Constitutional Review

[tiers 2,761]

Received the alternative view today. Very slick and professional but not much help for the club.

If they already have addresses and have sent out many thousands of brochures, then why do they need email addresses?

Enough is enough. I want some privacy.

[DistrACTION Jackson 6,388]

3 minutes ago, tiers said:

Received the alternative view today. Very slick and professional but not much help for the club.

If they already have addresses and have sent out many thousands of brochures, then why do they need email addresses?

Enough is enough. I want some privacy.

What is the general gist of his views?

[demon3165 1,908]

Had a read, going with current board, this while it looks like a meaningful attempt, is a waste of time and money for things that don't need to be included or changed, more like old fashion thinking here.

[Ugottobekidding 913]

1 hour ago, demon3165 said:

Had a read, going with current board, this while it looks like a meaningful attempt, is a waste of time and money for things that don't need to be included or changed, more like old fashion thinking here.

Seems like it is more inclusive than the boards attempt. 

[Cyclops 434]

4 minutes ago, Ugottobekidding said:

Seems like it is more inclusive than the boards attempt. 

Yes, why not have a look at it whilst we can! Both versions have been put together by "experts". Alternatively we can do it all again in a few years time.

[daisycutter 28,452]

4 minutes ago, Cyclops said:

Yes, why not have a look at it whilst we can! Both versions have been put together by "experts". Alternatively we can do it all again in a few years time.

the alternate one though is not up for a vote at the board meeting

[Cyclops 434]

2 hours ago, Ugottobekidding said:

Is the letter good? Are we in for a dee revolution. Don't like the current board.

I don't believe it is about the current board but about how they got there 

To my knowledge all current members were not initially voted onto the board by members but placed on the board until positions were advertised alongside those where the incumbents tenure had lapsed. On most occasions no further action was required.

[Cyclops 434]

3 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

the alternate one though is not up for a vote at the board meeting

It is a General Meeting not a Board Meeting. If a 75% yes vote is not reached then we can have a look at both versions...or more 

[daisycutter 28,452]

13 minutes ago, Cyclops said:

It is a General Meeting not a Board Meeting. If a 75% yes vote is not reached then we can have a look at both versions...or more 

there is currently no option to consider the alternate version, 75% vote or not

in short there is no alternate version officially

the only choice is to vote (yes/no) for the board version

[Graeme Yeats' Mullet 6,267]

15 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

there is currently no option to consider the alternate version, 75% vote or not

in short there is no alternate version officially

the only choice is to vote (yes/no) for the board version

Correct

It's the Board version or nothing at the moment

I like most of the board's proposed changes, but I dislike the key changes to Nominations processes

Before the Board chose to actively campaign against a candidate last election I was relatively disinterested in the whole topic, and probably would have remained so. But that series of events irked me, and the Board's proposal to impede similar candidacy and then reaction to further agitation has continued to raise questions for me

[Mel Bourne 3,596]

21 hours ago, Lord Nev said:

Rubbish.

Catch up on the 21st century and data privacy mate.

I can’t imagine what it would be like worrying about whether the wrong person obtained your email address. Wedding invitations sent by group email must be incredibly stressful. 

[Cyclops 434]

29 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

there is currently no option to consider the alternate version, 75% vote or not

in short there is no alternate version officially

the only choice is to vote (yes/no) for the board version

Correct.  If the current version is not accepted then a new one is drawn up and presented or you present the same one again for acceptance. There is no rush to accept a presentation that is not 100% acceptable.

[Spaghetti 264]

24 minutes ago, Cyclops said:

Correct.  If the current version is not accepted then a new one is drawn up and presented or you present the same one again for acceptance. There is no rush to accept a presentation that is not 100% acceptable.

Disagree with this completely. The club doesn’t have money or time to put constitutional changes to a vote every few months until it’s “100% acceptable”.

If the changes broadly improve things on balance, they should be approved. If people are aiming for perfection, they will get nothing.

[Cyclops 434]

5 minutes ago, Spaghetti said:

Disagree with this completely. The club doesn’t have money or time to put constitutional changes to a vote every few months until it’s “100% acceptable”.

If the changes broadly improve things on balance, they should be approved. If people are aiming for perfection, they will get nothing.

You have misunderstood me I believe. I did not say it had to be 100% but it needs to be the best we can have to suit the needs and be modern and durable.

The impetus behind the changes in the constitution, I believe, was the last two farcical representations of board elections and the rules that govern it. Can we at least get that right?

[Lord Nev 13,511]

51 minutes ago, Mel Bourne said:

I can’t imagine what it would be like worrying about whether the wrong person obtained your email address. Wedding invitations sent by group email must be incredibly stressful. 

And I can't imagine what it must be like to be a boomer with no comprehension of how important data is.

 

[Roger Mellie 3,483]

With the changes to the constitution, amongst other things, such as strong corporate governance and evolution with the times, I'm looking for an all encompassing sense of fairness. I'm just not seeing this in all the proposed changes.

I think it's thoroughly reasonable for members to scrutinise the club's proposal. I wouldn't mind comparing other club's constitutions to see where we sit in the scheme of things too.

[Its Time for Another 4,051]

This OC is a prime example of why I love Demonland so much. A great unfettered Democratic forum to respectfully express opinions and with the passion of a group of people who care about their Club. 

A couple of my opinions for what it's worth.

1. As a lawyer with some limited experience with Privacy law I just make the comment that under the terms of the Privacy policy the Club would face significant fines and the potential for individuals to sue them if they released our email addresses to Lawrence. End of story. Once he issued his proceedings the Club had no choice but to waste tens of thousands of our membership dollars on defending it. 

No doubt  to avoid the cost of further litigation the Club will probably agree to send out his manifesto thus getting around the breach of Privacy law. Personally I'm not happy about this precedent at all. It means because of Lawrence any Tom Dick and Harry can start doing this as they please when they're not happy with processes put in place by the Board that have been elected by the members. I don't know about anyone else but I don't want to start getting streams of emails from disgruntled individual members on whatever topic they chose when they're not happy with Board decisions which is what this precedent would create if that is what happens. 

I am very confident about one thing and that is as long as there are institutions and there are Boards or Committees you can be guaranteed there are always going to be some people who are going to be disgruntled. I've seen some staggering behaviour at Junior footy club level little own the big league. You have elections so members can democratically elect the people they are putting their faith in to run the institution. Not everyone is going to agree with them. Lawrence is acting like our Trump. He stood for election and a tiny amount of the 56,000 members voted for him. He is clearly someone who has a bone to grind with this Board. He submitted his suggestions as did a lot of us and they either accepted them or didn't. He can't accept that and here we are. 

As for Lawrence's amendments.

I strongly disagree with most of them and agree with two of them which I don't think justify his actions.

New Constitution

I agree that it makes sense to have created a new Constitution from scratch instead of just amending the old one. I don't think practically this makes any difference. He has not raised any material concerns with the vast majority of the existing constitution other than the couple of changes he wants. 

Twenty members for nomination

I can see both sides of this argument. I imagine the Board has selected 20 so someone wanting to nominate outside the Board's selection process has to make some effort and show that there is some measure of support other than two members, who as someone mentioned could be your dog and your two year old. 20 out of 66,000 doesn't seem outrageous. On the other hand I can see that for an individual without access to information on other members trying to find 20 might be onerous. I would have thought 10 would have been fairer. This could be raised at the Special Meeting and discussed there. I don't think this point  justifies what he has done. 

I strongly disagree with limiting Presidents to only one 3 year term. IMO they should have up to two terms and if that starts on the verge of their 9th year on the Board so be it. I think it's extremely important to have stability and 6 years is right for me for that purpose. As we saw last year if Presidents are problematic like Bartlett they can be voted out by the Board. If this Board didn't do that last year we would not have a Premiership or Coach. 

I don't agree with setting female quota's. I want the best people on the Board irrespective of gender or binary etc. I have no doubt that in due course the women's team is going to generate significant non male members and this will naturally lead to a greater representation of women on the Board as there will be much more women members and women's sporting and membership issues will become far more significant. I don't think it's necessary to set a quota for them. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Its Time for Another

[Mel Bourne 3,596]

57 minutes ago, Lord Nev said:

And I can't imagine what it must be like to be a boomer with no comprehension of how important data is.

 

Nev, how many screens do you go through smashing that facepalm emoji?

Your email address is very much out in the world already. Glance through your promotion/spam emails and look at the list of faceless entities who are in possession of it. Yes, it can open the door to potential phishing, but it’s up to you to guard your nest at that point (which is not that hard to guard if you’re halfway switched-on). 
 

Look, I’m not in favour of the club handing out email addresses, because it opens a potentially-irritating door of more people requesting them for all manner of dumb reasons. But the likelihood of a data-breach occurring from handing out a mailing-list is beyond low. 
 

Take it from a Gen-Xer, internet pioneer. 

[Lord Nev 13,511]

Just now, Mel Bourne said:

Nev, how many screens do you go through smashing that facepalm emoji?

Your email address is very much out in the world already. Glance through your promotion/spam emails and look at the list of faceless entities who are in possession of it. Yes, it can open the door to potential phishing, but it’s up to you to guard your nest at that point (which is not that hard to guard if you’re halfway switched-on). 
 

Look, I’m not in favour of the club handing out email addresses, because it opens a potentially-irritating door of more people requesting them for all manner of dumb reasons. But the likelihood of a data-breach occurring from handing out a mailing-list is beyond low. 
 

Take it from a Gen-Xer, internet pioneer. 

You would know then that there's huge differences between signing up to email lists, agreeing to terms where you provide your email or data, having unsubscribe and opt out options by law, how your data is stored etc and providing those details to a third party who you have not given permission to obtain.

I currently work as a senior member of a company that has a huge amount of data collection through apps, email distribution lists and even have to handle financial data, so I'm well aware of how these things operate and how much work it takes to protect data. Ask Optus or Medibank how serious it can be and how taking absolutely no risks is your safest option; rather than taking liberties with data you may deem to be a 'beyond low' risk because 'hey, what's the worst that could happen, right?'

I apologize for my earlier snarky response, it's not been a great week or two, but I'm not with you on this one. Personally I'm already appalled that our addresses are so easily accessible and surprised that, even in a member based organization, those details can so freely be provided.

[Cyclops 434]

2 hours ago, Its Time for Another said:

This OC is a prime example of why I love Demonland so much. A great unfettered Democratic forum to respectfully express opinions and with the passion of a group of people who care about their Club. 

A couple of my opinions for what it's worth.

1. As a lawyer with some limited experience with Privacy law I just make the comment that under the terms of the Privacy policy the Club would face significant fines and the potential for individuals to sue them if they released our email addresses to Lawrence. End of story. Once he issued his proceedings the Club had no choice but to waste tens of thousands of our membership dollars on defending it. 

No doubt  to avoid the cost of further litigation the Club will probably agree to send out his manifesto thus getting around the breach of Privacy law. Personally I'm not happy about this precedent at all. It means because of Lawrence any Tom Dick and Harry can start doing this as they please when they're not happy with processes put in place by the Board that have been elected by the members. I don't know about anyone else but I don't want to start getting streams of emails from disgruntled individual members on whatever topic they chose when they're not happy with Board decisions which is what this precedent would create if that is what happens. 

I am very confident about one thing and that is as long as there are institutions and there are Boards or Committees you can be guaranteed there are always going to be some people who are going to be disgruntled. I've seen some staggering behaviour at Junior footy club level little own the big league. You have elections so members can democratically elect the people they are putting their faith in to run the institution. Not everyone is going to agree with them. Lawrence is acting like our Trump. He stood for election and a tiny amount of the 56,000 members voted for him. He is clearly someone who has a bone to grind with this Board. He submitted his suggestions as did a lot of us and they either accepted them or didn't. He can't accept that and here we are. 

As for Lawrence's amendments.

I strongly disagree with most of them and agree with two of them which I don't think justify his actions.

New Constitution

I agree that it makes sense to have created a new Constitution from scratch instead of just amending the old one. I don't think practically this makes any difference. He has not raised any material concerns with the vast majority of the existing constitution other than the couple of changes he wants. 

Twenty members for nomination

I can see both sides of this argument. I imagine the Board has selected 20 so someone wanting to nominate outside the Board's selection process has to make some effort and show that there is some measure of support other than two members, who as someone mentioned could be your dog and your two year old. 20 out of 66,000 doesn't seem outrageous. On the other hand I can see that for an individual without access to information on other members trying to find 20 might be onerous. I would have thought 10 would have been fairer. This could be raised at the Special Meeting and discussed there. I don't think this point  justifies what he has done. 

I strongly disagree with limiting Presidents to only one 3 year term. IMO they should have up to two terms and if that starts on the verge of their 9th year on the Board so be it. I think it's extremely important to have stability and 6 years is right for me for that purpose. As we saw last year if Presidents are problematic like Bartlett they can be voted out by the Board. If this Board didn't do that last year we would not have a Premiership or Coach. 

I don't agree with setting female quota's. I want the best people on the Board irrespective of gender or binary etc. I have no doubt that in due course the women's team is going to generate significant non male members and this will naturally lead to a greater representation of women on the Board as there will be much more women members and women's sporting and membership issues will become far more significant. I don't think it's necessary to set a quota for them. 

Thank you for your well worded opinion. Just a couple of things if I may.

The names addresses of members can be made available to members should a legitimate case be made to the club. Obviously such a case has been made and members are receiving snail mail. Is an email address classed as an address? That is the question before the court. My opinion is that neither the judge, the club or Mr Lawrence want to create a precedent regarding the disclosure of email addresses and the club will send the literature.

Democratic elections? A system for choosing and replacing a board through free and fair elections. A system to encourage active participation of members. Hardly fair when candidates cannot contact members but the President writes to  members with the purpose of standing behind some candidates. Like the Governor General endorsing a political party.  

Your small amount of votes gained by Mr Lawrence in the last two elections was indeed 27% in 2021 and I think around 22% in the last one.

The number of memberships sold does not equal the number of people who have memberships.

Additional females on the board, I believe, secures additional State funding. I also would like to see us take on the best available people.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Cyclops
Spelling

[Its Time for Another 4,051]

1 hour ago, Cyclops said:

Is an email address classed as an address? That is the question before the court....My opinion is that neither the judge, the club or Mr Lawrence want to create a precedent regarding the disclosure of email addresses and the club will send the literature.

Hardly fair when candidates cannot contact members but the President writes to  members with the purpose of standing behind some candidates. Like the Governor General endorsing a political party.  

Your small amount of votes gained by Mr Lawrence in the last two elections was indeed 27% in 2021 and I think around 22% in the last one.

Whatever you think the semantics are the Club was legally obliged not to guess but to spend tens of thousands defending it. Clearly as soon as emails go out a precedent has been created and that is what Mr Lawrence is creating by his action.  

As you know it's not true that candidates can't contact members. All candidates statements are sent out to members as part of the election process. I don't have a problem with the President promoting candidates they know have passed through a rigorous vetting process and offer skills that the Board assesses it needs rather than candidates that won't provide that. 

Not sure what your point is about Mr Lawrence's 22%, if that's what it was. He put his case and got flogged in the election. From memory I looked at his credentials and didn't think he offered anything that would have made me vote for him over the other candidates. He can still put his case at the meeting and try to stop the amendments going through but I hope and pray most of his amendments don't get up for the reasons previously stated. 

[Its Time for Another 4,051]

3 hours ago, Lord Nev said:

so I'm well aware of how these things operate and how much work it takes to protect data. Ask Optus or Medibank how serious it can be and how taking absolutely no risks is your safest option; rather than taking liberties with data you may deem to be a 'beyond low' risk because 'hey, what's the worst that could happen, right?'

Personally I'm already appalled that our addresses are so easily accessible and surprised that, even in a member based organization, those details can so freely be provided.

Agree with these comments. The last two weeks have very clearly shown how vulnerable our data is and how hard it is to protect it. What steps has Mr Lawrence taken to protect the information he's already been given. Cyber security requires quite a level of expertise and investment. He's now very much in the public domain and open to being a target for hackers. I hope the Club has made sure he is able to protect my details that have already been released to him. I would have expected any contact coming to me through my private details that I give to the Club to come from the Club not some random disgruntled member. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Its Time for Another

[Ugottobekidding 913]

14 hours ago, Sideshow Bob said:

Got my snail mail propaganda. Have read through it and nominated a proxy…… The current president And will voted for the prezs reforms.

really not appreciative of all this data transference he wants!!

Ha, I did the opposite 

[Ugottobekidding 913]

5 hours ago, Its Time for Another said:

Agree with these comments. The last two weeks have very clearly shown how vulnerable our data is and how hard it is to protect it. What steps has Mr Lawrence taken to protect the information he's already been given. Cyber security requires quite a level of expertise and investment. He's now very much in the public domain and open to being a target for hackers. I hope the Club has made sure he is able to protect my details that have already been released to him. I would have expected any contact coming to me through my private details that I give to the Club to come from the Club not some random disgruntled member. 

Your data is given to sponsors 

[Ugottobekidding 913]

On 10/20/2022 at 12:30 AM, DeeSpencer said:

In practical terms:

Kate Roffey joined the board in 2013, 9 years ago. If she was a regular board member it would be time for her to wind it up. Seems about right.

But after 8 years of solid service on the board she’s only been President for 1 year, it would be crazy to finish her up now. Makes perfect sense that she stays for up to 2 more terms in the top job. If she’s done well she’ll have served 7 years in the top job which is probably the perfect amount of time to make a difference then hand over. 

So it's about her trying to grab a bit longer in power.