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Hi SBW committee,
In early 2023 then President Mary Furness apparently spoke with someone who had some association with either Bushwalking NSW or Bushwalking Australia who advised her to update the club’s safety procedures. There has never been any correspondence minuted detailing this advice, and there is no evidence that the person in question ever read the safety procedures that the club already had in place, which had been working without a problem for many years.
In an email to the committee on January 30th, Mary said - “A member, Lee Cordner, put up suggestions re the club's safety procedures. When someone questions our safety procedures, I deem it appropriate to follow up quickly. I decided to do some preliminary work to inform our next committee meeting in March. A sub-committee of the committee met on Saturday to discuss Lees (sic) question re safety procedures on walks. I called the sub-committee suddenly as I was in Vincentia that day. The s-c was Julienne McKay, as hybrid coordinator, John Souter as weekend coordinator, Kynie as Wednesday coordinator and me. Kynie could not make the meeting as she was working but I have briefed her by email, and we received her thoughts on the matter.”
In the SBW constitution, Rule 22. Club management, part b (x) states “The powers and duties of the Club committee shall be .... to establish Sub-committees”. It is not the duty or the right of the President to establish sub-committees. As a result, the ad-hoc sub-committee was unconstitutional. Mary had not read, had not understood, or had chosen to ignore the constitution. I think that Mary believed that the President had much more power than what is actually stated in our constitution, and that she believed she could basically do whatever she wanted to achieve her goals.
Section 13 of the SBW constitution says that a complaint may be made against a member of the Club who has refused or neglected to comply with a provision or provisions of the constitution, or who has willfully acted in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the Club. I contend that Mary "neglected to comply with a provision or provisions of the constitution" by forming a sub-committee when she had no constitutional right to do so.
When the proposed new safety procedures produced by this unconstitutional sub-committee were eventually discussed during the August part of the combined August / September committee meeting, I pointed out that the sub-committee was unconstitutional and that as a result the committee should not deal with the procedures that the sub-committee had produced. This was voted down by the committee. My comment and the subsequent decision to deal with the new procedures were not recorded in the minutes, and by the time the September part of the combined committee meeting occurred, I had resigned from the committee so I was not able to have that omission corrected.
The committee choosing to deal with the procedures produced by the unconstitutional sub-committee will be the subject of a further complaint.
Regards,
Brett
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