been so challenging for our aged care homes and their fabulous staff, including those working so hard on the ground at Lyndoch Living.

What I have also found enormously worrying these past two weeks, however, is the rapid erosion of our right to know. Our right to have a say. Of our right to speak up when we see our public institutions being hijacked by vested interests.

Lyndoch Living belongs to us. The Warrnambool City Council is answerable to us. We must never forget this.

And right now, while we are fighting a pandemic, we are being forced to also fight for our democratic rights which are being pulled out from under us one bit at a time.

Secrecy and silence is becoming the new normal.

I’ll be honest, legal letters scare the shite out of me, but I became a journalist for a reason and I am not going to be scared into silence, and, I hope, neither are you.

So we will keep going. We have to, and I want to thank every single one of you who is helping me to make that happen.

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