To the President, Board and Executive of the Gliding Federation of Australia
An open letter
18 October 2005
Dear sir
I am writing to you to express my dismay at the tone of the minutes of
the Board meeting held on 27 June 2005. These are available at
http://www.gfa.org.au/Docs/minutes/gfa_min050626.pdf
At that meeting, eleven resolutions passed at the Gliding Queensland
meeting in May were discussed. That discussion is reported in the minutes.
Unfortunately, at no time do the minutes reflect that the Board and
Executive felt concerned that the membership of one of the consitutuent
states of the Gliding Federation had serious issue with the running of
the national organisation. Indeed, the tone the minutes reflect is
belittling, hectoring, disparagement and nit picking. Every attempt was
made to justify the status quo and no attempt was made to try to explore
the reasons behind this fairly strong and unprecedented action taken by
and on behalf of a significant number of members of the GFA.
Even if the Queensland membership is wrong in each and every motion that
it submitted, they clearly do not believe so. They are still members and
as such deserve to be taken seriously and not treated in this
disgraceful and dismissive fashion. The Queensland membership did not
lightly put together the eleven motions. There was wide consideration of
them before the meeting and considerable discussion when the resolutions
were passed at the GQ AGM. The resolutions represent issues that greatly
concern a large number of members of the organisation that you govern.
The reply given to these issues in the minutes is a damning indictment
of the Board and Executive: if the membership of the GFA needs further
example of the arrogant way the Board and Executive views the membership
at large, they need only read the minutes of the June 2005 Board
meeting. That Queensland members are completely dissatisfied with the
the way their concerns were handled is unsurprising. The rift between
the Queensland members and the GFA Board and Executive is only wider as
a result of the lack of concern and consideration shown by the Board and
Executive.
How different the situation might now be if the GFA Board and Executive
had rather attempted to use the Queensland motions to search inwards, to
explore even the vaguest possibility that its actions and positions lay
behind the significant distrust of the GFA hierarchy apparent in the GQ
motions. From the minutes, it does not appear that there was one instant
of self doubt. The only concern reflected in the minutes is that of self
justification at the expense of the Queensland membership.
Shame on you all for your failure to grasp this nettle in any meaningful
way. With such leadership, the future of the governance of the sport we
all love remains seriously clouded.
I request that this letter be tabled at the next Board and Executive
meetings.
Robert Hart
Brisbane, Queensland
GFA Membership # 13701
--
Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
+61 (0)438 385 533 http://www.hart.wattle.id.au
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