Constitutional Review

[Graeme Yeats' Mullet 6,772]

4 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

No it’s not, and this is my precise point. Deemocracy present themselves and their proposed constitution as an alternative but this is not a vote between alternatives. This is a yes/no vote for what the Club is proposing and if you vote no, we get nothing. We don’t necessarily get anything, let alone everything, Deemocracy is asking for (although if the vote fails you would imagine at least something Deemocracy is seeking would ultimately make it in).

I agree with you on some/most of this, not sure how you see me differently

The alternative is materially pointless, except to highlight their view of what they see as deficiencies in the Board's proposal and promote a debate, raise awareness, and ask members to vote Against 

I've clearly agreed above, it's FOR or AGAINST, the Board's proposal

[Mach5 4,767]

It really is a great shame that the board is so insular and has gone to such great lengths to stifle a different voice, such that we now have this as the result.

A board that continues to achieve so little progress. Their great achievement is maintaining the status quo.

It saddens me.

 

[1964_2 2,357]

18 hours ago, Jontee said:

So if the No vote succeeds we have gone through all this kerfuffle and $$$$$ for nothing.  Voting No doesn't get the No constitution up.  And I can go back to calling Kate Roffey Chairman?

This is so far from our core business of kicking it through the big sticks and will not do anything to improve our accuracy in front of goal.

 

Unless it’s the finer detail of the constitution running through Max’ mind when he is lining up for goal? 
 

[Demon17 5,186]

1 hour ago, Mach5 said:

It really is a great shame that the board is so insular and has gone to such great lengths to stifle a different voice, such that we now have this as the result.

A board that c achieve so little progress continues to. Their great achievement is maintaining the status quo.

It saddens me.

 

Debt free

$10M in cash and off AFL lifeline

Out of Gambling

65000+ members

Senior coaching support (note c.f Saints for example) and outcomes.

Premiership

Ongoing Top 4 window potential

Central Australia indigenous relationships

Female President.

This is a 'status quo' I like, compared to what I was watching since 1968.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Demon17
spelling mistakes

[drysdale demon 4,830]

I don't give a rat's how insular they as long as it never returns to the pathetic, useless , embarrassing and destabilized boards prior to 2013.

[Roger Mellie 3,981]

This has been unashamedly pilfered from 'Johnny Karate' from Big Footy, with thanks:

We have clearly been the most innovative club in the past 30 years…

Ian Ridley wanted us to merge with Hawthorn which really united the club.

Joseph Gutnick made us play an extraordinary amount of marquee Sunday games to fit in with the Sabbath. This was a real commercial boon for the club.

Gabriel Szondy and the KPMG crew took over with the innovative fiscal responsibility route where we somehow ended up millions in debt.

The Paul Gardner board attempted to solve this by attracting Chinese investment and surreptitiously dumping our Demon logo. They also made the erudite decision to offer Chris Connolly the footy manager role as a consolation prize for missing out on the head coaching gig.

Jim Stynes’ board hired Cameron Schwab. Wiped the debt and then got it back. Were somehow so devoid of talent that a man who was recovering from brain surgery was deemed the only person able to step in as Football Director. Hired Mark Neeld and extended Schwab’s contract after we were belted by 186 points.

Glen Bartlett stated we would be bigger than the New York Yankees. Froze out Peter Jackson from choosing his own successor. White anted his own coach, was fired from his own board and has been feeding Mick Warner talking points ever since.

Kate Roffey still hasn’t settled the home base issue, despite her State Government contacts. Has appeared in the media a billion times claiming credit for the premiership. Now her board wants to change the club constitution to further entrench their positions.

[chookrat 4,247]

23 hours ago, Cyclops said:

I fail to see the key here. Names and postal addresses were given to Deemocracy by MFC as a legal right through a corporate law.

Email addresses were given to Deemocracy as a court order. 

There is no key or link between the two sets of data that I can see.  I would think you would need some link field such as member number to  combine the data.

Deemocracy has plan that has been actioned rather quickly.

If it was a game then the score would be :

Deemocracy 2 goals

MFC yet to score.

Cyclops, I don't know if the data provided to Deemocracy includes a key linking both sets of data, or whether they have simply added email addresses to the original list. In any case the postal address would likely include the person's name and in most cases email addresses and names would be similar and relatively easy to match.

Re if this were a game, while I get that Peter Lawrence wants to be on the Board, his challenge re the Constitution takes out Boards attention away from football, our facilities and growing our membership, costs money in legal fees that could be better spent on our footy program or facilities, and creates disunity while we are in the best position we have been on and off the field for more than 50 years.

While his version of the constitution may be better the proposed changes are sensible and address the matters of substance. I'd get that if the club were proposing changes that reduce transparency and accountability then Deemocracy's approach might be warranted, but he has picked a big argument over a set of relatively minor concerns. I also back that the Board has stood it's ground as they cannot have a powerful member second guessing every decision and threatening legal action if they don't get their way.

[Lord Nev 13,512]

3 hours ago, Mach5 said:

Their great achievement is

[old55 23,396]

9 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

No it’s not, and this is my precise point. Deemocracy present themselves and their proposed constitution as an alternative but this is not a vote between alternatives. This is a yes/no vote for what the Club is proposing and if you vote no, we get nothing. We don’t necessarily get anything, let alone everything, Deemocracy is asking for (although if the vote fails you would imagine at least something Deemocracy is seeking would ultimately make it in).

I agree Titan, it is a yes/no vote, but I think it's a positive move to include an alternative rather than just criticise the proposal.

[titan_uranus 24,974]

4 hours ago, Graeme Yeats' Mullet said:

I agree with you on some/most of this, not sure how you see me differently

The alternative is materially pointless, except to highlight their view of what they see as deficiencies in the Board's proposal and promote a debate, raise awareness, and ask members to vote Against 

I've clearly agreed above, it's FOR or AGAINST, the Board's proposal

I was commenting on your analogy of the vote being like an election, which it isn’t. 

28 minutes ago, old55 said:

I agree Titan, it is a yes/no vote, but I think it's a positive move to include an alternative rather than just criticise the proposal.

I agree with that. It’s the right way to go about it. I consider some aspects of the Deemocracy website to be misleading but the provision of an alternative constitution lends a lot of credibility to their arguments. 

[Cyclops 504]

2 hours ago, chookrat said:

Cyclops, I don't know if the data provided to Deemocracy includes a key linking both sets of data, or whether they have simply added email addresses to the original list. In any case the postal address would likely include the person's name and in most cases email addresses and names would be similar and relatively easy to match.

Re if this were a game, while I get that Peter Lawrence wants to be on the Board, his challenge re the Constitution takes out Boards attention away from football, our facilities and growing our membership, costs money in legal fees that could be better spent on our footy program or facilities, and creates disunity while we are in the best position we have been on and off the field for more than 50 years.

While his version of the constitution may be better the proposed changes are sensible and address the matters of substance. I'd get that if the club were proposing changes that reduce transparency and accountability then Deemocracy's approach might be warranted, but he has picked a big argument over a set of relatively minor concerns. I also back that the Board has stood it's ground as they cannot have a powerful member second guessing every decision and threatening legal action if they don't get their way.

Thank you Chookrat for your reply and whilst I agree with most of what you say I may see things a little differently.

Email addresses may be similar or the same as peoples names but the invitation to exploit that will always be there.

I see that Mr Lawrence's nomination for board membership and his obvious want of a strong constitution to be different entities.

The only argument I can see is whether the new constitution proposed by the MFC should be carried or not.

Legal fees could have been saved on both sides of the debate.

Whilst you see Mr Lawrence as a "powerful'" member I see him as a single member asking other "single members" to vote down a proposed change to their clubs constitution using the same rights they have as members.

[mauriesy 7,261]

4 hours ago, Demon17 said:

Debt free
$10M in cash and off AFL lifeline
Out of Gambling
65000+ members
Senior coaching support (note c.f Saints for example) and outcomes.
Premiership
Ongoing Top 4 window potential
Central Australia indigenous relationships
Female President.

This is a 'status quo' I like, compared to what I was watching since 1968.

These are all good. But that still doesn't mean we give the board carte blanche to do anything. It all depends on the road they are going to travel from here.

[Demon17 5,186]

33 minutes ago, mauriesy said:

These are all good. But that still doesn't mean we give the board carte blanche to do anything. It all depends on the road they are going to travel from here.

Completely agree wityh you Maurisey, but my comments were specifcally addressing the quote below in another post....

" ....A board that  achieved so little progress continues to. Their great achievement is maintaining the status quo......"

Its good we don't re-write history necessarily.  Current Board, mostly, and significant others like Peter Jackson and Paul Roos etc also own the current position the club finds itself in and had a major hand in most of the achievments since 2013.

[tiers 2,829]

For once we are in a good position - stable board, well coached, strong list, financially secure and well managed.

Constitutional review seeks to enhance our enviable position as a strong, well managed club. Are all the changes of equal worth? Perhaps not but none would adversely impact on our club.

So let's not get too hung up on the constitution but instead let's focus on on good thoughts such as where Angus will play, how Maxie and Grundy will combine, how to fit Hunter and Schache into the team and how to ease the load on Clarrie and Tracca so they can be more damaging.

GO DEES

Edited October 25, 2022 by tiers
Better expression

[Graeme Yeats' Mullet 6,772]

5 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

was commenting on your analogy of the vote being like an election, which it isn’t. 

I didn't say that

I said the tactic of putting an alternative proposal for amendments forward (by Deemocracy) was like an Opposition party putting forward alternative policy ideas  -  they do this for the whole time they are in Opposition (nothing to do with election time) even though the Parliament will never vote on the policies

[titan_uranus 24,974]

12 minutes ago, Graeme Yeats' Mullet said:

I didn't say that

I said the tactic of putting an alternative proposal for amendments forward (by Deemocracy) was like an Opposition party putting forward alternative policy ideas  -  they do this for the whole time they are in Opposition (nothing to do with election time) even though the Parliament will never vote on the policies

Right, sorry. With it being election time now I inferred that into your post. You didn’t say that. 

There’s still a big difference between what opposition parties say mid-term and this situation - in ours, there is a vote. For the opposition, the public isn’t voting on anything. 

[bing181 9,193]

Voted yes by proxy.

Down the road I wouldn't be surprised to see the AFL step in to ensure more stringent protection of members' emails. Sharing emails to private individuals - and with zero protections -  should never have happened under any circumstances.

[demoniac 1,330]

25 minutes ago, bing181 said:

Voted yes by proxy.

Down the road I wouldn't be surprised to see the AFL step in to ensure more stringent protection of members' emails. Sharing emails to private individuals - and with zero protections -  should never have happened under any circumstances.

Corporations Law would have to change.

[Graeme Yeats' Mullet 6,772]

1 hour ago, titan_uranus said:

Right, sorry. With it being election time now I inferred that into your post. You didn’t say that. 

There’s still a big difference between what opposition parties say mid-term and this situation - in ours, there is a vote. For the opposition, the public isn’t voting on anything. 

Sure

But the premise of the post was the structure of Deemocracy alternative proposal was "cleverly concealing" something

I was simply pointing out that putting forward an alternative is a legitimate way of promoting debate - better than simply [censored] canning ideas and offering nothing

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Graeme Yeats' Mullet

[Its Time for Another 4,194]

On 10/23/2022 at 5:33 PM, Dr. Gonzo said:

Some people are being overly precious and I find it all quite hilarious. Getting your knickers in a twist because someone sent you an email, oh lord how will we sleep tonight?!

Dr G normally love your work. But this is not your finest. I'll tell you a cautionary tale. I got my email address hacked a couple of years ago. The hackers used my email address to send out automated emails to 30,000 plus addresses every hour all over the world. This lead to my email address being registered on international registries as a spam address and being permanently blocked. That leads to it being rejected everywhere and everyone of those emails that goes out generates a detailed anti spam warning back to your email system. It literally means you're getting up to 100,000 email rejection notices per day. And it's impossible to stop. It goes on for weeks. This jammed our work email system and caused it to shut down so the entire business lost it's emails for some days. I was forced to quarantine and shutdown my email address. Have a think about how many places you use your email address. All had to be scraped and started again. I can't begin to tell you how many hours were lost over many many days for me and our whole business. Plus it damaged our corporate and personal credibility with people getting hundreds of these emails. They don't care it's from a hacker not you. You might think that's hilarious but I can assure you my business and I didn't. 

We've just seen the devastating impact of hackers getting hold of people's information at Optus and Medibank. It's turning into 10's if not 100's of millions of dollars of damages. Both these companies had excellent cyber security. This joker has got front page publicity in national newspapers about getting all our personal data and how unhappy a lot of members are about it. What cyber security do you think he has to stop the scenario above from happening especially as he has made himself a target with his publicity.  I have contacted them twice asking for their details so I can contact them and to find out what cyber security steps they are taking to protect our data. I have not had the basic courtesy of a reply on either topic. I am extremely concerned about this. 

Don't be fooled by this bloke and his faceless group. They might claim Democracy, transparency and accountability but they practice the opposite. They won't even tell you who they are, how many of them there are or their details so we can contact them. But they have litigated to get that information from all of us. If there were enough to be relevant they would have said so. I'd be very confident it's just a couple of people he's drummed up. A couple probably called Fido and Daffy.  

This is not an election. It's not a campaign with a couple of policies, it's a Constitution with hundreds of paragraphs and he wants to change them all. Do we get hundreds and hundreds of emails from all members voicing their opinions about what they want or don't want on each paragraph of his new Constitution. I could have done that. So could have other people I know who submitted suggestions that didn't make it. How do you go about doing this practically. You are never going to get everyone agreeing to the same thing. I accepted the process the Board set up with a Committee of experienced qualified people. We all got the opportunity to respond to changes that were sent through to us. If this gets stopped whats next. I don't agree with virtually all his amendments. Some I strongly disagree with. So what negotiations are going to go on. How do we ever move forward. I find most of the proposed amendments important and necessary.  

When you go on to his email which is supposed to be about responding to the Constitution you find content referring to Bartlett's legal actions as some sort of blight on the Board members he is suing. In my opinion that is a dirty political smear campaign which has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution but everything to do with his naked ambition to get elected after he's been rejected twice.

I urge people to get out there and send in their Proxy's to vote Yes. And to be clear I've got no ambitions to get on the Board. I have had no contact with anyone on the Board or the Admin about this process other than sending in my suggestion. My only agenda is having the Club in a position to do it's best work. I believe a stable Board is essential for that and this bloke is actively working to do the opposite. I'm appalled he's got my private details and won't tell me who his group is or what he's doing to protect my details. This bloke and group need to be kept as far away from our Club as we can get him.  

Edited October 25, 2022 by Its Time for Another

[Ugottobekidding 1,181]

30 minutes ago, Its Time for Another said:

Dr G normally love your work. But this is not your finest. I'll tell you a cautionary tale. I got my email address hacked a couple of years ago. The hackers used my email address to send out automated emails to 30,000 plus addresses every hour all over the world. This lead to my email address being registered on international registries as a spam address and being permanently blocked. That leads to it being rejected everywhere and everyone of those emails that goes out generates a detailed anti spam warning back to your email system. It literally means you're getting up to 100,000 email rejection notices per day. And it's impossible to stop. It goes on for weeks. This jammed our work email system and caused it to shut down so the entire business lost it's emails for some days. I was forced to quarantine and shutdown my email address. Have a think about how many places you use your email address. All had to be scraped and started again. I can't begin to tell you how many hours were lost over many many days for me and our whole business. Plus it damaged our corporate and personal credibility with people getting hundreds of these emails. They don't care it's from a hacker not you. You might think that's hilarious but I can assure you my business and I didn't. 

We've just seen the devastating impact of hackers getting hold of people's information at Optus and Medibank. It's turning into 10's if not 100's of millions of dollars of damages. Both these companies had excellent cyber security. This joker has got front page publicity in national newspapers about getting all our personal data and how unhappy a lot of members are about it. What cyber security do you think he has to stop the scenario above from happening especially as he has made himself a target with his publicity.  I have contacted them twice asking for their details so I can contact them and to find out what cyber security steps they are taking to protect our data. I have not had the basic courtesy of a reply on either topic. I am extremely concerned about this. 

Don't be fooled by this bloke and his faceless group. They might claim Democracy, transparency and accountability but they practice the opposite. They won't even tell you who they are, how many of them there are or their details so we can contact them. But they have litigated to get that information from all of us. If there were enough to be relevant they would have said so. I'd be very confident it's just a couple of people he's drummed up. A couple probably called Fido and Daffy.  

This is not an election. It's not a campaign with a couple of policies, it's a Constitution with hundreds of paragraphs and he wants to change them all. Do we get hundreds and hundreds of emails from all members voicing their opinions about what they want or don't want on each paragraph of his new Constitution. I could have done that. So could have other people I know who submitted suggestions that didn't make it. How do you go about doing this practically. You are never going to get everyone agreeing to the same thing. I accepted the process the Board set up with a Committee of experienced qualified people. We all got the opportunity to respond to changes that were sent through to us. If this gets stopped whats next. I don't agree with virtually all his amendments. Some I strongly disagree with. So what negotiations are going to go on. How do we ever move forward. I find most of the proposed amendments important and necessary.  

When you go on to his email which is supposed to be about responding to the Constitution you find content referring to Bartlett's legal actions as some sort of blight on the Board members he is suing. In my opinion that is a dirty political smear campaign which has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution but everything to do with his naked ambition to get elected after he's been rejected twice.

I urge people to get out there and send in their Proxy's to vote Yes. And to be clear I've got no ambitions to get on the Board. I have had no contact with anyone on the Board or the Admin about this process other than sending in my suggestion. My only agenda is having the Club in a position to do it's best work. I believe a stable Board is essential for that and this bloke is actively working to do the opposite. I'm appalled he's got my private details and won't tell me who his group is or what he's doing to protect my details. This bloke and group need to be kept as far away from our Club as we can get him.  

I think you just downloaded a virus.

[Palace Dees 2,275]

11 hours ago, Demon17 said:

Debt free

$10M in cash and off AFL lifeline

Out of Gambling

65000+ members

Senior coaching support (note c.f Saints for example) and outcomes.

Premiership

Ongoing Top 4 window potential

Central Australia indigenous relationships

Female President.

This is a 'status quo' I like, compared to what I was watching since 1968.

[Clintosaurus 7,838]

Deemocracy envelope arrived today. What a waste of postage and printing.

[Its Time for Another 4,194]

1 hour ago, Ugottobekidding said:

I think you just downloaded a virus.

Nah. Caught one. From someone I never wanted to have contact with 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Its Time for Another said:

I urge people to get out there and send in their Proxy's to vote Yes. And to be clear I've got no ambitions to get on the Board. I have had no contact with anyone on the Board or the Admin about this process other than sending in my suggestion. My only agenda is having the Club in a position to do it's best work. I believe a stable Board is essential for that and this bloke is actively working to do the opposite. I'm appalled he's got my private details and won't tell me who his group is or what he's doing to protect my details. This bloke and group need to be kept as far away from our Club as we can get him.  

This entire post is extremely well-written and makes a lot sense. The only negative is that you posted it only one hour ago. The deadline for nominating a proxy was 5pm today. Considering the No vote needs to make up only 25% of all votes in order to “win” this would’ve been absolutely invaluable had you posted it before the deadline.