Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Now that the hammer has fallen on disgraced trainer Darren Weir, the arse has fallen out of the argument to allow 800 racehorses a week to train on a wild beach in the Belfast Coastal Reserve – because this was always about Weir.

Regardless of how the Warrnambool Racing Club, Warrnambool City Council or State Government try to spin it, ramming up the training numbers at Levy’s Beach to industrial levels was all about appeasing Weir.

Racing Minister Martin Pakula said as much in his very public face slap to the council last October:

“Council really needs to decide whether it wants a commercial horse training industry in the City of Warrnambool or it does not…If it doesn’t, it should just say so, because trainers like Darren Weir – and others – have plenty of options.” Warrnambool Standard, Oct 30, 2018

 

Mr Pakula has never actually detailed these other “options”, because there is no other beach in Australia where racehorses can run up and down the dunes en masse. There is a simple reason for this – dunes damage easily.

But who cares about that minor detail, the blackmail message was clear: No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry.

Parks Victoria originally thought 65 racehorses a day across the whole 22km stretch of the Belfast Coastal Reserve might be a reasonable number.

This was the number it came up with in 2016, before the Belfast Coastal Management Reserve Plan was developed in 2018.

It turns out Parks Victoria was hopelessly naive.

As of last year, Warrnambool had about 250-300 racehorses in training: of those, Weir trained about 100 and counting.

A total of 65 horses training across the whole reserve was never going to cut it for Weir’s mega-stable.

It wasn’t even close.

 

So when the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan hit the decks last July, the daily number had suddenly more than doubled – to 160 – and all of the racehorses (apart from some ‘historic’ trainers near Killarney) would be poured into Levy’s Beach, just 10 minutes from Weir’s Warrnambool stables.

The stretch of wild beach with its threatened Hooded Plover population and fragile dune system had become the sacrificial lamb to Weir’s ambitions.

Weir the Invincible. Mr Magic. Mr Superstar who won $33 million in prize money in just 12 months.

And now we know behind all of the “magic” was something terrible and cruel.

There was no secret tonic in the dunes.

They found three tasers in Weir’s bedroom.

 

Weir’s demise has exposed the rotten core to a career that no doubt began with hard work and heart, but which veered dangerously off course.

Because the tasers – and the criminal charges that may be yet to come – follow a string of convictions against Weir under the rules of racing, especially around the illegal use of anti-inflammatories and pumping horses pre-race with bi-carb soda in a practice known as “tubing”.

But such was Weir’s dazzling success, everybody looked the other way, even when his rapid rise seemed to pass the realms of the explainable.

“No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry”: that was the only message.

And now there is no Weir.

So what does this mean for our dunes and our wild beach?

Is it business as usual, keep moving, nothing to see here?

Surely not.

Surely the game is up. Surely now, as Cr Michael Neoh hinted last week, Levy’s is not needed and allowing local trainers to continue to access the ever-shrinking beach at Lady Bay is more than enough? 

 

We no longer need the carpark graders to move into Levy’s and Spookies, do we?

We no longer need to keep explaining that 800 horses a week running along a stretch of beach (including 200 up and down a dune) in a coastal reserve will destroy it, do we?

The Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Victoria are no longer going to rely on a great lie – rather than environmentally stringent plans – to sustain our local racing industry, are they?

If the answers to these last three questions are yes, yes and yes, then our local racing industry really is doomed and it has nothing to do with Weir this time, but our own collective stupidity at letting it happen.

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By Carol Altmann

For a few weeks there, I really thought the impact of the independents might see a changing of the guard in the south-west at the state election on November 24, but, no, the Liberals are on track to win yet again.

How I would love to see our seat change hands – just this once – or at least become marginal, just so we know what that feels like.

But as former south-west candidate and self-confessed political junkie Roy Reekie sets out in detail in his blog, it all comes down to simple maths and the maths is firmly on the side of a victory for Roma Britnell and the Liberal Party.

There are two reasons for this:

1) As a safe Liberal seat, the Liberal Party already starts miles ahead of everyone else. At the 2015 by-election, with few people even knowing who Roma Britnell was, she was still the first choice of 40% of voters. Remember, she only needs 50.1% of votes to win.

2) Former Moyne Shire mayor Jim Doukas, who apparently doesn’t like independent candidate, Upper House MP and fellow former mayor James Purcell very much, is set to be the queen maker via his preferences.

Just a quick primer on preferences, for those who are not political junkies and find the whole thing totally confusing.

In a nutshell, who you vote for first is critical, but also who you put second, third, fourth, fifth etc is just as important because these votes can decide who actually wins.

How? Well, imagine the election as a foot race where each candidate starts with a sack of golden potatoes (aka first-preference votes) and the person holding the majority of potatoes at the end, wins.

The person with the least amount of golden potatoes drops out of the race first, but their potatoes don’t go to waste. No! They are instead distributed to the others who are still in the race.

This dropping out of candidates and distributing of their potatoes/preferences goes on until there is one winner with a big fat sack of spuds (aka a majority).

Using this analogy, Roma Britnell, as the sitting Liberal candidate in a safe seat, will start on November 24 with a hefty bag of potatoes – she had 15,486 of them as a newcomer in 2015 and only needed another 4000 or so to have a majority.

Country Party candidate Jim Doukas last time started with around 4000, which is substantial, so you can see why where he decides to direct his preferences really matters: everyone wants his potatoes!

 

Unfortunately for James Purcell and Labor’s Kylie Gaston and the Greens’ Thomas Campbell, Mr Doukas has decided to direct his spuds first to Michael Neoh and Roma Britnell, in that order. James Purcell is a lowly fifth on his preference list.

Just remember, Roma doesn’t need that many extra spuds to crack that magical 5o%-plus-one mark and Jim is now her greengrocer.

James Purcell must be spitting chips. This was not how it was supposed to play out when he decided to take the leap from the Upper House to run for the Lower House.

 

It was always going to be a tough haul for James to get close to beating Roma, but if all of the “others” banded together and agreed to share their votes via preference deals, then maybe he at least had a half chance as a “I’m-not-Liberal-but-I-am-conservative” candidate.

At least independent and former Warrnambool mayor Michael Neoh has done his bit to try and shake the south-west from its slumber and, in so doing, has performed a 360-degree twist in allegiances that would leave any head spinning.

In 2015, Michael ran for the National Party after failing to win preselection for the Liberals, and it was his preferences that helped get Roma Britnell safely over the line (ahead of the aforementioned Roy Reekie).

This time, however, Michael is running his own race and Roma has been dropped to 7th on his preference list behind the ALP’s Kylie Gaston – ouch! – you can see why they say there are no friends in politics!

So what does this all mean?

Well, I think the most we can hope for is that the influence of the independents sees the south-west shift from being safe to not-so-safe and maybe even a tiny bit marginal.

This would be a victory for all of us, even Liberal voters, because we all know that it is the marginal seats that have better roads than ours, better trains than ours, more funding for projects like hospitals and schools and libraries, and – above all – a genuine sense that our vote can never be taken for granted, and that, dare I say, is no small potatoes.

If you haven’t voted yet and want to help make this seat marginal, vote for one of the independents, the Greens or the ALP. For a much more detailed analysis of how things could play out, please read Roy’s blog here (written before the preference deals were announced). Roy crunches the numbers like nobody can.

 

By Carol Altmann

The Warrnambool City Council’s handling of racehorse training at Levy’s Beach is turning into a trifecta of trouble that should have us all seriously concerned about how the council operates.

Let’s check the form guide as the council prepares to meet tomorrow night (26/10) to revisit a decision it made just 11 days ago to – illegally – issue permits to allow commercial racehorse training at Levy’s from December 1.

Race 1: The Law-Breaker Stakes

The WCC broke the law and has been breaking it for years.

This may sound dramatic, but it is true. The Warrnambool City Council has enabled racehorse training at Levy’s for years without ever checking if it was breaking its own planning laws.

It was.

The entire Warrnambool Planning Scheme is a serious document. It is enforceable by law and its whole purpose is to make sure that we all know the rules and we abide by them. We trust our council to make sure this happens regardless of who we are, how much money we have, or what influence we might bring to bear.

 

Despite this, the council did nothing when racehorse trainers started to turn up at Levy’s Beach well before trainer Darren Weir’s Melbourne Cup success in 2015 and well before anyone started to talk about a Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan.

These trainers, we now know, were breaking the local planning laws and the rules around what is allowed in a coastal reserve, and they continued to do so until so many of them began turning up along the beaches between Killarney and Warrnambool that it was impossible to ignore.

Council CEO Bruce Anson has tried to justify the WCC’s ignorance of its own laws by saying when Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio stepped in in late 2016, giving an order to say the council could issue licences to trainers, they blindly followed. (You can see Ms D’Ambrosio’s order here).

Nobody at council checked? Nobody challenged this? Nobody thought that perhaps the Environment Minister didn’t have the power to ignore the Warrnambool Planning Scheme?

 

(I wonder if the WCC would be so subservient if the Minister granted free car parking across the city? Hmmmm.)

A planning scheme can be altered one of two ways: by the council (a process that can take a year), or a Planning Minister declaring the matter of such importance that they change the planning scheme. Ms D’Ambrosio is not a Planning Minister.

It is not a decision to be made lightly, which bring us to the second leg.

Race 2: The Who-Gives-A-Stuff Cup

The council knew it was breaking the law, but raced on anyway.

Word has been leaking out of council this week that concerned council officers tried to raise the alarm back in February this year about the legality of racehorse training at Levy’s and nobody listened.

I absolutely trust my sources on this and I trust them even more in light of what happened at last Monday night’s council meeting.

That was when we saw, in unprecedented scenes, four of the seven councillors vote in favour of issuing training permits for Levy’s despite being warned they were breaking the law.

 

That warning came from the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) to Mr Anson in late September and directly to councillors via email on Sunday night.

The council’s own legal advice arrived this week, confirming it was in breach of the law.

As Shannon Hurley, from the VNPA, said today, the VNPA’s legal advice confirmed “commercial racehorse training has never been allowed within the reserve and so should have never been allowed to explode”.

“It is (also) not a ‘balanced use’, it is the opposite, because it was never allowed in the first place.”

Crs Kylie Gaston, Tony Herbert, Sue Cassidy and Mayor Robert Anderson didn’t care about any of this, it seems, because they cracked the whip and pushed through the vote on Monday night.

Which brings me to the final leg:

Race 3: The Nothing-to-Declare Handicap

The conflict-of-interest rules in Local Government are pathetic and because they are pathetic, our councillors need to be stronger.

We saw just how pathetic the conflict of interest rules were on Monday, when Cr Gaston was able to sit at the council table, move the motion on the Levy’s permits and vote on those permits, all while being an endorsed Labor candidate.

The racehorse training at Levy’s is being pushed by the State Labor Government and Cr Gaston wants to be a Labor MP, yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

The week after Monday’s vote, Cr Gaston was campaigning in Portland with Minister Lily D’Ambrosio (mentioned above), yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

Cr Sue Cassidy’s partner runs sign company Cassign, which is a sponsor of the Warrnambool Racing Club and has sponsored several races, yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

 

The council hosts a hospitality marquee (which we pay for) each year at the May Race Carnival and yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

It stinks, yet not one councillor at Monday night’s meeting raised any of these concerns.

Nobody leapt to their feet and challenged Cr Gaston on how she managed to wear two hats within 24 hours, or how it looks when Cr Cassidy’s family business is a supporter of racing, or how the council can hope to make an impartial decision on racehorse training when it hangs out at the May races.

As we know, there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, and right now the council is running dead last on both.

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By Carol Altmann

What the heck just happened?

Our Warrnambool City Council chief executive officer Bruce Anson earns a salary package of around $320,000 a year and yet it was left to a group of volunteers to reveal to us this stunning fact: racehorse training at Levy’s Beach is illegal.

Had Mr Anson not bothered to have his staff check this possibility before? Why not?

Why was it left to volunteers in the Belfast Council Reserve Action Group (BCRAG) to do all the leg work, which they did?

Even if Mr Anson hadn’t bothered to check the legalities since this whole racehorse issue blew open more than two years ago, he certainly knew about the legal issues by September 20.

 

That was when the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) contacted Mr Anson to tell him that the council was breaking its planning laws.

Mr Anson definitely got that memo, because he emailed a response to the VNPA soon after, saying he would ask the city planners to investigate.

(The city planners confirmed today that yes, it is illegal.)

Mr Anson was contacted on September 20 – almost a month ago – and yet he did not pass any of this critical information onto elected councillors, who found out about it last Sunday via an email from BCRAG.

 

The BCRAG email arrived just one day before councillors were to vote on whether to allow racehorses back in to Levy’s and it warned they were in breach of the law.

The vote went through 4/3 – Labor candidate Cr Kylie Gaston made sure of that – and the council agreed to once again issue permits to allow 60 horses a day on Levy’s beach and 40 on the dunes.

Let’s be super clear on what all of this this means.

It means elected councillors turned up to an urgent meeting called for Monday night to decide whether to allow dozens of racehorses back on to Levy’s Beach without having all the facts.

Facts that were already known to the CEO who seems determined, for reasons unknown, to make sure that what the Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Minister Martin Pakula want, they get.

If this is not a red-hot scandal, I don’t know what is.

 

The thing is, it comes on the heels of so many other examples of information being provided to councillors or the public that is either wrong, mis-leading or incomplete.

Just this week we saw an attempt by council to chainsaw two 115-year-old Australian banyan trees from Raglan Parade this weekend because of false suggestions they were causing car accidents.

Last month we saw a mass correction published in the council papers when wrong budget figures were included in an earlier agenda.

Before that we saw rubbery figures provided to the public about how well Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village was travelling, when in fact it is going backward.

And that is just the stuff we know about.

Ratepayers – and councillors – rely on being given accurate information by its very well-paid senior council officers, with Mr Anson at the top of that tree.

We shouldn’t have to work this hard to get to the truth.

It shouldn’t be the case that every time a major issue arises, we have to strap ourselves in – volunteers, ratepayers, journalists, councillors – for another exhausting wade through the reports and fine print to see what is really going on.

But this has become the culture within the WCC and it is the culture that has developed under Mr Anson’s watch.

As BCRAG member Teresa O’Brien shouted out at Monday night’s meeting, “We just want to be told the truth”.

When the stakes are so high – wild beaches that will be trampled, or ancient trees that cannot be replaced – never has this plea been more important.

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[Note: What happens next with the racehorses on beaches? Now that the WCC has been found in breach of its planning laws, the State Planning Minister Richard Wynne may intervene and grant permission. If not, the WCC can amend its planning laws, but this is a lengthy process. The State Government moves into caretaker mode on November 1, before the state election on November 24. The Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Minister Martin Pakula are desperate to have this resolved before then.]

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By Carol Altmann

Here is a legal loophole that is so big, you could drive a truck through it: you can be a local councillor AND run for parliament at the same time.

That is, of course, unless your council draws up a policy that says you can’t.

The Warrnambool City Council has no such policy.

This is why former Warrnambool mayor Kylie Gaston could announce way back in May that she was running for Labor at the next state election on November 24 which, at that time, was still six whole months away.

And it is why former Warrnambool mayor Michael Neoh could announce this week that he will run as an Liberal National Independent at the same election, which is still two months away.

Neither he nor Cr Gaston have to step aside.

In fact, technically, they don’t have to step aside until nominations for the state election close on November 8. (Independent nominations close on November 9, so Cr Neoh gets an extra day).

That is another six weeks away.

The current Local Government Act allows this, largely because it still hasn’t caught up with the modern way of doing things, where loads of wanna-be MPs are launching their political careers via the grassroots of local councils.

There is nothing wrong with a person running for local council with a view to bigger things – that’s called ambition – but there is a massive conflict of interest when you decide to run for a state election and hold on to your council spot.

 

When are you speaking to the media as a councillor? When are you speaking as a candidate? Do the public spot the difference? (I doubt it).

And how can your council profile, all of the free publicity and the behind-the-scenes-access to council business not be anything but a massive boost in an election campaign?

Michael Neoh has been in this territory before, back in 2015, when he ran as an Independent Liberal National candidate while still Mayor of Warrnambool.

The council didn’t ask him to step aside, so he didn’t.

Here is what Cr Neoh said to me in an email at the time:

“I have a campaign car that I use and also non-council equipment.

I am following the MAV policy in regards to taking leave of absence and I do not use mayoral invited functions to campaign.

If I meet with stakeholders outside of Council duties and as a candidate, I make it very clear that I am an election candidate and are not representing council.”

Having seen Cr Neoh get away with it, Cr Gaston has since been following the same map, with her Labor-Party-emblazoned car parked in the WCC carpark while she performs, as Cr Neoh did in 2015, her council duties.

Again, neither Cr Gaston nor Cr Neoh are breaking any rules or laws, they are simply doing what they are allowed to get away with.

Like any savvy politician, they are milking every opportunity to maintain their public profiles, and the council is a perfect platform.

 

The Victorian Local Government Association is on to this.

It put out eight guidelines for councils, asking that they develop their own rules to manage councillors who run for state or federal parliament.

The guideline that nails it is this: “The taking of leave of absence immediately after nominating as a candidate until the conclusion of the election campaign”.

Simple, huh?

Don’t expect the councillors themselves to suggest the Warrnambool City Council write such a policy. Two of our seven already benefit from not having such a thing in place.

It is up to ratepayers – again – to say this is not good enough, that we are not interested in subsidising councillors’ political aspirations and that we want their mind firmly on the job of running our council, not how they can move on from it.

If you would like to support local, independent journalism, please consider making a contribution below. Thankyou to all of you who have already done so. 

 

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