The Safety Procedures sub-committee, and protocols

Hi SBW committee,

You are going to love this email! 😂

The Safety Procedures sub-committee
On Wednesday 25th January this year we had the Leaders Training Afternoon at Erowal Bay. Lee Cordner expressed concerns at our safety procedures that afternoon. On Monday 30th January our President emailed the committee to inform us that as a result of Lee's concerns, she had formed a safety sub-committee two days earlier on Saturday 28th January.

Unfortunately, the President should not have formed the safety sub-committee in January because the President doesn't have the authority. Rule 24 of our constitution in section (1) states "The Club shall be managed by the Club committee" and section (2) which details "The powers and duties of the Club committee" lists one of those powers under paragraph (j) as "to establish Sub-committees".

As a result, the committee could totally disregard any safety report produced by that sub-committee!

However, the minutes of our March committee meeting under "General Business 3a. Are Our Safety Procedures Easy to Follow?" state "Julienne McKay and David Campbell will revise existing safety policies for review and agreement by the committee". This implies that Julienne and David are a sub-committee formed by the committee, even though it is not explicitly stated, so we cannot disregard the safety report that has now been produced by that sub-committee.

Protocols
The March committee meeting minutes record under "Business Arising" a large swathe of information about how we would reply to the "Bushwalking Australia Inc. Insurance Underwriting Information Questionnaire" later this year after the proposed new safety procedures had been implemented. Rather bizarrely, the committee meeting was held on March 30th and the actual proposed new safety procedures document was not distributed until a month later on April 29th.

Even more bizarrely, the proposed new safety procedures document alluded to in the "Business Arising" insurance questionnaire at the beginning of the meeting was "commissioned" in General Business later in the meeting when Julienne and David were asked to revise our safety procedures.

It is therefore obvious that the procedures produced by the President's illegal sub-committee were used to answer the questionnaire mentioned in "Business Arising" at the committee meeting. Those procedures later gained legality by being produced after Julienne and David had been asked by the committee to review our safety procedures.

How convoluted is that!?

Also, the entire swathe of information about how we would reply to the "Bushwalking Australia Inc. Insurance Underwriting Information Questionnaire" later this year that appeared in Business Arising at the March committee meeting could actually be completely disregarded because there was no mention of the questionnaire, safety procedures or risk management at the previous committee meeting in October last year. The business arising mentioned at the March committee meeting actually arose from the February general meeting - and was therefore out of order.

Perhaps we should change our procedures to make it explicit that when we move that "the minutes of the previous meeting are a true and accurate record", at committee meetings we actually state that "the minutes of the previous committee meeting are a true and accurate record", and at general meetings we actually state that "the minutes of the previous general meeting are a true and accurate record".

Similarly, the March committee meeting minutes show that the next meeting will be the general meeting in June. They should actually refer to the next committee meeting in July.

Cheers,
Brett

P.S. My current status about whether or not I'm still a committee member is yet to be determined. I was talking to John Souter a couple of days ago about Rule 21 which says that if an office bearer is absent from three consecutive committee meetings without approval of the committee then the office is declared vacant, but he reasoned that it is only the office of Webmaster that is vacant and that technically it doesn't mean that the office bearer is removed from the committee as well. He figures that as we only have two ordinary members of the committee at the moment, I would become the third ordinary member of the committee ...

Cheers,
Brett