10.30AM: Submissions made by AIDS Foundation members over the embattled Board's dropped proposals to mandate 50% Maori representation at board level earlier this year will not be made public before this month's AGM. Board chair Simon Robb cites “operational issues” for holding back on the release of the submissions, and believes issues raised by members over the Foundation's Constitution should be kept separate from the issues being raised by members at the AGM, which include two remits calling for the entire Board to resign over their handling of the proposals. “This needs to be dealt with in a deliberate way in terms of a process,” he says. “I've always seen them [the submissions] as being an issue to do with how we best go and consult on the Constitution moving forward, and it's always been framed in that way. For us now to frame it as being material to the AGM is quite different to how we've managed it to date.” However, the two remits calling for the board's resignation stem directly from their handling of the constitutional change proposals, drafted from the board's interpretation of the Foundation's Treaty of Waitangi commitments. One of the remits, from Phil Parkinson, calls for all Treaty references to be removed from the NZAF Constitution and replaced instead with a commitment to takatapui-targeted health programmes. The second, from Calum Bennachie, takes exception to former board chair Clive Aspin suggesting at an international conference in July that opposition to the 50% Maori proposals were racist, and that the NZAF was an unsafe place for takatapui. Robb said in July that Aspin's comments, made while Aspin was chair, were “unhelpful”, but the board felt Aspin's contribution to the board outweighed any potential fallout from the comments made in the paper, which it felt could be interpreted in a number of ways. Aspin eventually resigned from the board four weeks later, having already stepped down as chair. Robb told GayNZ.com last week that he didn't know how much support there was amongst members for at least one of the remits, but now admits that many of the submissions the board has received are similar in tone to the Bennachie and Parkinson remits. “Given Calum and Phil's views have been clearly communicated through the remit and associated documentation, I think that people get a flavour for what the submissions are all about anyway,” he says. “It's not about me not wanting to make them available. It's more about time and process.” The board has not yet decided in what form the submissions will be released subsequent to the November 19 AGM. Robb says he is “very open about putting in a process to make the content of the submissions available”, but it is possible the submissions themselves may never see the light of day in public. The board has discussed reading the submissions and creating a “summary of themes” document instead.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Friday, 4th November 2005 - 12:00pm