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

I have been spending some winter time in Tasmania for a number of reasons and this is one of them – to finally visit this isolated place called Little Musselroe Bay.

This is where my uncle Alf Altmann, from Warrnambool, pushed off in his home-made kayak to try and become the first person to row solo across Bass Strait from the very top of Tassie to the bottom of Victoria.

He set off from Little Musselroe Bay on 25 February 1970 and died 10 days later, less than 2km from shore off the Gippsland Lakes, after being caught in a storm and knocked unconscious.

Warrnambool wraps its arms around Christchurch. We embrace flowers, not guns.
You can add whatever you have in your garden, whenever you like. This living vase of hope at the Civic Green will be there until Friday (March 22), a week from when hate again tried to break us, but failed. #newwarrnambool #oneworld #lovenothate #holdmyhand