Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Why on earth is the Warrnambool City Council persisting with its decision to whack dozens of pet owners with $330 fines for failing to re-register their pets on time?

What possible justification can there be for demanding such an exorbitant fine – the maximum set by the state – even once the owner has paid the overdue bill?

One answer might be simple bloody mindedness and greed.

The council won’t talk about it, but I believe more than 250 pet owners – most of them dog owners because they are the easiest to catch – have been hit with these extraordinary fines and final demands for payment or the threat of court action.

If you do the math, this is around $82,000 the council stands to make in fines.

Those facing fines include the most vulnerable, including pensioners where the fine is almost 10 times the cost of the registration.

 

And pensioners have been hit.

As have new parents, and those who simply forgot, or those who were pre-occupied with other things in life and, of course, a few who decided they didn’t want to be fleeced $70 for having done the right thing and registered their pet in the first place.

Because this fine is not for failing to register your pet, but for failing to re-register it.

And bad luck if you have done the right thing for each of the past 10 years, sorry, that doesn’t count.

The cost of pet registrations shot up this year because of a lop-sided and extremely expensive contract with the RSPCA to run the animal shelter.

Warrnambool’s pet regos are now the second most expensive in Australia for a desexed pet.

So it doesn’t matter if you have desexed your pet, microchipped and registered it, if you failed to pay your rego on time, the $330 hammer will fall.

It is completely over the top and, worse, it is random.

Some people have been lucky enough to plead their case successfully and had the fine wiped.

Others, who have equally compelling circumstances, have been told, sorry, mate, your lucky day is not today.

This is not how to treat a community.

If the council wonders why people are so angry, this is it – this heavy handed, bloody mindedness that comes on top of a 4.5% rate rise which nobody wants or deserves.

 

There are options.

One is to do what Melbourne City Council does – that little town further east of us – and offer a late penalty of $15. That’s right, $15. See the snapshot for the MCC website below:

Perhaps, like what happens with your gas, and electricity, and rates, this late penalty could increase each month until you make payment.

(I have paid overdue power bills before and never has it cost me $330 in fines.)

The other thing the council could do, right now, is offer an amnesty.

Call a truce, wipe the slate clean and give people a chance – not only those who have already done the right thing and re-registered their pet, but those who haven’t.

It is the latter group that need the most incentive to sign on.

 

Drop the $330 fines. Encourage everyone to register their pet by making it affordable, if not free, for the rest of this year.

Introduce a $15 late penalty when re-registrations are due next year.

Throw in some free doggy bags, a leash, or a cat collar for those who pay on time.

In other words, create incentives to make the RSPCA less busy, not more.

As it stands, not only will the RSPCA be busy, but so will the Magistrates’ Court, where all 250-plus pet owners who have paid their rego but still been fined, could choose to challenge the point of it all. I reckon they have a good case.

And how would the WCC make up the shortfall from all of those juicy, $330, money-for-jam fines?

Well, here’s just one idea: look at the photo below.

That’s right, four racehorses in a row, who were barrelling along Lady Bay foreshore a couple of weeks ago, in breach of the rules, yet again (#notalltrainers).

Do you know how many fines have been issued to the Warrnambool Racing Club by the WCC despite multiple breaches of the rules since 2016?

None.

Zero.

Nada.

So there is one rule for the pet owners of Warrnambool and another for racehorses which, I think we could safely argue, are far more of a risk to public safety than Pixie the poodle hanging out on the couch.

I asked Barry the Bull Terrier Boolshite detector what he thought of all this.

Barry gave it a perfect 10.

 

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

On days like this, we need hope.

On days like today, when we see laws passed that allow even greater damage to our wild coast than what we have already inflicted, it would be so easy to just give up, because the battle is exhausting.

But on days like today, when I need to draw deep on hope, I think of my late uncle Alf Altmann.

 

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

If Warrnambool City councillor and ALP candidate Kylie Gaston had one job to do this week, it was to make sure she pushed the vote to have racehorse training back on Levy’s Beach by December.

I have seen Cr Gaston move fast, but never quite as fast as on Monday night when – amidst roars of protest from the council gallery and dissent from three council colleagues* – she cracked the whip and moved the motion to allow the council to again issue beach permits to the Warrnambool Racing Club.

At that moment, Cr Gaston shifted from being an environmentalist, to an ALP candidate with an agenda.

It was a very public shift that shocked many of her long-time supporters, some of whom were in the gallery and who left the meeting visibly upset by the sense of betrayal.

 

Cr Gaston knew that the council was most likely breaking its own laws by allowing dozens of racehorses to be trained on what is a public coastal reserve.

Despite this, and rather than wait a day or two to confirm the legal advice, Cr Gaston galloped on as if there was no more vital issue than making sure the WRC has seamless access to our beaches once summer closes off Lady Bay to trainers from December 1.

The racing industry was so desperate to get back on the beaches that it even offered the WCC what was probably one step short of a bribe: they would fund most of a $400,000 new carpark at Lady Bay, for its own use, of course, and adding even more bitumen to our beach. Sorry, I forgot to mention it was a “bespoke” carpark.

Warrnambool Racing Club CEO Peter Downs, who also sits on the council’s Visitor Advisory Committee, must have been thrilled by Cr Gaston’s form.

Even more importantly, State Labor Government and Racing Minister Martin Pakula would have been delighted with the performance of the party’s candidate for the south-west.

As we know, Minister Pakula and our own independent Upper House MP and racehorse owner James Purcell have been pushing the whole racehorses-on-beaches issue like there is no tomorrow, such is the might and power of the billion-dollar racing industry.

Unfortunately for Minister Pakula, Mr Purcell and the WRC, however, the tomorrows were running out rapidly.

In just two weeks time, on October 30, the State Government goes into caretaker mode in preparation for the state election on November 24.

During “caretaker mode”, a government is discouraged from making any major decisions.

And also in just two weeks time, on October 30, Cr Gaston – and Cr Michael Neoh – take leave from the council to focus entirely on their election campaigns.

The clock was ticking.

 

Monday night’s urgent meeting, called at the behest of Minster Pakula, was a last chance for Cr Gaston – and Labor – to tidy up some very untidy business by hurrying the decision on the beach permits.

After all, if the legal advice came back to say that the council wasn’t breaking the law, then the racehorses were home and hosed.

And if the legal advice came back to say that it was breaking the law, then Minister Pakula still had two weeks to cook up a plan B.

(The council confirmed yesterday that it was breaking the law. Plan B – watch this space – could now see the Minster for Planning intervene.)

Of course Cr Gaston has denied her head-of-steam had anything to do with the State Government (“nothing to see here!”) getting in her ear.

No, for the once-committed environmentalist who says she loves Levy’s Beach, it was all about “compromise”. You know, give and take: we give the WRC our wild beach, and they take away the wildness, that sort of thing.

If it wasn’t so transparent and ugly, it would be darkly humorous.

Bu then, in the final act, things became even weirder.

Having pushed the vote, without time to properly consider the legalities, Cr Gaston told the local paper yesterday that it would have been better if the vote had not gone ahead.

I have read Cr Gaston’s quotes to the paper several times now, and they still don’t make sense:

“We didn’t really have time to think about it. It would have been great if that vote did not proceed.

“Waiting would have been best, but that was the position we faced at that time”, she said.

“There were a lot of people emotional, it was difficult, but I also knew that if the motion approved something that was illegal, the situation would resolve itself.”

 

What?

Back-pedalling often follows a backlash, but if Cr Gaston hoped to regain the respect of those who saw her as a genuine alternative to the old players, well, that horse has already bolted.

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* Cr Gaston’s motion was passed with the support of Mayor Robert Anderson, Cr Sue Cassidy and Cr Tony Herbert. Crs Cassidy and Herbert are both angling to be the next mayor. Crs Peter Hulin, Michael Neoh and David Owen voted against it.

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