GRAINGROWERS Limited northern region director election candidates and NSW growers, REBECCA REARDON, Moree, and XAVIER MARTIN, Mullaley, say the GGL must review its board election process after the recent election was ultimately determined by proxies.
OPINION: IN any industry organisation, members should be the ones empowered to choose who represents them and subsequently use that mandate to lead their industry forward.
And those leaders need to drive good process and systems in order to achieve the best possible outcomes in the areas of representation, policy and industry good functions.
But at the most recent GrainGrowers Limited board elections the declaration of the end result did not align with the views of the majority of members who were actively engaged in the process and voted directly.
Instead, the result determined by Members was yet again skewed by the casting of proxy votes despite constant assurances by GGL that the organisation is seeking to resolve this permanent stain that blots their governance and transparency.
Having been at the heart of the GGL board elections over the past two months listening to the comments of current members and ex-directors, it is clear the board election process and the use of standing proxies must now be seriously reviewed and the constitution amended.
GGL has the potential to contribute enormously to our industry.
Next year there will be another national election for the two Southern Region board members and it will be a critical litmus test to determine if this year’s lessons are learned and a fair process underpins the election result.
One of the most important issues raised by members over the past couple of months has been GGL board’s support of preferred candidates.
During this election, GGL invested in hiring an independent recruitment specialist to assess candidates and make a final recommendation, without fear or favour.
The response by GGL to this process - after the recommendations were made - was to introduce a new priority criteria of “continuity” and “board stability” which then required the board to recommend the two incumbent directors.
Another issue was the use of online voting.
Some members who received their packs by post and tried to vote online struggled to cast their vote after being unable to clearly determine that the first digit of the membership number - it was an ‘I’, not a ‘1’.
This ambiguity led to a lot of frustration, with some members eventually giving up on casting a vote.
One member who phoned GGL to complain was told by the Returning Officer that this was a common problem.
Another issue was the integrity of online voting.
Only a member number and postcode were required to vote on-line and unlike previous years there was no PIN number.
This system may have been satisfactory, except that members were advising us of old membership lists floating around with these numbers.
Hence, an individual could log on and vote for multiple parties without their knowledge (if they did not have an email address linked).
In order to ensure future integrity, PIN numbers would be an appropriate security measure to help validate member votes.
Another issue was GGL’s claim that they have “absolutely no dead members” but this is incorrect and therefore continued efforts must be made by GGL to clean up its membership list and restore confidence.
Transparency of the GGL voting system was also a concern based on the use of votes ‘for’ and ‘against’ candidates, which created confusion due to complexity and misunderstanding.
This confusion applied to members, candidates and even ex and current directors.
This system needs to simplified (as one member called for at the AGM) and/or the voting rules clearly published to ensure the system is not misunderstood or misused.
In this election, the total votes cast only represented about 10 per cent of members.
Proxies represented about 25pc of total votes cast, hence these “passive votes” had a decisive impact.
Furthermore, the standing proxies were primarily held by only a handful of members at the AGM with a significant amount of these votes held by two board members.
GGL have endeavoured to reduce the number of standing proxies - which we praise.
But this should have been done in the 12 months leading up to the election and not during an election campaign.
During the election campaign, members were offered the chance to “revoke” proxies.
But at the same time claims were made that members were being asked to also redirect their proxy to the incumbent Chair, which meant a vote for the incumbent directors.
GGL Chair Andrew Carberry has stated that if there were no standing proxies, “I’d certainly be a happy chairman”.
But if not for those standing proxies, incumbent directors would not have been re-elected!
The GGL board code of conduct policy is that if a director is allocated a standing proxy after 2011, that proxy can only be used once at the most immediate AGM.
We see no reason why the same principle would not apply to those director-held proxies collected earlier than 2011, which apparently represent the majority.
This paradox goes to the heart of why members have expressed serious mistrust and grave reservations about the ongoing use of proxies and their undeniable impact in ultimately determining election results.
GGL have made many statements to members over time about resolving these electoral issues but when put to the test, the incumbent directors clearly benefitted from the ongoing use of standing proxies.
The leadership of GGL, and as an organisation now charged with representing Australian growers to federal government in areas like oversight of the Grains Research and Development Corporation to which all growers pay a levy, must be judged by how they respond to resolve this mess.
With 12 months until next election, GGL now has the opportunity to clean up these standing proxies, act in line with the board rhetoric and seek a mandate.
In 2016, the GGL Southern Director election will be conducted and again we expect another well-fought contest.
What is clear from members this election is they want a united voice to represent the grains industry and not one that duplicates resources and inflames industry dysfunction and unrest.
We wish the current GrainGrowers board all the best in this endeavour to unite grain representative organisations as one voice for growers.
‘GrainGrowers notified its members on Friday that the organisation would carry out a review of Board election processes during 2015-2016’.
