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Hi SBW committee,
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. This complaint is made against John Kubale, John Souter and Kynie Evison for their failure to follow Section 13 of the SBW constitution in September 2023 after John Kubale's receipt of complaints against me from David Campbell, and Graeme and Lyndal Lawless.
For the first 23 years of my membership of Shoalhaven Bushwalkers I have had no reason to make any complaints, but beginning during the Presidency of Mary Furness - and continuing under John Kubale - some members of the committee, particularly the Presidents, have been increasingly loose with club rules. I have mentioned this at committee meetings prior to my resignation from the committee, without having the problem acknowledged.
In early September last year I tried to highlight the constitutional rules that were being ignored by the Presidents and by other committee members by including the "SBW Incorporated" web page on our webste. That web page stated that Shoalhaven Bushwalkers is an incorporated association governed by a constitution and as such we are bound by regulations set down by the Department of Fair Trading (DFT) and we are also bound by the NSW Associations Incorporation Act 2009 and the NSW Associations Incorporation Regulations 2022. It is actually a legal requirement in NSW for an association and its members to follow the rules set down in its constitution. Rather than heed the advice of that web page, the three prominent members of the club committee mentioned in this complaint requested that I remove that page from the website.
I suspect that some of the recent violations of the rules have been caused by the resignation of many experienced committee members during the past few years, and the subsequent influx of members who are not only new to the committee, but to the club as well. These new committee members may have experience on other committees with other organisations or other bushwalking clubs, but they have no experience with how our committee works or the rules by which it is governed. Experience on our committee, however, might not necessarily be the main factor behind ignoring our constitution, as our two most experienced current committee members have also failed to comply with club rules.
Given that committee members continue to ignore the rules to this day, I really have no other recourse than to make this complaint. I do realize that this is a Catch 22 situation and probably futile, as the committee would have to actually follow the rules to deal with a complaint about it not following the rules.
If the committee decides to deal with the complaint, and if the committee finds that the complaint is justified, I do not want the committee to cancel or suspend the memberships of the people concerned. I do not want the committee members mentioned in the complaints to be asked to resign from the committee. I am not seeking any punishments at all. I also don't want any additional rules or codes of conduct created. The club has become complicated enough under the new committee and does not need any more complications. I would just like the current committee to acknowledge that mistakes have been made, and that they will endeavour to ensure that similar mistakes do not occur in the future. Of course, what I want is unimportant. Suitable punishments - if any - are for the committee to decide.
Of course, the committee might find that it is my understanding of the rules that is at fault, and that this complaint is not justified. If so, I feel confident that the committee will let me know.
Anyway, on with the complaint!
On page 12 of the August/September 2023 committee meeting minutes directly under "Business arising from Correspondence" is a paragraph which says "Kynie Evison gave a brief outline to the recent posts on the SBW website referred to in the first two items of correspondence and the discussions held with John Kubale, John Souter, Kynie Evison and Brett Davis."
Unfortunately, there is no mention in the minutes of what Kynie said in her brief outline. The "discussions" that Kynie apparently mentioned actually took place at a meeting at my home on September 11th. That meeting with me was requested by John Kubale via phone on September 7th.
John Kubale initially refused to give me a reason for the meeting. He and I had had two prior informal meetings at my home - requested by John - where we discussed our differing opinions about following the rules of the club as laid down in the club's constitution. John seems to believe that the differences of opinion that I have had with previous President Mary Furness and previous Vice President Julienne McKay over matters such as the proposed new safety procedures were due to my belief in following the rules. He is correct - I believe in following the rules of the constitution, and Mary and Julienne seemed to believe that the President and Vice President ran the club and could ignore the constitution and make up the rules as they went along.
The understanding I received from those two informal meetings was that John favours a more pragmatic approach which involves ignoring the rules on some occasions in order to conduct the business of the club more effectively. He might dispute this, and I might be completely wrong, but that is the impression I got.
In an email to John on September 8th, I pushed him to give me a reason for the upcoming meeting, and he replied via email on the same day that "the meeting is to address some of your complaints while considering others". I had made no official complaints to SBW, but John and I had discussed the many bad decisions (in my opinion) made by the committee in the past couple of years, and we had also discussed committee members not following the rules that are laid down in the constitution. The reference to "others" in his reply however indicated to me that other club members had made complaints to John.
In his reply, John also said "I have asked Kynie & John Souter to join me, since they have the long-term Bushwalker’s committee experience that I lack" - which indicated that the meeting would definitely be about SBW business and complaints.
As it turned out, I was correct in assuming that the meeting would be about SBW business, but I was wrong in assuming that it would deal with my concerns about committee decisions and about Presidents not following the rules. The meeting actually dealt with two complaints against me - the complaint from Graeme and Lyndal Lawless fully quoted in the August/September 2023 committee meeting minutes, and the complaint about me detailed in the email to John Kubale from David Campbell that was not recorded in the minutes of the August / September committee meeting, and which I have distributed to all of you. Nothing else was discussed at the meeting at my home. Printed copies of both complaints were handed to me at the beginning of that meeting - which is how I obtained the David Campbell email.
The SBW constitution has two sections that detail the procedures to be followed if bad conduct by a member occurs. Rule 6 covers the situation where the committee believes bad conduct to have occurred, and Rule 13 covers the situation where a club member makes a complaint about another member's bad conduct.
As the complaints were apparently made to the President rather than the committee as a whole, and given his subsequent actions, I believe that the President did not consult all the committee members about the complaints before deciding on a course of action. He obviously informed John Souter and Kynie Evison, but it is likely that other members of the committee were not informed. In the light of later revelations, it is certain that no other committee members were contacted about the complaints.
Digressing slightly, one of the contributing factors to this whole situation was the fact that both the David Campbell and Lawless emails were sent to only one committee member. Sending an email to only one person on the committee is always potentially problematic. The email might disappear into the ether. It might find its way into a spam or junk folder. It might be ignored. The committee member might decide that the email is trivial and not worth bothering the other committee members about. It might be deliberately deleted because the committee member who receives it does not want anyone else to know about it. It might also be kept SECRET by a President who believes that he does not need to follow the rules. That is why I prefer to send emails to ALL committee members - so that I know they will all receive it. I am a great believer in "full disclosure" and having everything out in the open.
When the President received the two complaints against me, he should have informed the committee about both complaints. It would have then been up to the committee to decide whether to action the complaints using Rule 6 or Rule 13. John Kubale decided to ignore the rules of the constitution and deal with the complaints himself without consulting the whole committee.
Perhaps John was unaware of the provisions of the constitution or perhaps John felt that the provisions of the constitution did not apply to this situation, but it really doesn't matter whether or not the whole committee or the President alone decided to deal with the complaints by having a private meeting, because neither Rule 6 or Rule 13 was followed.
I would like to point out that John Kubale was not on the committee when the emails mentioned in the David Campbell complaint - which were addressed to the entire committee - were sent out, so John was not sent the emails in question. I actually suspect that John has never read them. I would also like to point out that both John Souter and Kynie Evison were on the committee when the emails mentioned in the David Campbell complaint were sent out, and that they - along with every other committee member at the time - did not have any objections to the content, tone or style of the emails at the time.
Please note that like every other committee member who received the emails mentioned in the David Campbell complaint, Julienne McKay made no complaint. David is the only person who seems to think that my emails needed to be complained about, and he was not sent those emails and admits that he did not read all of them!
I found it rather ironic that at this non-constitutional and SECRET meeting organised by the President without consulting the whole committee, I was requested to take down two web pages that I had recently added to the SBW website. "The Role of the President" explained the President's limited role as defined by the constitution, and "SBW Incorporated" explained that as SBW is an incorporated association in NSW, its committee members are legally obliged to follow the rules of their association's constitution and are subject to the laws of the state.
To pre-empt any of your potential arguments that the email from David Campbell was not really a complaint but simply a suggestion to improve the club by instituting a code of conduct, and therefore the President did not have to follow the complaints procedure shown in the constitution, I will point out that the minutes of the August / September 2023 committee meeting, under General Business, item 2, refer to the Campbell and Lawless emails as "complaints". Those minutes state - "the behaviour subject to the complaints occurred at committee level". So SBW committee meeting minutes have already acknowledged that the emails were complaints, and at a later meeting (October 2023) verified that those original minutes were a true and accurate record.
As mentioned earlier, with the President's non-constitutional actions supported by the two most experienced members of the committee, and after a year of battling the previous President's belief that she too could make up the rules as she went along, I came to the conclusion that all my efforts to get the club to follow its own constitution had been futile in the past and would continue to be equally futile in the future. Combined with my concerns about being associated with the many bad decisions made by the committee in the recent past, this was the primary reason for my resignation from the committee.
However, just because I am no longer on committee, it does not mean that I will stop trying to get the committee to follow the rules of the constitution.
Regards,
Brett
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