Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Tonight we are launching a Go Fund Me campaign on behalf of the Warrnambool community as the first step toward taking Lyndoch Living to court.

It’s time for action.

A group of community philanthropists has been working on this legal challenge for some time and have now reached the point where a barrister can be engaged.

The crowdfunding will pay for expert advice from a barrister who is the Australian specialist in this field of the law.

The 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.

This failure includes the rejection of all general membership applications by the community these past two years.

It’s time for action.

This is the first step in a legal process that will probably take place in either the County Court or the Supreme Court.

We have been ignored, silenced, pressed down, rejected and dismissed by the board for more than two years.

Enough.

We are now moving, as a community, to hold the Lyndoch board to account.

To take the first step, we need to raise $5000.

This is the equivalent of 100 people donating $50, or 1000 people donating $5 each.

Chip in what you can afford.

It reminds me of the days of buying a raffle ticket to support Lyndoch – except this time the prize is not a car, but Lyndoch itself: keeping Lyndoch a community asset, fully accountable to the community it serves.

A professional legal opinion from the best in the field is the first step.

We have already explored the next step: receiving pro bono (free of charge) support to run the case in court. We have received some very positive responses.

Now is the time for action.

Let’s go.

Click here to chip in – you can be anonymous: [https://gofund.me/170a6e8b]

[If you prefer an offline method to chip in, please contact me via DM or at Terriercarol@protonmail.com]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lyndoch Living will this year change how it selects its board, but there is still no sign – yet – of allowing “ordinary” members anywhere near the action.

In fact, my sense is that Lyndoch is driving methodically toward becoming a fully corporatised, tightly controlled company and ditching any real input or scrutiny from the wider community about its operations.

I say this because while Lyndoch is changing how it chooses its board members – more about that in a second – it’s in absolutely no rush to let every day people become “ordinary” members.

These pesky “ordinary” members are the ones who can keep an eye on the direction, priorities and performance of Lyndoch, ask questions and, if enough members agree, call meetings and vote on action.

They can be a powerful local voice.

They also reflect the people, or their offspring, who supported Lyndoch for decades – we must never forget that harnessing “people power” is how Lyndoch started and how it has survived for more than 60 years.

Right now, however, Lyndoch has no “ordinary” members. Zilch.

As we know, more than 115 people applied to the board last year to become “ordinary” members and nobody made it through.

It turns out, however, the Lyndoch board has been looking at itself and, a year ago, hired a local consultant – Robert Lane from SED Consulting – to suggest ways it could do things differently.

Mr Lane popped up as a surprise guest at the Lyndoch Living AGM last month, and I felt a surge of hope that maybe the breakthrough we have been waiting for, where membership would become open and accessible, had finally come.

But after meeting with Mr Lane last week to learn more, that hope is on hold because encouraging “ordinary” members was not a part of his brief.

Mr Lane was tasked with other priorities, including setting up a new board selection process that will work something like this:

– All board vacancies will be advertised;

– Nominees will go to a new committee, chaired by Mr Lane and including two board members Kane Grant and Lorraine Mielnik;

– The committee will assess these people against a range of criteria and settle on those it thinks would be best;

– The committee’s decision is then assessed by another, as-yet-unnamed, independent person.

– The final, preferred nominees will then go to a vote at the AGM.

On paper, this looks better than the closed shop of recent years, but is it? I see a gaping hole – who gets to vote for board members at the AGM?

There ARE NO general members of Lyndoch so, once again, the board votes for itself.

Around we go.

I asked Mr Lane: aren’t we right back to square one, with only seven people – the seven board members – having full control and being answerable only to themselves?

We were.

This is not Mr Lane’s fault or responsibility, as he is only tackling what he has been hired to do.

“I am trying to manage an interim process,” Mr Lane said, “(and) in the absence of members outside of the board, this is the process that will take place.”

Mr Lane agreed the situation was “not ideal”,  but stressed that he hadn’t “accepted this role to not have a positive influence”.

Well I really hope that Mr Lane’s influence can extend a lot further, because the biggest issue with the board right now is not who sits on it, but its refusal to talk to the people.

It has failed – repeatedly – to tell the community what is going on, or to answer questions.

This is why most people have no clue about the scope of the $100m masterplan, or why Lyndoch became a “Company Limited by Guarantee”, or how it will pay for its $22m medical complex, or why so many staff have left, or why it’s failing aged care standards, or why it even wants to run a medical clinic…because the board has explained none of it.

The board can change this, but does it want to?

In fact I wonder if the next step is for Lyndoch board memberships to no longer be voluntary, but paid positions to progress Lyndoch Living Ltd, rather than – in theory at least – to represent the community?

These next 12 months are critical: they will determine whether Lyndoch is fully answerable to the community, or whether – having become a Company Limited by Guarantee – that side of Lyndoch is now pure nostalgia.

Thanks for reading The Terrier. If you would like to say thanks and buy Jock a juicy bone, you can find the Tip Jar here.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Well, well, well…. it turns out former Warrnambool Racing Club chief Peter Downs resigned from the Lyndoch board months ago, but, oddly, officials weren’t told until the very day after The Terrier post on Facebook.

Mr Downs resigned on 18 December 2019 and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) is supposed to be told of such changes within 28 days.

Despite this, and despite Lyndoch having held at least one board meeting since then, ASIC wasn’t formally notified until 17 February – the day after the Facebook post on The Terrier.

Mr Downs’ profile was also suddenly whipped down from the Lyndoch website.

Funny, that.

As it stands, there has been no public statement by Lyndoch about Mr Downs’ departure after three years on the board, and just three months after he was re-elected for a second term.

While I am sure we’re all happy to help Lyndoch to keep up with its governance free of charge (!), the bigger picture here is cause for concern.

Who replaces Mr Downs?

As we now know, while Mr Downs’ seat at the table sat empty, the Lyndoch board was rejecting membership applications left, right and centre.

You have to be a member of Lyndoch to become a board member.

No new members = nobody can nominate for the board.

Memberships were discarded instantly because the applicants happened to know me, however closely or distantly, or have ‘liked’ a post from The Terrier.

Wow, to think that passes as acceptable.

Board vacancies no longer have to be advertised, as they were under the old rules of Lyndoch that were changed without any of us noticing.

Now, when a vacancy arises, the board members and CEO just hunt around for their preferred applicants.

If any other public body worked this way – imagine the WCC councillors and CEO deciding who could be on the council – there would be rioting in the streets.

For the wider community to have no chance to nominate for the Lyndoch board is an outrage.

In any other world, this would be called branch stacking, or insider trading, or a closed shop, or a cabal, yet we are supposed to accept it as normal.

I keep saying it, Lyndoch is owned by the community and run by the board on our behalf.

That board will hold its monthly meeting on Tuesday.

There it will decide who will replace Mr Downs. The names are in.

It will also decide which membership applications, including that of Vicki Jellie AM, will be accepted or tossed in the bin.

It’s going to be a very interesting test.

There are troubles at Lyndoch. I am going to keep saying it, despite the attempts to silence those who say the Emperor is naked.

Does the current board feel happy with how things are being run? Do they agree with this shutting out of the community? Are they monitoring the numbers of staff on sick leave? Are they happy to sit back and watch and then say they knew nothing and did nothing?

There is a lot to be learnt from what is now unfolding at the Warrnambool City Council about speaking up and standing up.

I, for one, am waiting to see who from the Lyndoch board emerges as a Bernadette Northeast – on the front foot – or as a Cr Michael Neoh – far too little, far too late.

If you would like to help The Terrier keep digging, please visit the Tip Jar here.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Former Warrnambool Racing Club chief Peter Downs has quit the board of Lyndoch Living, having been reappointed for another three years just last October.

I don’t know exactly when Mr Downs* – who moved to Melbourne in September – resigned, but his board profile was on the Lyndoch website yesterday morning and gone by the end of the day.

This is awkward.

Lyndoch now has to fill his spot.

Mr Downs was one of nine board members, and Lyndoch must have at least nine board members under its constitution.

And here’s the catch: to become a board member, you must be first a general member.

Uh oh.

As we know, Lyndoch has only 15 14 members in total, all present and accounted for, including the board, the executive including the CEO, and two life members in Ron Patterson and David Atkinson who have already done their time.

There is nobody else, because, as we also know, nobody has been allowed to join.

No new members = no new board members.

Just yesterday there was a brilliant Letter to the Editor to the Warrnambool Standard by retired lawyer Lynn Hudson, a super-qualified person who applied to become a member of Lyndoch and was flatly rejected.

Her well-credentialled husband was also rejected. (You can read the letter here).

Lynn’s letter pulled back the veil on the farce that has seen a string of smart, caring, well-credentialled people who have applied for Lyndoch membership and been rejected with no explanation.

What an absolute joke. 

Except the joke, if it only were funny, is that the Lyndoch board now has to find a new board member.

It has four choices, only two of which will pass muster. 

One is to hand pick someone that passes the strict criteria for being a Lyndoch board member, which appears to be sit down, don’t ask tricky questions and be bedazzled by the plans to transform our aged care home into LyndochLand™.

Another is to advertise for a board member, which used to happen back in the days of equity, openness and gratitude for a community that loved Lyndoch.

A third is to do both of the above: advertise and then pick the person who has been worded up to apply.

Or…..

Or, the board just happens to have a membership application on its desk right now from one of the most qualified, most decent, most ethical, respected and upfront people in Warrnambool: Vicki Jellie, AM.

What a stroke of luck for Lyndoch Living!

Vicki, as we all know, was the driving force behind Peter’s Project, which saw a multi-million-dollar cancer treatment centre built in Warrnambool.

The AM after her name was awarded in the national Australia Day awards in 2017 as Australia’s Local Hero – a winner chosen out of the whole nation!

And yet here is Vicki, applying along with the rest of us, to see if she is good enough to be accepted as a member of Lyndoch Living where she used to work and where, first hand, she saw the changes that are now the subject of long-overdue scrutiny.

Mind you, I doubt Vicki would want to join the Lyndoch board as it stands. 

There are mounting questions about the direction of Lyndoch, and around staff morale, resignations and sick leave, which rolls on, believe me, except I am unable to speculate publicly as to why.

Mr Downs’ resignation has forced the hand of the board to reveal its true intentions and the next board meeting on 25 February will be very revealing.

We will know whether the board intends to once again be open and honest with the community that built and sustained Lyndoch for more than 60 years, or to remain a place of secrets and, I hope, growing unease.

One thing is certain, the game is up.

*I have left messages with Mr Downs late this afternoon for comment.
If you would like to apply to become a member of Lyndoch Living, here is the form.

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