LESSONS FROM DOWERIN

Why the CCC investigated Dowerin’s financial anomalies, but seems not to have given a stuff about York’s

Readers who don’t have the good fortune to reside in Western Australia’s beautiful Wheatbelt region may never have heard of Dowerin. 

Indeed, there are probably more than a few West Australians who, even if they have heard of Dowerin, would have trouble trying to find it on a map.

So I’ll begin with a handful of geographical, demographic and political facts about the town and shire.

Dowerin—which styles itself  ‘The Home of Field Days’, in honour of its annual agricultural show—is a small town situated in the Central Wheatbelt about 165 kms north east of Perth, and 101 kms northwards from York. 

Its local government, the Shire of Dowerin, serves a population of fewer than 700 people—683, according to the government website My Council—most of them living in the town.  As in other Wheatbelt shires, the population of Dowerin appears to be aging and declining. 

The Shire Council consists of eight councillors representing three wards—four for the Town Ward, and two each for the rural North and South Wards.  The current Shire President is Mr. Dale Metcalf.  His deputy is Mr. Graham Ralph.

Crime and punishment

Now, to our story: in April of this year, Mr. Dacre Alcock, who served as the Shire of Dowerin’s Chief Executive Officer from 2008 to 2015, appeared in court on charges of stealing as a servant. 

We’re not talking peanuts here.  It wasn’t just a matter of paperclips, biros and a ream of A4 paper.

The Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) prosecuted Mr. Alcock for stealing $599,879.92 from the Shire.  He pleaded guilty to 665 separate acts of theft, occurring over a period of four years from mid-October 2011 to late in October 2015.

Rounding the figures, you might say that Mr. Alcock stole roughly $880 from each man, woman and child resident in Dowerin.

He did so mainly by using the Shire’s credit card to feed an online gambling habit.  He also transferred money from Shire bank accounts into his own.

Mr. Alcock wouldn’t have been the first paid official of a country shire to filch from municipal funds.  I doubt he will be the last.

But he must surely rank among the boldest and most avaricious.

Following Mr. Alcock’s conviction, a spokeswoman for the CCC stressed the importance of the commission’s role in pursuing and prosecuting crimes like his.

What happened in Dowerin, she said, ‘reinforces the need for vigilance at all levels of public service’.

Amen to that.

Mr. Alcock is due to appear for sentencing in the District Court at the end of next month.  Under Section 378 of the WA Criminal Code, the offence to which he has pleaded guilty carries a sentence of up to ten years in the slammer. 

As  (presumably) a first offender, he won’t get ten years, but he’s unlikely to avoid a custodial sentence.  Most probably, he will get between two and five years and may only have to serve two-thirds of his sentence, whatever it is, if he behaves himself while in prison.

An inquest

A couple of weeks ago, on 28 July, the CCC held in Dowerin what might be regarded as an inquest into Mr. Alcock’s crimes.  How did they happen, and how did he get away with it for so long?

I read somewhere that during his period of office, no fewer than seven audits of Shire finances took place.  It’s astonishing that only one—no doubt the last—revealed the awful truth. 

Perhaps that was a forensic audit, commissioned to investigate anomalies in the accounts.

Here are some of the CCC’s findings, as reported in the West Australian on 29 July.

According to Shire President Metcalf, Council trusted Mr. Alcock to provide the council with correct information.  The council did not have a policy requiring independent review of credit card expenditure.

Nothing happened to arouse Mr. Metcalf’s suspicions.  There was, he said, no way for the council to detect fraud committed by its most senior employee.

(But somebody must have found out what CEO Alcock was up to.  Otherwise, he would still be energetically helping himself to the Shire’s money.  I understand it was Deputy Shire President Ralph who dobbed Mr. Alcock in to the CCC.)

The Shire’s finance manager, Sonia King, said Mr. Alcock did not provide her with his credit card statements.  She described him as ‘controlling, intimidating and aggressive’ and as someone who didn’t like being asked too many questions.

Ms King related that Mr. Alcock ‘often spoke about which horses he had bet on at morning tea’, and that on one occasion she had caught him ‘watching a race when he was pretending to work at his desk’.

I’m surprised that Mr. Alcock’s aggressive behaviour, as reported by Ms King, didn’t long ago set off alarm bells for councillors, other employees, and members of the public, as one might expect in Dowerin’s small and close-knit community.  

I suppose it’s a tribute to Mr. Alcock’s capacity for intimidation as well as deception that nobody seems to have dared to gossip about his nasty temper outbursts and dubious financial activities as CEO.

Unfortunately for the good folk of Dowerin, there’s not much chance that they will see much if any of the stolen money returned to the shire.  Most of it was devoured by online betting agencies.  

Those agencies are under no legal compulsion to repay it.

Ironically, the CCC’s ‘inquest’ was held in the Dowerin Community Centre, a building that, as the West Australian report tells us, Mr. Alcock ‘pushed for and helped bring to fruition’.

Parallels

York readers might have observed some interesting parallels between what happened in Dowerin and ‘historical issues’ that have arisen in York. 

I’m not going to spell them out here.  The issues concerned have been canvassed endlessly over a couple of years on this and the other blog.

What I will say, while crossing my fingers, is that on present showing nothing like what happened in Dowerin is going to happen from now on in York. 

Helped and encouraged by former Acting CEO Dacombe and Dr Gael Ferguson, the Shire has adopted a sensible and comprehensive set of policies to ensure York’s finances remain safe in future from the predatory attentions of rogue employees.

Details of corporate credit card expenditure are no longer concealed from public view, as they were for several years after a former CEO took umbrage because local busybodies started to question how the card was being used.

If Council can bring itself to keep strictly to the policies it has adopted—and I’m sure we agree that a question mark now hangs over that proposition—our Shire’s money should be safe for many years to come.

Lessons for York

The lessons York now needs to learn from Dowerin relate not to future regulation of Shire finances but to the historical issues I mentioned earlier. 

They can be summed up in a single question: Why did the CCC exert itself so vigorously to investigate anomalies in Dowerin’s finances, but didn’t give the proverbial nanosecond of high altitude intimacy for what was alleged to have happened in York?

Those allegations have failed to provoke much interest, let alone investigative action, on the part of three major government agencies: the Department of Local Government and Communities (DLGC), the CCC and the WA Police Fraud Squad.

Never mind the DLGC bureaucrats and their doltish minister.  They had friends to protect, reputations to lose and nothing to gain from the truth coming out, and have done their level best to keep it hidden.  

As for the police, they must have realised from the moment they opened York’s files that this wasn’t a case for them but for the CCC. 

They rejected the Shire’s request for an investigation with the explanation—I should say ‘apparent explanation’, because we’re not allowed to read the letter that contained it—that although they had found ‘issues’ in the financials, they were governance issues and therefore not suited to a police investigation.

What they seem to have been saying is that because councils of the day approved the suspect expenditure, there was nothing police could do that would result in a successful prosecution.

With all due respect to our illustrious constabulary, I think that was for the most part an excuse to brush off our complaint.  After all, it’s the job of the CCC to investigate allegations of corruption at all levels of public service—isn’t it?

Perhaps the Fraud Squad pointed that out in its ‘confidential’ letter to the Shire of York.  Since the Shire has no intention of releasing the letter for public scrutiny, or even telling us what ‘governance issues’ the Fraud Squad identified, we’ll probably never know. 

It’s possible that the Fraud Squad’s conclusion may have been arrived at with the assistance of the Sage of Alexander Heights and his disgraced ‘acolytes’ in York.

Governance issues in Dowerin

At this point, I should acknowledge that there is a profound difference between what happened to Dowerin’s complaint and what befell York’s.

So far as I know, in Dowerin’s case the police weren’t involved.  The complaint went straight to the CCC.

Moreover, if Mr. Alcock declined to present his credit card statements to Council, it must follow that Council had no opportunity to approve them.  That is certainly different from what happened here in York. 

As for governance issues, I daresay they must have played some part in facilitating CEO Alcock’s defalcations from municipal funds.

The Dowerin Shire Council had neglected to adopt an effective credit card policy.  Surely that was a governance issue?

It may also be counted a governance issue that for several years nobody on council took the trouble to examine the Shire’s financial statements closely enough to detect that something didn’t add up. 

(Mind you, who can blame the councillors for not seeing what their auditors failed to see—not once, but half a dozen times.)

The Dowerin Council must have known that their CEO had the use of a credit card.   They may even have known that he was refusing to provide credit card statements to the Shire’s finance manager. 

If so, why did they ignore what was obviously a serious problem for the Shire?   Wasn’t that a governance issue too?

Quite rightly, in my opinion, the CCC doesn’t seem to have been worried about any of that.  They directed their energies to sorting out Mr. Alcock, and got him bang to rights.

Why the CCC turned York down—if indeed they were told of our problems, which is open to doubt

York readers will remember that not long before he rode off unlamented into the sunset last year, the Shire’s former commissioner James Best claimed to have investigated various ‘historical issues’ in York on behalf of the CCC.

He said he had found no evidence of wrongdoing.  The truth is that he wasn’t looking for it, and if he had found it, would in all probability have kept that under his hat.

Mr. Best wasn’t appointed as York’s commissioner to clear up the mess created by the Shire and previous councils.  His brief was to hose down dissent.  Instead, he managed to stir up more.

The story Mr. Best put about was that he and Acting CEO Simpson had sent material to the CCC for investigation, but the CCC had returned the material for them to investigate.  I have no idea if that was true.

Which brings me back to the question I asked earlier:  Why did the CCC dismiss York’s plea for help but react vigorously and effectively to Dowerin’s?  (I’m assuming that the Shire of York did in fact contact the CCC.)

Here’s my hypothesis. 

Community leaders in Dowerin had nothing to hide.  As soon as they had worked out that something was amiss in the conduct of their CEO, they wanted something done about it and reported the matter to the CCC.

York, on the other hand, is a town of secrets with shadowy figures pulling strings from behind the scenes.  It has influential citizens who have nothing to gain and much to lose if truth is told and justice takes its course.

There is little or no appetite on Council and in some sections of the community for investigation of past misdeeds. 

Every time somebody politely suggests that the Shire’s ‘historical issues’ should be properly dealt with, up goes the moronic cry: ‘Never mind the past!  Move on! Let’s move forward!’

No prizes for guessing who they are who shout that the loudest, and why.

I believe there are good reasons for not ignoring the past.  I’m going to nominate three matters that the Shire should send, or send back, to the CCC for investigation.

Those matters are the use of the Shire credit card from 2008 to 2013; the sale of the Old Convent at an advantageous price and on advantageous conditions to a colleague of a former CEO; and the purchase last year of the Old Convent School, in apparent contravention of Section 83 of the WA Criminal Code.

Each of those cases raises serious questions of probity that remain unresolved.  In each case, it is possible (in the last one, certain) that the Shire of York suffered a significant degree of financial harm.

It would be a miracle if Council decided to act as I’ve suggested, but I’m off now to light a candle to St Jude.