Carol Altmann – The Terrier

This is the smoking gun.

I was going to publish this piece tomorrow night to give the Warrnambool City Council and its tourism chief David McMahon time to respond to questions I sent this morning, but given the events of this afternoon – Mr McMahon’s resignation – I am bringing it forward.

Tonight is when all the pieces of the credit card scandal around Mr McMahon come together and it explains why Mr McMahon’s position became untenable.

Because what follows is not a story about mistakes or misunderstandings, but deliberate concealment.

 

And it worked because, until right now, the truth was concealed.

Here is what happened:

On the night of Thursday, 31 May last year, Mr McMahon and a group of four people, including two other council staff, ate and drank at Bojangles restaurant in Liebig St.

There was a couple of pizzas, there was plenty of wine, there was even one or two shots, and lots of laughs.

At the end of the night, the waiter brought the bill and Mr McMahon pulled out his council corporate card, as he had done so many times before, and whacked the $172.50 on the WCC account.

The crew then made their way home, but neither the original bill nor the receipt from that night made it to the council.

Instead, someone returned to Bojangles later and secured a hand-written, unitemised receipt dated 4 June 2018 – four days after the meal.

It showed nothing but a Bojangles stamp, Mr McMahon’s name, the word “Meals” and the total of $172.50.

In his record to council, Mr McMahon submitted this receipt and put the meal down to “VEAC meeting” – the council’s tourism advisory group – but this knees-up was nothing to do with VEAC.

The two members of the public at the table had nothing to do with VEAC. The two other council staff had nothing to do with VEAC.

This was not a VEAC meeting, but a little private party held after “Beers and Ideas” finished across the road at The Loft, which is where they had wandered from.

 

Did the two members of the public in the group know they were being shouted by ratepayers? Probably not. Did either of the two other council staff know? Maybe.

But Mr McMahon knew.

Such was the slack scrutiny of his spending, the hand-written, unitemised receipt made it through. No questions asked.

 

At the time, Mr McMahon, from Ballarat, had worked for the Warrnambool City Council for about two years and had held a council corporate credit card for around 15 months.

The picture I have built from this 12-month investigation shows the rot with this card started early and it rolled on for 18 months, with non-itemised receipts, missing receipts, vague stat decs, claims for committee meetings that never happened, unauthorised drinks, lunches, dinners, and paying for hundreds of dollars worth of booze at a Cape Schanck conference which, at last, was the red thread that blew the whole thing right open.

Because people like this – I have reported on them before – always go a step too far: there is always one receipt, or maybe two, that sets the red light flashing.

As a journalist, you then pull this thread, using Freedom of Information, solid, brave sources and hours and hours of mind-bending slog, and it all unravels: the dirty tricks are exposed and the game is up.

Except to hard-working ratepayers, this is far from a game.

And for all of the ethical, hard-working staff at the Warrnambool City Council, this is not a game. They are as angry as we are.

 

It is shocking and painful and infuriating to learn that the very systems we believed would protect us from this sort of excess and breach of trust, have failed us.

Mr McMahon has failed us. His superiors in upper level management have failed us. The boys’ club culture of the WCC has failed us.

Those councillors who have still not asked one question or raised one concern about the potential misuse of council funds including this credit card – and that is every current councillor apart from Cr Peter Hulin – have failed us.

Even the new CEO, Mr Peter B Schneider, has not said one word publicly about this scandal which has now moved into the red zone. Indeed at his briefing of staff today about Mr McMahon’s resignation, he spoke glowingly of Mr McMahon and dismissed the credit card scandal as one contained to “social media”.

Nobody in charge has been on our side.

 

And so it has been up to The Terrier, with limited resources but multiple, brave sources, to expose the fatal combination of a long-standing toxic culture and weak systems of accountability within the WCC that allowed this rot to happen.

Remember, we were not supposed to know about any of this. We still don’t know it all, but I am sticking with what I can prove.

We were not supposed to know about the dodgy receipts, or about the thousands of dollars that had been repaid, or that Mr McMahon’s credit card was suspended, and then reinstated soon after.

We didn’t even know that the council has 81 corporate credit cards.

Despite this huge number of cards, it was only in November last year, after the Cape Schanck booze up in July and my lodging an FOI in October, that the WCC updated its credit card policy and travel policy to exclude alcohol.

We are still not allowed to see these policies.

While the council says it is now- finally – reviewing its credit card rules in light of the recent report by the Victorian Auditor General into fraud and corruption control, it is clear that the bunker mentality that developed around former CEO Bruce Anson remains firmly in place.

If we ask too many questions –  whether we are journalists, ratepayers, councillors, or council employees – we are dismissed as irritating troublemakers and, it is hoped, intimidated into silence.

 

In my case, the council spent more time and energy trying to uncover my sources than it did investigating the issues.

And in this case, the council charged almost $200 for the FOI application and it took nine exhausting months of wrangling, by which time a lot of Mr McMahon’s unauthorised spending had been repaid (although not the Bojangles bill from May).

When the receipts were finally released under FOI in June, these repayments had been removed as “irrelevant”.

This is how deep coverups work, and they happen when image management is considered far more important than transparency.

In that world, ratepayers sit at the very bottom of the pile.

This has to change.

 

Even Mayor Tony Herbert, elected to represent the people, took to Facebook in February to attack my wasting of council time and resources on FOI applications that, he raged, had exposed no “foul play”.

“All you seem to want to do is tear people down, with unresearched accusations,” he thundered.

“Can I ask which investigations and stories have uncovered foul play? Which ones?”

Mr Herbert has since been swept up in Mr McMahon’s vortex.

What happens next? Well, I have now written five stories and have sent them all off to IBAC (Independent Broad-based Anti Corruption Commission). Who knows if anything will come of that.

Mr McMahon as of today no longer works for the council.

I am just glad that you now know the truth.

 

Thankyou to the many courageous souls who were a part of this long investigation and who trusted me and helped me to turn over rocks to see what crawled out. It has been mind-blowing.

But it doesn’t end here. In fact, it is just the beginning.

If you want to see greater accountability and true transparency at WCC, write to the six silent councillors below, write to Mr Schneider (PSchneider@warrnambool.vic.gov.au), and remember all of this when the council elections roll around in November next year.

We deserve so much better and it is time to demand it.

(Neither the WCC spokesman or Mr McMahon responded to my questions from this morning).

randerson@warrnambool.vic.gov.au,
scassidy@warrnambool.vic.gov.au,
dowen@warrnambool.vic.gov.au,
mneoh@warrnambool.vic.gov.au,
kgaston@warrnambool.vic.gov.au
therbert@warrnambool.vic.gov.au

On we go.

Thankyou so very much to those who have supported The Terrier with a contribution to the Tip Jar: this investigation would not have happened without the Tip Jar. You can be part of it by clicking below.

Terrier Tip Jar

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Imagine, for a moment, you meet some people at the pub for drinks on a Saturday night, then wander across the road for a $546 group dinner, then grab lunch the next day, and charge the whole thing back to your boss with virtually no questions asked.

I know, I know, it doesn’t happen.

And yet it does, because this was about the level of scrutiny by the Warrnambool City Council for the credit card held by its tourism manager, David McMahon.

As we know, Mr McMahon racked up more than $10,000 worth of spending on this card for gatherings, meals, drinks, coffees and the like over 18 months from March 2017 until October 2018.

Given this is ratepayers’ money, you would expect that every single line of this spending would be scrutinised, cross-checked and at least backed up by decent receipts itemising everything that was bought.

 

You might even expect a clear record of who was there (how many council staff/how many guests), why the event was held, and what benefit it was to the council.

From what I have learned through this in-depth investigation, this was rarely the case.

We all know that Mr McMahon has to spend money on tourism-type stuff, like meet and greets, events, working with journos, showing people around, all that sort of thing, but it is for this very reason that – surely – the level of scrutiny should be even greater than for a desk-bound council worker ordering boxes of staples and Sticky Notes.

And yet so much of the paperwork provided for this credit card is vague at best and non-existent at worst.

 

Let’s go back to the Saturday night example.

On Saturday, 9 July 2017, Mr McMahon spent $48 on a round of drinks at the Seanchai Irish Pub in Liebig St. From there, it appears the group moved over to the Hairy Goat where $546 was spent on tapas and share plates, but not one beverage, as part of a convivial evening that wound up after 10pm.

The next day, around 2.30pm, Mr McMahon’s card spent $40 at the Cactus Jam Mexican restaurant.

That is more than $600 worth of ratepayers’ money literally chewed up in less than 24 hours at three different locations and yet there is just one itemised receipt – from the pub – and no indication of who was involved, or the reason, or what was the benefit to council.

For the WCC internal record system, these outings were simply described by Mr McMahon as  “promotions/meals” or “promotions/beverages”.

Here are more examples from documents released through Freedom of Information:

On Tuesday, 15 May 2018, Mr McMahon’s card was used to buy $146.30 worth of groceries from Coles, but the receipt was lost.

Mr McMahon, as per council policy, provided a stat dec that said the goods were cleaning products for a shuttle bus. This may be so, but on the council’s internal record Mr McMahon described the groceries as “stationery”.

So, was it pens or Pine O Cleen? Biros or bleach? Who knows? Who cares? We do.

On Saturday, 12 May 2018, a group of people travelled on the Warrnambool Westcoaster steam train, which ran from Melbourne to Warrnambool and back again, arriving in Melbourne on the Saturday night.

The group spent $195 on meals and drinks – the train was fully licensed, but we don’t know if these drinks included alcohol, because apparently the Westcoaster could not provide a receipt, so Mr McMahon signed another stat dec.

On Monday, 9 July 2018, Mr McMahon’s card was used to pay for tickets into Sovereign Hill at a cost of $149.60. The tickets were for two adults and a child who, I suspect, was enjoying the school holidays.

The only explanation given is “Vol Famil”, which is shorthand for taking a person (in this case, apparently a volunteer), to a place they have not been before. Why was a kid there? What came out of the visit?

On Monday, 3 September 2018, a very precise $434.90 was spent on hiring a room at the Lady Bay Resort with no further explanation provided. Was there an event? Why use the Lady Bay and not a council room? The WCC is yet to explain.

And lastly, on Friday, 19 October 2018, during a business trip to Denmark, WA, $40 was spent at the Ocean Beach Caravan Park on “tackle”. The sale was at 7.19pm. Tackle? Seriously?

And this is just a sample.

All of the above may be 100% justifiable, but the record keeping is appalling.

Despite this, it was all signed off by Mr McMahon’s superiors and paid for by you.

I asked the council if such receipts were considered acceptable, because it is one thing to keep a receipt for accounting purposes, and quite another to keep records for accountability.

These are two different things, as the Victorian Auditor General recently pointed out very clearly in his report on corruption control within councils:

“Councils are accountable to the communities they serve and the ratepayers who fund their services,” he wrote.

 At the end of the day, it is about trust and, for ratepayers, that has been severely shaken.

 

The council’s answers via a spokesman are in full below.

Next: I have two, final stories to come this week as I build a picture here. Tomorrow night will be the first of those.

* * *

Q: The documentation includes several un-itemised receipts and at least one receipt written retrospectively. How do these receipts conform to the council’s credit card or procurement policy?

Council’s Credit Card Policy follows the ATO’s requirements for tax invoices.

Tax invoices for taxable sales of less than $1,000 must include enough information to clearly determine the following seven details:

that the document is intended to be a tax invoice

the seller’s identity

the seller’s Australian business number (ABN)

the date the invoice was issued

a brief description of the items sold, including the quantity (if applicable) and the price

the GST amount (if any) payable – this can be shown separately or, if the GST amount is exactly one-eleventh of the total price, such as a statement which says ‘Total price includes GST’

the extent to which each sale on the invoice is a taxable sale (that is, the extent to which each sale includes GST).

A receipt may be sought and obtained retrospectively for the reconciliation of credit card accounts.

Q: What is the council policy in regard to café or restaurant meals being purchased by staff at weekends, other than when travelling on official council business?

Some roles at the Council require work after hours and/or at weekends. These purchases would need to comply with Council’s reimbursement policies.

Q: What is the council policy on the use of a corporate credit card to purchase alcohol?

Under Council’s current travel allowance policy – adopted in November last year – purchases of alcohol are not to be reimbursed by Council as part of the meal allowance. This condition is also included in the Credit Card Policy renewed in November last year.

Terrier Tip Jar

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Yet another layer has been added to the Warrnambool City Council credit card scandal, and this time it involves former CEO Bruce Anson.

You are not supposed to know this, but Mr Anson and tourism manager David McMahon last year spent $185 on a lunch, paid for by ratepayers via Mr McMahon’s credit card.

The lunch at the Pavilion on Tuesday 9 January was – it appears  – also attended by others, but who was there and why, remains a mystery.

The place was very public, but the public didn’t know that it was paying the bill.

That was kept under wraps. Until now.

The lunch receipt, with bits removed, was included in documents released after nine months and almost $200 in fees via Freedom of Information which has blown open thousands of dollars spent on Mr McMahon’s credit card on meals, coffees and drinks over 18 months.

I am starting to wonder if there was anyone within the upper levels of council who didn’t eat or drink with Mr McMahon at some point.

In this case, Mr McMahon wrote on the Pavilion receipt “Lunch with” but the council removed what followed because it was consider “not relevant”.

What I have since learned is that this lunch was with Mr Anson.

That is not relevant? Are you kidding me?

 

When the person at the table is the CEO of the council that is subject to a FOI application to scrutinise credit card expenditure, it is absolutely relevant.

Just ask the Victorian Auditor General who recently wrote an entire report on this very thing and exposed major flaws at Strathbogie Shire Council, which led to the resignation earlier this month of its CEO.

Mr Anson retired from the council in January this year.

Maybe the council FOI officer – who decides these things – thought because Mr Anson was now retired, he should be treated as a private citizen.

Sorry, but that just doesn’t wash.

Mr Anson was still CEO when the lunch happened and he was still CEO when the FOI into the credit card usage was lodged last October.

The big question is: what is there to hide?

What I want to know, as I am sure you do too, is why Mr Anson and Mr McMahon were having a $185 lunch on us, who was there, and did we get value for money in return for a spread including calamari and a grazing board?

(I asked the council these questions yesterday morning and it replied at 5.29pm tonight, not with the answers, but asking for a copy of the receipt I am referring to.)

The only reason I can see for Mr Anson’s details being removed is to avoid these exact questions.

I also want to know why Mr McMahon’s credit card was used to pay for the lunch and not Mr Anson’s? 

This is also important.

As was pointed out by a savvy reader (thankyou, Adrian), in business, the most senior person at the table usually pays the bill. Why?

Because it stops a senior person from hiding their credit card expenditure behind a more junior person.

It also stops potential collusion (ie. you pick up the bill on your credit card and I will sign off on it).

I am not suggesting for one minute that this has happened here, but it exposes – yet again – the way things have operated within the WCC when it came to the use of corporate credit cards.

We have already seen how loose that goose has been with Mayor Tony Herbert and Cr David Owen being caught up in hundreds of dollars worth of breakfasts paid for by Mr McMahon’s card.

And now we have the former CEO himself making at least a cameo appearance in the rot.

This cameo might explain why when I lodged an FOI for Mr Anson’s credit card usage several years ago, only a sprinkling of transactions showed up.

Things were being paid for by other means.

I have to tell you, the council fought tooth and nail to have chunks of information removed from this current credit card FOI before it was released.

One of the reasons given was because some of the bills had been repaid, they believed it no longer mattered: “move along, nothing to see here…”

As we know, Terriers don’t give up that easily.

 

I also fought tooth and nail, all the way to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, to have these receipts included.

Why? Because the amounts could have been repaid after I lodged my FOI, to avoid public embarrassment.

And even if they were paid before I lodged my FOI, I believe the public still has a right to know what had gone on and why.

I now know that between $5000 and $6000 was repaid, but, as it stands, the council has still not released the missing receipts.

Under the rules, if I want those missing bits, I have to lodge another FOI.

And if I don’t get them a second time around, I can ask for a review via the commissioner.

It is exhausting and expensive and enough to make you give up.

But we don’t, do we? No, we don’t.

I have two more stories to come.

Again, I want to say that this is the Terrier Tip Jar at work. Every cent you throw into the jar goes toward fighting for transparency and the occasional packet of Panadol. If you would like to be a part of it, you can find the Tip Jar here.

 

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hen a groovy cafe with fantastic food opens on the main street of a small country town that happens to be enroute to Melbourne, you might expect a steady trade.

But nothing – not even a former career as an international flight attendant with Qantas – could prepare Cheyanne Ainsworth and her husband Chris for the phenomenal response to their venture, Front Paddock Cafe & Larder, which opened about eight weeks ago in what passes for downtown Derrinallum.

The town officially has a population of around 500, but many, many more than that pass through each day on their way to or from Melbourne and, up until now, it has been a long drive between delicious food and brewed coffees.

“It has been amazing,” Cheyanne says in between serving customers. “My friends say, ‘what did you expect?’ and I didn’t imagine this.”

Soon after opening, the cafe – which offers breakfast, lunch and dinner – was selling out of its entire supply of gourmet sandwiches, rolls, cakes (brought in from the cake capital, St Kilda, no less), pies and generously proportioned sausage rolls which have quickly gained a cult following.

Even during our visit last week, a backpacking cyclist wandered in, put his hands on the counter, smiled and said “I’m hungry and I have been told this is the place to come.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] O [/dropcap]f course a memorable cafe also needs style, character and atmosphere and this is where Cheyanne’s family history comes into play.

Her father, Bob, who occasionally drops in to help with the dishes, was a drover and Cheyanne is affectionately known as “DD” – drover’s daughter.

This strong rural connection is reflected not only in the name of the cafe – more about that shortly – but the beautiful fittings, including several wool classing tables bought at a clearing sale, that have been topped with glass and are used for shared dining and larger groups.

Related story: Mt Elephant rises from its slumber 

There are also salvaged saleyard signs and the inspired use of a bookmaker’s board where the tote prices reflect the coffee prices – except where Cheyanne has added “50 cents” because the old tote prices didn’t have that option.

“A lot of what you see here comes from people who Dad has known for years,” she explains.

Chris, who is a registered builder and bricklayer but also has a background in running family hotels, put the whole space together in what was previously an old butcher shop.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I [/dropcap]f life wasn’t busy enough for the pair, Cheyanne and Chris have continued to work a mixed farm with “Bob the drover”, who manages both his own property and theirs.

So when they are not working in the Front Paddock, they could be working in the other front paddock – their Derrinallum property which carries Berkshire pigs, lamb and beef.

“By the end of the year we hope that all beef, lamb and pork served on the table is from our farm,” Cheyanne says.

“It has all happened at once, but we got to the point where we thought life was too short not to do what we have wanted to do for a long time.”

Which brings us to the name of the cafe.

The pair had hoped to call it the Long Paddock – a droving term – but so many ventures were already using that name that they instead opted for the Front Paddock.

“The front paddock is your best paddock, the one that everyone sees, so it works,” Cheyanne says.

Judging by the response so far, this is one front paddock that is perfect for happy grazing.

[box]The Front Paddock Cafe & Larder is at 24 Main St, Derrinallum. Open for breakfast and lunch every day, but closed on Tuesday. Dinner is available Thursday-Sunday nights. Bookings: (03) 5597 6880 Find them on Facebook here. The cafe is finalist in the 2015 Savour Australia Restaurant & Catering Awards in the category of New Restaurant – Victoria Regional.[/box]

[button link=”http://the-terrier.com.au/subscribe-2/” type=”icon” icon=”heart” newwindow=”yes”]Bluestone needs at least 500 subscribers in 2015. If you wish to support independent media, please click here to become one.[/button]

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REMEMBER THE SMELL of hot pies warming in the pie warmer of the school canteen? Irresistible!

Everyone had their favourite school pie: in Warrnambool it was usually a Chitticks. In Port Fairy, Cobbs pies. In Mortlake, Clarke’s. In Timboon, the Timboon bakery…

For those lucky enough to be able to “buy their lunch” – wow! – the canteen ladies (and they were all ladies) would squirt the pie with a squiggle of tomato sauce (it was free) and slip it into a crunchy brown paper bag ready for it to be devoured while sitting on a bench in the shelter shed.

Some of us may have even had a pie AND a finger bun.

And to think, there was no such thing as childhood obesity back then – we just ran it all off.