The Big Richo said:
My concern is that Peggy and co have artfully created an environment where democracy and accountability are considered disruptive and anyone who dissents is dismissed as a Judas.
The Focus on Football was a classic example. Putting aside the fact that they were not even slightly media savvy and embarrassed themselves with their launch, what you had was a group of capable, professional people who were exercising their right as members to participate in the democratic process.
Essentially they said the football game style was unclear and needed changing (correct), football management was poor and needed changing (correct), recruiting was hit and miss and needed to be better (correct) and we were underachieving and should be producing better football results (correct and still is).
Not too much wrong with any of that yet their emergence was greeted with an indignant response, not based on issues but based on their right to exist.
Stability was the word Peggy used over and over again.
Instability and change equals chaos she kept spouting, when the reality was the challengers were just pushing sensible solutions to problems everyone could see.
The stability obsession is set in stone now but the thing about stability is it is only useful when the results are positive.
Agreed.
My major gripe was (is) the corruption of the process.
The example of Simon Wallace is what I object to most.
Wallace set up a 20 page website to publish his concerns.
He was asked (and agreed) to take take down this website until the club had rewritten its election rules to deal with electronic publicity that was not in place prior.
The By-laws that the club drafted were and are unworkable. An example is that The club name and logo could not be used nor any suggestion that the club favored a candidate.
One of the incumbent directors then set up their own website ignoring these rules (photo holding a club jumper with the president in the change rooms) which she had helped to write as a member of the club governance committee.
The club also put articles supporting the incumbents on their website and, in Dunne's case, on the AFL website and linked these to the voting site.
Neither of the challengers was given this assistance.
Despite all this, Simon came very close to being elected.
As I said, the processes were corrupted so the result was as well.
