10.40PM: A past chair of the NZ AIDS Foundation and HIV treatments activist says he is shocked and saddened at the situation the NZAF Board has got into, given the publicised expertise of its members. Jonathan Smith was commenting on the Board's announcement late this afternoon that all its members will remain at the helm of the NZAF despite calls for resignations, concerns about Maori and HIV positive member quota proposal back flips, and the impugning of the organisation by its just-resigned chair. He says the situation is “shocking, because when I look at the GayNZ.com-published profiles of the board members and the amount of expertise and skills and experience there I am really shocked that these people would actually allow themselves to get into this position.” Commenting from Spain where he now lives in order to access HIV treatment from the British health system, Smith says he also feels “sadness that so much of the good work that has been done by the AIDS Foundation is being totally undermined. [The board members] seem to have missed some of the real major issues affecting positive people at the moment, such as treatments, the rights of HIV positive people, and the huge increase in HIV/AIDS cases. Those things are being put on the board's back burner because of all this commotion. I think this is going to distract the Foundation for at least six months while they sort it all out. Should the board have resigned? Prior to today's board meeting, Smith says, he believed that they should not have resigned. “But now since the meeting, reading the GayNZ.com reports and the board members' profiles, I believe the board should go into a stand-down mode. Then a caretaker board consisting of experienced past board members should be brought in. They should then consult with the Foundation membership and get their advice on whether or not to reappoint this board.” Smith is more blunt about just-resigned chair Clive Aspin, who remains a board member after today's meeting despite referring to mounting Foundation (as opposed to board) members' opposition to the board's proposed 50% Maori quota for NZAF board members as an example of the racism that exists in New Zealand society towards Takataapui. His comments were made in an academic paper entitled The Place of Takataapui Identity Within Maori Society, authored by Aspin in his capacity as a University of Auckland researcher, and presented by him at a recent international conference on sexual identity in Mexico. Aspin has also misleadingly represented material posted on GayNZ.com to reinforce his ‘racism' findings. "Clive Aspin should resign, totally. If you look at Clive's experience and his role at the University of Auckland, Clive knows better." Past-chair Smith believes it is the job of the chairperson to represent the Foundation positively in public and believes Aspin would be “totally aware that as chairman of the AIDS Foundation that no matter where you are, what you are saying, you are always wearing the AIDS Foundation chair's hat. That never changes. He adds that “as a positive person and a life member of the Foundation do not feel comfortable having someone on the board who thinks I am a racist” because of opposition to quotas which have been tried and failed to be workable in the past.