By David
Murray Coulter has finally gone. Swimming New Zealand became a better place. Is his resignation enough? Not nearly. The crisis that has affected the sport is a crisis with the entire Board and with Jan Cameron and Mike Byrne. Coulter has been thrown out in the hope that the others can save their jobs. However the disastrous management that resulted in the Ineson Report and brought us to this place was not caused by Coulter alone. It is the Swimming New Zealand Board who acted shamefully. It is Cameron and Byrne who have let us down.
If any readers have doubts about the collective responsibility of this Board, they only need to read the first public utterance of the new Board under the direction of acting Chairman Butler. This is contained in an open letter to all members posted on Swimming New Zealand’s website and attached at the conclusion of this story.
It is the meanest, most classless, bitter and nasty document I think I have ever read. If ever there was proof positive that Butler and his Board need to follow Coulter into the wilderness this first effort at communication does the trick perfectly. There is no attempt at reconciliation, no class, no breeding. This is not a Board communicating with its shareholders. This is an ill-mannered rant from an arrogant group of autocrats. Butler may have taken over but, if this document is to be believed, things have just got worse.
It is none of my business, but The Coalition’s original goal of establishing a new mandate with a new Board has not been satisfied by Coulter’s departure. The original call was for the entire Board to resign and for a new Board to be elected. When that is done and Byrne and Cameron have carried their brown boxes out of the building for the last time, then we can get on with the business of supporting the leaders of this sport.
I am not surprised that a Butler lead Board acts no differently from the Coulter version. Butler is the guy who, at a meeting in Nelson recently, publically threatened to damage the reputations of those who questioned his divine right to rule. So what is it about the Butler Board communication that is so offensive? I suggest you read it in order to understand its full and bitter contents. Here, though, are a few highlights.
In relation to Project Vanguard the Butler Board says, “Challenging the process and procedural aspects of the initiative is destructive and unhelpful.” A more common way of saying that is, “The end justifies the means.” The Regions, Mr. Butler hold the rule of law to be pretty important. You may put it into the category of “destructive and unhelpful” – which is why you should never have anything to do with this sport again. It is hard to imagine any Board putting its name to a document that says the rules of the organization don’t matter. The two SPARC representatives should be ashamed of themselves.
In relation to the high performance program the Butler Board reports that they, “acknowledge that there have been issues in aspects of the High Performance programme. At the same time there have been some considerable successes.” Clearly the Butler Board is unaware that after spending $16 million over ten years no New Zealander has won a medal at a world Championship or Olympic swimming event. Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance program has been a failure. I can think of five or six New Zealand swimmers who in another environment would have won Olympic medals. Jan Cameron, Mike Byrne and the Swimming New Zealand Board let these athletes down. And that is a considerable failure.
Referring to the Board’s communication with the Regions the new Butler Board says their values are, “in keeping with the SNZ values of being open and transparent.” I guess they must be referring to the Sweetenham Report that they sat on for three years until Swimwatch obtained a copy via the Official Information Act. Or perhaps Butler means the next sentence in this report that says, “The board is concerned by the number of clubs within the coalition regions that state they had no awareness of their region’s involvement in this request.” In the interests of being open and transparent I would imagine all the Clubs reporting their concern would be included on the Swimming New Zealand website. But alas there is only one; North Shore Swimming headed by the Clayton’s Dr. Phil.
And still this Board continue to threaten their owner Regions. Butler’s Board says, “A lack of confidence by SPARC in the stability of our governance will also affect the confidence of trusts and other funders and sponsors across the whole sport (including clubs and regions).” This Board should realize by now that the money threat does not work. The Coalition of Regions believes good governance requires that this Board be replaced. Coulter was forever using the money threat. Byrne told my friends in Hamilton the same thing. Butler will find he has no more success. As I read the situation, The Coalition of Regions is not afraid of Butlers attempt at financial intimidation. The Coalition is set firm on reform. They know that eventually funders too will see the justice of doing the right thing.
The new Butler Board then complain about Auckland’s membership numbers. They say, “For example, this has allowed the Auckland region to register approximately 3500 learn to swim members, mostly children, through a single club.” Why they refer to children, I have no idea. Is there something wrong with children? Anyway the complaint is the ultimate dishonesty. For years Regions have been registering learn to swim members. Even this year there are 7138 learn to swim registrations. Half of these come from Regions other than Auckland. The number of registrations only became a problem for Butler’s new Board when Auckland’s improved voting power joined The Coalition of Regions. And all this complaining is from the Board and Chairman who said at the beginning of his memo that, “challenging the process and procedural aspects of the initiative is destructive and unhelpful.” It seems that the Butler Board’s definition of “destructive and unhelpful” is ruled solely by expediency.
And finally the pièce de résistance. Butler’s Board says, “The AGM is now just over 3 weeks away and 10 remits have been submitted with the clear purpose of hobbling the board in its governance obligations. We are unaware of any national governance organisation that operates in this way. This begins to suggest that our sport is rapidly becoming ungovernable.” Now, I have not researched this fully. However the truth is that most of the new remits are based on rules that are normal in dozens of other sports. Providing for the removal of rogue directors, limiting the term of directors and setting time limits on the provision of information and registering constitutional changes are in many – no, that’s wrong – are in the constitutions of most national sporting bodies. Just like the Coulter Board before them, the Butler Board just make it up as they go along.
Here is the Butler Board report. See what you think.
