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Hi John,
Given that you wouldn't give me a reason for our meeting on Monday, I have naturally made a couple of guesses as to the reason, the first being my belief in following the rules.
As you are no doubt aware, I have been a member of BirdLife Australia for many years. You probably also know that in 2013 Karen and I formed a local branch of BirdLife Australia called BirdLife Shoalhaven. I have been on the committee of BirdLife Shoalhaven since its inception.
In a lot of ways, my membership of BirdLife Shoalhaven echoes my membership of Shoalhaven Bushwalkers. Soon after joining I set up the website for the group, and have been Webmaster ever since. I set up the Facebook page as well, and have been its administrator and one of its main contributors since the beginning. I am also the BirdLife Shoalhaven e-magazine editor, producing a magazine every quarter for almost ten years, echoing my seven years as Ettremist Editor in the Bushwalkers. And for many of my years on the BirdLife Shoalhaven committee I have been its Secretary.
A week ago the board of BirdLife Australia decided to support the Yes vote in the upcoming Voice referendum - without consulting its members. I consider this to be an extremely poor decision, and can see no justification for a bird conservation organisation that is registered as a charity getting involved in a political campaign, especially one where it is likely that a large percentage of its members, supporters and donors will not agree with its decision, whichever way they decided.
For the past few years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with many BirdLife Australia decisions, but none of them by themselves were enough to make me leave the organisation. This changed with BirdLife Australia's Voice decision. I did not want to be seen as a part of an organisation that made such bad decisions, so shortly after BirdLife Australia announced its decision, I made the decision to resign my membership of BirdLife Australia immediately. This automatically meant that I was no longer a member of BirdLife Shoalhaven either, so could not be a part of its committee. As a result, BirdLife Shoalhaven will have to find a new Secretary, Webmaster, Facebook administrator and magazine Editor.
[Although I quit BirdLife Australia, BirdLife Shoalhaven allowed me to volunteer my time and expertise so the local branch was largely unaffected - I am still the Webmaster, Facebook administrator and magazine Editor for BirdLife Shoalhaven.]
During the past three years, there have been a number of decisions made by the committee and membership of Shoalhaven Bushwalkers that I have disagreed with as well. These include the following -
- the decision to allow the President to set up sub-committees without committee approval
- the decision to allow the committee to consider recommendations from a sub-committee that had been set up illegally
- the decision to change committee meeting venues from members homes in the north and south to the Nowra library
- the decision to allow the President and Vice President to redistribute the club PLBs to locations that are contrary to a committee decision
- the decision to allow the President to advertise for positions required by safety procedures that have not been approved by the committee
- the decision to allow the President to advise holders of private PLBs to give the names of the PLBs registered emergency contact to the club because of safety procedures that have not been approved by the committee
- the decision to allow the President to tell the club via a news item that our safety procedures had been revised - when they hadn't
- the decision to create the Risk Manager role without having first worked out what the role of the Risk Manager would be
- the decision that all communication to the club membership must be approved by the President and signed by the president
- the decision that any news item posted by a committee member on the NEWS section of the website is to relate only to the area of their elected or appointed responsibility
- the decision to allow holders of club PLBs to decide who the registered emergency contacts for those PLBs would be - against committee guidelines
- the decision to remove two walking days from the calendar and replace them with social days at the beginning of Autumn and Winter
- the decision to schedule Xmas in July on a walking day - and then not schedule any walks on that day
- the decision to enshrine in the constitution the right of the President to call committee meetings without requiring the approval of 50% of committee members
- the decision to limit the term of the President to 3 consecutive years
- the decision to have a Welfare Officer and Welfare Group!
None of the above decisions on their own have been bad enough for me to make a decision similar to the one I made after the BirdLife Australia decision to support the Voice - but some of them have gone pretty close. Most of the above decisions were made by people new to the club and new to the committee with very little or no understanding of the history of the club and the decisions that had been made in the past. Some of them are purely matters of individual preference.
But many of them are the direct result of the rules of the club not being followed - either those rules listed in our Standing Resolutions or those rules defined in our constitution. The people making many of the decisions listed above either do not know the rules, or chose not to follow them.
If you have arranged our meeting on Monday to advise me to stop insisting that the club follows the rules, then your trip will be wasted because I will not stop pointing out when the rules are being broken. Our constitution states that "the President shall direct the general functioning of the club" - so you would be better off spending your time considering if the President directing the general functioning of the club includes making people follow the rules. I believe that it is the people not following the rules that are causing problems, not me. Those with a less rigid view of the rules might disagree.
Of course, maybe our meeting is not about following the rules. Maybe it's about Julienne's safety procedures and its ridiculous requirements - like making leaders carry out the additional and unnecessary administrative task of sending the attendance sheet to a variety of people depending on whether or not a PLB is taken on the walk and depending on which PLB is taken on the walk. New members of the club and new members of the committee would be completely unaware that all decisions made in the past twenty years relating to leaders have always been made with the unwritten law of "don't make leaders do unnecessary extra work" in mind.
However, if you wanted to talk to me about safety procedures you would probably have suggested I join the safety sub-committee - which is composed of three members with zero experience on committee. And I won't be changing my mind about Julienne's safety procedures anyhow, so a trip to my place for that purpose would also be a waste of your time and mine.
As your phone call came very soon after my email to the committee about the Peter Walsh motion that was "passed" at the general meeting, then perhaps that is what you want to talk about. Or perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with Shoalhaven Bushwalkers at all!?
Mary's Presidential "style" involved a lot of secrecy, and I wasn't impressed by it. Could you give me some indication of what you want to talk about? Then I can give you some indication of whether your trip to my place on Monday will be wasted or not.
I would suggest that if our meeting will probably be a waste of time, we now just let the sub-committee make its decisions and recommendations to the committee - whether they are good or bad for the club. We now let the President make his decisions - whether they are good or bad for the club. We now let the committee make its decisions - whether they are good or bad for the club - and we now let the Website Administrator make his decisions about all of the above decisions - whether they are good or bad for the club ...
Cheers,
Brett
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