MAJOR FRAUD IN A MINOR KEY?

What the Department knew and did nothing about—or, Probity Blues yet again

Last week there was great excitement in York when police from the Major Fraud Squad seized files alleged to contain evidence of corporate credit card fraud from the Shire of York’s offices in Joaquina Street.

At present, police are assessing evidence seized from the Shire.  No charges have yet been laid. 

It’s widely rumoured that the Major Fraud Squad may also be interested in other aspects of Shire finances, including the sale of the Old Convent some years ago to a colleague and friend of the CEO of the day. 

The story goes that the property was sold for considerably less than its market value, with the sale price based on a valuation several years old—not six months old or less, as the law requires.

The police might also consider aiming the spotlight at a more recent transfer of property initiated by former commissioner James Best. 

Personally, I think the motive for that transaction was vindictiveness, not corruption, but there are doubters in our midst whose misgivings should be assuaged for the sake of the innocent vendors whose only sin—venal, not cardinal—was to profit handsomely from the sale at the community’s expense.

Knowledge and awareness—philosophy 101

In the excitement of the moment, it was easy to overlook a rather odd statement issued by the Department of Local Government and Communities.

The Department told the media it had been made ‘aware’ of allegations concerning misuse of corporate credit cards ‘by documentation included in the response to the Show Cause notice issued last year’.

‘Aware’ is a funny old word.  ‘Being aware’ means much the same as ‘knowing’, but has a kind of airy connotation that puts what is known at arm’s length, virtually relieving the knower from responsibility arising from knowing it. 

‘We sort of kind of may have in effect got a sideways hint of it, but not to the point where we felt driven to do anything about it’—that’s what the word ‘aware’ is meant to convey in the department’s statement. 

‘That kind of thing just isn’t the kind of thing we’re supposed to take on.  Tell the cops about it.  They might be bothered.  We’re not.’

Less directly, the statement said that, too.

The truth is that the department was more, much more, than just ‘aware’.   The Shire’s response to the minister’s Show Cause notice contained specific and detailed allegations of misconduct including misuse of corporate credit cards by councillors and staff.

So why did the minister and his department decide to do nothing about those allegations at that time or since? Doesn’t financial misconduct in local government automatically draw forth the dragon Probity from its lair in Gordon Stephenson House? 

Isn’t there a probity wizard in the department whose job is to monitor probity and recommend intervention when probity isn’t maintained?  Isn’t his name (roll of drums) Brad Jolly?

Ah, but we’re forgetting…Mr. Jolly was busy, with other members of his coven, casting a nasty spell—ironically, in the name of probity— on the York Shire Council. 

This involved putting the elected council into a state of suspended animation for six months because the new shire president, Matthew Reid, had upset a couple of the minister’s political allies and a departmental favourite and was a mite too democratic in his approach to governing the shire.

That gave Mr. Jolly and the minister the chance to install their mate James Best, former mayor of South Perth, as ‘commissioner’ in York, with all the powers of an elected council. 

It would be his job to dispel complaints and allegations regarding credit card misuse, malicious prosecutions, persecuted dissidents, staff incompetence, patronage, nepotism and other varieties of foolish and corrupt conduct alleged against the Shire of York.   

Making such trivialities vanish into thin air would exonerate Mr. Jolly and his colleagues from the charge of having presided over ten years of neglect.

And while he was at it, for an extra $40,000 Mr. Best could run his ‘visioning’ program, wave his wand and make York and its inhabitants submissive and docile again. 

Why bother with probity, when you can have magic instead?

Monitoring and Mentoring

In its statement, the department mentions having established a ‘Monitoring and Mentoring Panel…to guide and assist the council to provide good governance for the community’.

The department has given us plenty of indications that its ideas about what constitutes good governance are a little on the hazy side.  I’m not sure about the mentors. 

The mentoring panel consists of a couple of departmental stalwarts—Jenni Law and Andrew Borrett—a CEO and a shire president from Morawa. 

As yet, I haven’t decided if the mentors are disinterested advisers, or departmental stooges tasked with indoctrinating councillors in the official view of how local government should work—the world according to Jennifer Mathews, Brad Jolly et. al., the wonderful people who brought you James Best and in consequence an unwanted debt of $625,000 and a record rate increase.

Next week, following the elections, York will have a new Council.  A majority of councillors will be new to the game.

May I respectfully suggest that the new Council instruct Acting CEO Simpson or whoever is doing his job these days to write to the ‘mentors’, copy to the minister, thanking them for their past services and advising them that their presence is no longer required in York.

Instead, councillors may, and in my view should, choose to undertake training of the kind provided to the last Council. 

The new Council has a right to make its own choices and learn from its mistakes.  It should not have to look over its shoulder every five minutes to find out what mentors think it should do or how they think the shire president should answer a question.   

Councillors will have access to the Local Government Act and Regulations.  Please read them, councillors.  Consult them as necessary.  Think for yourselves.  Don’t take anything you’re told as gospel.  As I’ve demonstrated in these pages more than once, what you’re told may not be accurate or true.

After six nightmarish months under James Best, we’re entitled to be sceptical of the department’s help and advice.  Not only did the department make it possible for the Shire of York to be well and truly screwed, it now refuses to accept blame or responsibility for the damage that was done or to offer anything by way of explanation, apology, expiation or reparation.  Despicable, wouldn’t you say?

Picking up on what David Taylor has written on the other blog, it would be a backward step for York if the mentors interfered in any way in the process of deciding who should or shouldn’t be our new shire president.  That’s a matter for Council alone to decide. 

On that issue, the mentors, the minister and the minister’s bureaucrats must be told to keep their hands well away from the control panel. 

And just so there’s no mistake, I give my word that if elected to Council I will not seek and would not accept nomination for the position of shire president.  That’s a job for a younger person. 

More than that, at this point in York’s history, it might well be a job for a woman—one with a clear and convincing vision for the future of our shire. 

POSTSCRIPT:  Mentors initially appointed were Karen Chappel, Morawa Shire President; Daniel Simms, CEO of Wanneroo City Council; and Jenni Law, a senior officer of the DLG.  Andrew Borrett stands in for Ms Law when she is unavailable or indisposed.

I think I must have prophetic powers.   It is now rumoured that Ms Chappel has encouraged one of the councillors currently in office to seek the shire presidency on the grounds that none of the new councillors ought to have it, presumably because they lack experience of how the department thinks things should be done.

I believe that rumour to be true.     

I wonder what the other sitting councillor, who has expressed a strong interest in the position, thinks of Ms Chappel’s alleged interference. 

For heaven’s sake, we haven’t even had the elections yet, and here we have one of the mentors—maybe acting for all of them—apparently trying to manipulate the choice of shire president.  What has led her to believe that her preferred candidate has the capacity to do the job?  What gives her confidence that other councillors will support that person's bid for office?

In saying this, I'm not passing judgement on the councillor in question, who may very well be the best person for the job.  It's the mentors that concern me.

I believe they gave Matthew a very hard time.  In my view they were there not so much to help him as to enforce upon him the importance of seeing things from a departmental perspective.  For all I know, that may be his view, too.

Essentially, the mentors are cat’s paws for Minister Simpson, or more correctly for Director-General Matthews and Brad Jolly, the real powers behind the ministerial throne.

Was Ms Chappel acting under instruction from on high? Or was she waltzing off on a frolic of her own?

Either way, her alleged interference might well lead to bitterness, conflict and friction at the very beginning of the new council’s existence and perhaps for some time into the future.

Please, mentors, leave the new council to sort out its own affairs.  How many other new and inexperienced shire councils are required to begin work under your kind of outside direction without having asked for it? 

Whoever the people of York vote for on Saturday, your names won’t be on the ballot paper, so what gives any of you the right to try to determine covertly who the next shire president might be? 

  
Written, authorised and published by James Plumridge, 14 Harriott Street, York