Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I very rarely do this in writing, but it’s time to drop the f-bomb.

Fraud.

It is not a word to be used lightly, but there is no doubt it is circling over the credit card scandal engulfing the Warrnambool City Council.

This is how the Victoria Police define fraud: “any deceitful or intentionally dishonest conduct, involving acts or omissions or the making of false statements, orally or in writing, with the objective of obtaining money or other benefit from a person/organisation for him/herself or another”.

Hmm, sounds like we might have a match.

The public response to this scandal is clear: ratepayers don’t want another review that goes nowhere, they want to know if there was fraud and, if so, what is being done about it?

In other words, it’s time to bring in the big guns.

This saga goes well beyond tourism chief David McMahon resigning and moving on, despite the council chiefs working hard to try and contain the fallout.

The CEO and councillors have known about this issue for months, but are now apparently gagged from speaking for legal reasons, which is no doubt a huge relief to those councillors who have not said a word.

I get nervous about speaking up too, but when it comes to backing the public, I would rather drown in a sea of truth than cling to a system designed to keep ratepayers in the dark.

We are still being kept in the dark, because none of what we have been told so far makes any sense.

Things got off to a bad start when CEO Peter Schneider, in telling council staff that Mr McMahon had quit, praised Mr McMahon’s many achievements and wished him well, as you do.

He then explained that the credit card repayments Mr McMahon and former CEO Bruce Anson nutted out over a table last November were work related.

Work related?

Why on earth would Mr McMahon be asked to repay more than $4000 from his own pocket – and possibly up to to $6000 according to my sources – if it was all work related?

And why would Mr McMahon agree?

I don’t know of anyone who would willingly hand over more than $4000 to their boss for work-related expenses.

And why, if everything was just a huge misunderstanding, did Mr McMahon give up his $100,000-plus a year job?

One of those expenses repaid was $736.50 for a “room hire” at the Lady Bay Resort just last September for a “conference” that the council, so far, can’t explain.

Did Mr McMahon accidentally hire a conference room at the Lady Bay? I had a look (see above) and unless you are booking a wedding, the Lady Bay Resort doesn’t have room hire that costs $736.50. The most expensive is $300.

It appears Mr McMahon also inadvertently spent several hundred dollars on drinks at the Cape Schanck resort and more on dinner at the Pickled Pig and also at the Warrnambool Hotel, and mistakenly bought a gift voucher for a full car detail, and gift vouchers for massages at the Logan’s Beach spa resort.

Mr Schneider now says all of this was “work related”, but at the same time, Mr McMahon repaid the cost and has since left his job.

Nothing makes sense and it never does when you’re only getting half the story.

 

Mayor Tony Herbert’s contribution so far is to tell the paper he is “very disappointed” and he could “understand” ratepayers’ “views”.

Views!  Ratepayers are bloody furious, and rightly so.

Because Cr Herbert, who promised to cut costs wherever he could, was there, along with Cr Owen, at the Cape Schanck conference when Mr McMahon shouted hundreds of dollars worth of drinks at the bar.

And Cr Herbert and Cr Owen were both there when Mr McMahon paid for every single VEAC breakfast and brunch.

Cr Herbert, you need to be so, so much more than “disappointed”.

And then we have the ratepayers’ money that hasn’t been repaid, but should have been.

There are at least seven occasions where Mr McMahon claimed food bills for VEAC meetings that were not official VEAC meetings, including the $172.50 “smoking gun” dinner at Bojangles on 31 May last year.

City Growth Manager Andrew Paton was Mr McMahon’s boss and a member of VEAC.

Mr Paton was also, ultimately, responsible for authorising Mr McMahon’s credit card spending.

Did Mr Paton not notice the bills for at least seven VEAC meetings that were not actually VEAC meetings? And if not, why not?

And to really hammer home the point, Mr McMahon – at Bojangles on 31 May last year – knowingly used ratepayers’ money to pay $172.50 for food and drinks that had nothing to do with council business.

And he lied on the council records.  And he organised for a receipt to replace the original.

F-word anyone?

We paid for all this.

This is why when it comes to public money, there are mandatory reporting laws and the CEO has to notify at least the anti-corruption bureau (IBAC) of potential wrongdoing.

I would have thought a report to the police would also be mandatory.

Mr Schneider says the council is “fully aware of its reporting obligations”, so I would imagine the council has reported this issue to IBAC and perhaps the police.

We can only hope so, and that a full, independent investigation follows into Mr McMahon’s spending and the spending on all 81 of the council’s corporate credit cards.

 

This whole credit card scandal happened because of, at the very least, a lack of scrutiny and transparency.

How far it goes, how deep it goes, and who else is caught in the net remains to be seen and – again – will only be settled by a full and frank investigation.

As the saying goes, those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

Having been ripped off for months before anybody noticed, WCC ratepayers deserve nothing less.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Now for the bits you were not supposed to see.

I intended to run this piece last night, but with the sudden resignation of Warrnambool City Council’s tourism chief, David McMahon, it had to wait, but now is actually the perfect timing.

Why? Because with Mr McMahon’s departure, the CEO Peter B. Schneider hopes this whole credit card scandal will all go away: “move on everybody, show’s over”.

This is not the end of the matter, but only the beginning.

This was not about claiming a scalp, but exposing a systemic problem that still exists: close ranks, pull up the drawbridge and tell the ratepayers nothing but gobbledegook.

We still don’t know why Mr McMahon resigned, but the context of his resignation is there for all to see in the stories on The Terrier.

This story will add even more meat to those bones, because it reveals some of the thousands of dollars in repayments made on Mr McMahon’s credit card that were kept secret.

These $4200 in repayments for dinners, drinks, room hire, car detailing, car washing, accommodation, gift vouchers and travel, were made after I lodged a Freedom of Information application with the council on October 30 last year.

But all details of these purchases and repayments were removed by the council from the FOI documents before they were finally released in June this year.

In other words, they were covered up.

You – the public – were never supposed to know about them and I find that scandalous.

 

But blessed be the public, because it is the public that has helped drag this crucial information into the light, including, I can tell you, almost $300 spent on food and beers at the Warrnambool Hotel for a Surfside caravan park “meeting” that finished near midnight.

The fact the bill was secretly repaid makes me suspect that there was no such “meeting” and yet Mr McMahon kept his job.

I know, here we go again right?

I fought for months to have these “missing” transactions revealed, because I could see the game that was being played by the WCC and it was a game designed to avoid embarrassment and public scrutiny.

If someone has to secretly repay thousands of dollars in unauthorised credit card payments, we have a problem, Houston.

In the end, if I wanted to access these crucial missing bits, I would need to lodge a fresh FOI and start all over again. And if the council again refused to play ball, I could lodge an appeal.

And so it would go on and on, grinding through a process that is supposed to be about “freedom of information”, but is often the exact opposite.

It can take a lot of time, and a lot of money, but thanks to the Terrier Tip Jar, I was ready to gird my loins for another round….

And then the cavalry –  sources on horses – arrived and busted a hole right through that stone wall of secrecy.

Thanks to those rolled gold sources, I have a solid chunk of that missing information, but not all of it. The total repayments, I believe, were between $5000 and $6000.

What I do have, however, adds to the big picture and, for ratepayers, it is not pretty.

It is a picture of a system that allowed unauthorised spending to pass through, undetected, for more than a year until the whopping $1600 meals and drinks bill from the Cape Schanck tourism conference turned up on a statement.

Questions were asked in September by someone in council’s finance department about this bill.

But it wasn’t until November, and after my FOI was lodged in October, that the repayments were made.

I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had not lodged the FOI.

 

Because what this investigation has also uncovered is the thousands of dollars of ratepayers’ money spent on food, drinks, travel and endless coffees that was signed off as being acceptable.

This is despite there being a string of unitemised or missing receipts and very little explanation or justification, which meant fake meetings, like the one claimed for the $172.50 Bojangles meal last May, could pass through.

Has this happened with other credit cards – the council has 81 in circulation – and what has been done to stop it?

 

Before Mr McMahon resigned, I asked the council this simple question:

“Why was there no requirement for Mr McMahon to record the specific purpose of gatherings paid for by council, including room hire, meals and drinks, who attended, and the potential outcomes, if any?”

I received no reply.

 

I also plucked out just one example of the spending – two room hires at the Lady Bay Resort, both within the first week of September last year which, together, cost ratepayers more than $1100.

This was my question to the council a week ago:

What events were held in these room hires (and) why did the council not use WCC spaces for these events?

It’s another simple question, but I received no reply.

My suspicion is that nobody knows.

 

This all comes, of course, as the WCC has moved to raise rates above the cap for the next two years because it is suffering hard financial times.

And that is what makes all of this such a bitter pill to swallow.

And that is why I will continue to pursue this story.

The repayment list so far is below.

Approx date            Purchase                                          Cost

24.04.17                     V Line ticket (Melbourne)                $88

5.07.17                       Pickled Pig restaurant                       $290

24.07.17                     Mr Magic car wash                            $20.30

18.09.17                     Mr Magic car wash                            $18.30

2.10.17                       Mr Magic car wash                            $20.30

3.01.18                       Mr Magic car wash                            $16.30

13.02.18                     Mr Magic car wash                            $18.30

20.03.18                     Mr Magic car wash                            $18.30

4.05.18                       Taxi Warrnambool                            $21.84

22.06.18                     Citadines Melbourne- accom          $166.65

16.07.18                     Bohemia Café                                      $9.80

25.07.18                     Apartments of Melbourne – meals  $75.00

2.08.18                       RACV Cape Schanck meals/drinks  $1633.50

10.08.18                     Mr Magic car wash                            $18.35

13.08.18                     Unidentified transport transaction $126.60

16.08.18                     Full car detail                                       $275

28.08.18                     W’bool Hotel dinner                          $287.30

10.09.18                     Room hire @ Lady Bay Resort         $736.50

12.09.18                     Logan’s Beach Spa 4 gift vouchers   $360

Total:                                                                                         $4200.34

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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.

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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.

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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.