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Hi SBW committee,
This complaint refers to the complaint against me by David Campbell. This complaint was apparently sent to President John Kubale on 10th September 2023. You have by now all received a copy of this complaint. It is also attached to this email.
First, let me say that I have absolutely no problem with the fact that David made a complaint against me - that is the right of every Shoalhaven Bushwalker member. However, I have many problems with the content of David Campbell’s lengthy and quite laughable complaint - and with how it was dealt with by the SBW President - and subsequently by the SBW committee.
The allegations contained in the David Campbell complaint are actually defamatory. Defamation refers to something said or written by one person that is not true or is unsubstantiated - which negatively affects the reputation of another person. Defamation claims can be brought against individuals, incorporated associations, large companies, and bodies of government. Given that the SBW committee has publicly apologised for the untrue allegations made in David's complaint, defamation claims could be made against both David and SBW.
I would suggest that the SBW committee distance itself from David's allegations by investigating this complaint, which should lead to a finding that David's allegations are completely false. The committee should then retract its apology to David which was based upon his false allegations.
A significant fault with David's complaint is that he never explains which emails he is referring to. David says that the emails were sent by me to Julienne while she and David were overseas, but apart from saying they concerned safety procedures, he gives no dates, no email subjects, and no details of who the emails were addressed to. Were these emails sent to Julienne alone, or were they the ones I sent to the committee at that time? Is he referring to all the emails I sent to the committee, or just some of them, and if so, which ones? In short, we don't know which emails David is referring to.
David also gives no quotes or examples from any of those undisclosed emails to support his allegations of the supposedly “personal and hurtful” comments within them. David even admits that he didn’t read all of the emails he is complaining about - as they were not actually sent to him - and he also admits that Julienne refused to show him the content of some of the emails - so much of his complaint is based on conjecture and hearsay.
I would guess that David was not able to provide these details because he simply did not have them. He was relying on information given to him by Julienne. I find it quite revealing that it was not Julienne who made this complaint, perhaps because she knew there was no substance behind it.
Digressing slightly, I would suggest that the SBW committee pass a resolution that stops members from making complaints on behalf of someone else. We only have David's word that Julienne was upset by my emails and web pages. If Julienne was so upset, why didn't she make the complaint?
In the fourth paragraph of his complaint, David writes about “persistent use of disrespectful messaging, circulated across the committee”, and in the seventh paragraph he writes “Julienne and I recently spent three weeks on the Isle of Skye, during which time Julienne received almost daily messages from Brett Davis written in a style that was both personal and hurtful.” I would like to point out that I was not sending messages or emails to Julienne alone - I was sending emails to the entire committee - of which Julienne was a member.
David's complaint also deals with what he describes as "two articles that appeared recently, and in my opinion inappropriately, on the SBW website - and in particular the one dealing with the term of the President". In the lead-up to David's complaint, I added three web pages to the SBW website - "Term of the President", "Role of the President", and "SBW Incorporated". David mentions "the one dealing with the term of the President" but he does not specify the other "article" he was referring to. He does not mention its title, and he makes no quotes from it. Because his complaint lacks any details at all about the emails, and about the second mystery "article" that David refers to, these sections of David's email should be ignored. The only time we are certain about what David is complaining about is when he mentions the "term of the President". His entire complaint therefore comes down to a complaint about one web page.
David complains that the page "was written in its very pointed personal style directed, repeatedly, at Julienne." I really don't care what David thinks about the style - it is the content of the page that he should be complaining about, and I would also ask how a style can be "directed" at anyone? David further complains "that this content was made available to all members, and even beyond through open web publication." This is because the page appeared under the History section of the website. All of the SBW history at that time was available to all members and to the entire world - because in the old days we had nothing to hide.
By the time David made his complaint - and by his own admission - the page had been removed from the SBW website, so what David's entire three page rant boils down to is a complaint against one web page that was up on the website for a day or two and had been taken down prior to his complaint. I will deal with that page in another complaint.
The contents of that web page described a part of SBW history - the decision at the AGM to change the term of the President in the constitution. The web page was written from the perspective of the writer (me) - in exactly the same way that all of the history web pages are written from the perspective of the writer. And yet again David does not quote anything from the page to support his complaint. In effect, he does not tell us what he is complaining about.
I believe that including the page in the club's history was valid. I believe that mentioning Mary and Julienne and the parts that they played in changing the constitution was valid. I believe that everything on the page in question was true and correct. The reason I took the page down prior to the kangaroo court with John Kubale, John Souter, Kynie Evison and myself on September 11th was due to feedback from John Souter after which I came to the conclusion that the actions of Mary and Julienne reflected badly on the club, and that this part of the club history - and perhaps the entire club history - might better be placed in the Members Only section of the website. I was in the initial stages of planning this change for presentation to the committee when the kangaroo court occurred and my resignation from the committee subsequently happened.
The remainder of this email gives pertinent background information to both my complaint and to David's complaint as well ...
FOR THE RECORD
For the record, I wrote thirteen emails to the whole committee between May 20th and May 28th in 2023, and I believe that these are the “messages” that David was referring to. Seven of those emails dealt with various aspects of the club’s safety procedures, with the others dealing with other SBW issues at the time such as my non-attendance at three consecutive committee meetings which necessitated my removal from the committee, and my work on the constitution sub-committee with Mary and Clare.
I wrote the emails about the proposed new safety procedures because I knew that I would not be present at the upcoming committee meeting that would discuss them, and I believed that the procedures contained serious flaws. Of the seven emails which dealt with various aspects of the club’s safety procedures, only two emails referred directly to Julienne’s so-called safety procedures. One of these dealt with the requirement for the leader to fill out an attendance form and email it to a safety contact prior to a walk - but this is not technically a safety procedure - it is just an additional administrative procedure for the leader that provides no improvement to safety or removal of risk for anyone on the walk.
This leaves one email which critiqued the proposed new safety procedures. How can one email sent to the entire committee who made no complaints about its tone or style or content - be considered as "hammering" or "harassment" or "bullying"?
I would also like to point out that when the club's safety procedures were eventually updated much later in the year, they contained very little content from Julienne and David's procedures. Apparently the committee eventually agreed with me that most of the procedures proposed by Julienne and David were not needed, or were not as good as those that were finally adopted.
Here is a summary of my alleged “bullying and harassing” emails -
1. May 20 - “My review of the proposed new safety procedures”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures - because the use of the emergency contact form as a record of people on the walk is an administrative procedure, not a safety procedure. This email explained that I would not be attending the next committee meeting, and why I would be emailing my thoughts about the new safety procedures in a future email. It also dealt with the change in role of a walker’s emergency contact on the attendance form - from a person who could provide a leader with your medical details if you suffered a medical emergency on their walk, to someone who should be contacted if the walker is simply delayed in getting home with no emergency necessarily having occurred.
2. May 21 - "Problems with the proposed new safety procedures”
This email went into detail about the many problems I saw in the safety procedures proposed by Julienne McKay and David Campbell.
3. May 24 - “Our Safety Record”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures. It detailed the club’s record of walks that finished a day late, and the fact that a PLB has never been activated on a club walk.
4. May 26 - “Possible agenda item”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures. It suggested that the committee should examine our risk management and safety procedures on a regular basis. It asked Julienne whether they followed the Bushwalking Australia or Bushwalking NSW risk management guidelines. I never received a reply.
5. May 26 - "The Safety Procedures sub-committee, and protocols”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures. It pointed out that the safety sub-committee established by Mary was illegally created and therefore the proposed new safety procedures did not need to be considered by the committee.
6. May 27 - “My critique of safety procedures on our website!”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures. It pointed out that the safety procedures on our website were outdated, and it explained some changes I had made to the location of the safety pages on the website to make it easier to compare our current safety procedures with the proposed new safety procedures. If this email was critical of anyone, it was critical of me!
7. May 28 - “My Proposed New Safety Procedures”
This email did not critique the new safety procedures. Because I didn't want to criticize the safety procedures without offering an alternative set of procedures, this email detailed what I thought the new safety procedures should be.
As you can see, only two of my emails critiqued the proposed new safety procedures – one dealing with the emergency contact form which is not technically a safety procedure - and the other dealing with the rest of the proposed procedures. In his complaint, David Campbell called this series of emails an “ongoing hammering with disrespectful messages” - even though the emails contained nothing disrespectful at all and only one email dealt directly with his safety procedures.
Regards,
Brett
For those of you who haven't actually read the two web pages in question - and I suspect that is most of you - here is the text from both pages –
The SBW Inc article / web page
The Role of the President article / web page
[The text was included in the original email, not the links to the pages above]
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