Sixteen member Regions elect the Board of Swimming New Zealand. As a consequence, the most compelling duty confronting every Swimming New Zealand board member should be to honour their fiduciary duty to the Regions. Byrne has the same responsibility. Failure to meet their fiduciary duty could result in grave consequences, including jail time, for both the offending board members and the CEO. A breach of Swimming New Zealand’s fiduciary duty to the Regions occurs whenever a board member or Byrne abuse their power in such a way that causes harm to one or more of the Regions.
The essence of Swimming New Zealand’s fiduciary relationship with the Regions is best described in a 1972 court decision which held that:
A fiduciary relationship is one founded on trust or confidence reposed by one person in the integrity and fidelity of another…A fiduciary relation exists when confidence is reposed on one side and there is resulting superiority and influence on the other…
Under the current constitution the Regions of New Zealand put their trust and confidence in the Swimming New Zealand Board – an obvious fiduciary relationship exists. And it has been betrayed. Potential criminal behaviour is in need of investigation. How do we know this? Well, today Swimming New Zealand published a paper called the “Operating Model Options Report – March 2011”. In it the SNZ Board identifies four recommended options for constitutional change. SNZ calls them Club Focused, the British Swimming Model, Super Regions and the Centralised Services and Governance option. The existing Regional structure doesn’t even make their final cut. The “shareholders” who elected these people are being eliminated with inexcusable contempt. In Swimming New Zealand’s rush for power, the Regions are unwanted. SNZ has abandoned its fiduciary duty.
This Board was not elected with a mandate to discard the Regions. When the Swimming New Zealand board was elected it entered into a relationship with the Regions “founded on trust”; based on “integrity and fidelity”. What a grave error that was. Project Vanguard is mutiny and here are the names of the nine mutineers – Murray Coulter, Ross Butler, Mark Berge, Humphrey Pullon, Dominic Toomey, Jane Wrightson, Jan Cameron, Mike Byrne and Cathy Hemsworth. If their intention is to get rid of those who elected them, they should resign in mass and stand again on a platform that makes it clear they no longer see any merit in having the Regions around.
The deception of Project Vanguard is probably dire enough to give SNZ board members serious legal difficulties. However, their problems are about to get much worse. You may recall that the definition of a breach of fiduciary duty includes the requirement that the abuse of power causes harm to one or more of the Regions. Well, eliminating the Regions is probably bad enough to satisfy that test. However, do you remember this recommendation from the Ineson Report?
The winding up of the regions will require a strategy to properly manage the change. An arrangement will be made with SNZ that all Regional funds and assets have a sunset clause (3-5 years) after which all remaining assets/funds to be forwarded to SNZ.
Swimming New Zealand is going to rape the Regions of their money, their equipment, their buildings, their cars; all their assets. Southland has a unique relationship with their licensing trust. Forget it – in three years that won’t exist or it will belong to greedy Mike in Wellington. Auckland owns the score board, the computers the chairs, the starting blocks; half a million dollars of equipment at the West Wave Pool. Not in three years it won’t. Jan Cameron will be the Queen of Auckland’s assets. Canterbury has reserves of $246,000, accumulated over 110 years; gone in three years to Wellington. Otago has $124,000 that the Hemsworth Report says Otago is as keen as mustard to transfer to the capital. In Swimming Northland’s February board minutes Helen, the Treasurer, wants to invest Northland’s reserves in a long term deposit. She had better make sure it’s less than three years. Murray Coulter is going to need that money. Did you think Swimming New Zealand was going to pay for the sporting carpetbaggers they are about to hire? Wrong. They are going to take your money and spend it on people like themselves. Project Vanguard is a Coulter and Byrne heist. And that just has to be a huge breach of their fiduciary duty.
The “Operating Model Options Report – March 2011” says Swimming New Zealand is an organisation that communicates poorly, it lacks consistency, it does not collaborate easily, it is not a performance-oriented organisation, it has a culture of ‘them’ and ‘us’, it sometimes finds it easier to lay blame than work together, it is an organisation of revered individuals rather than a team and it is not well positioned to reach out to the whole swimming community. I certainly agree with most of that. But those failings have nothing to do with the Regions. They are not their fault. Those problems are because Byrne and Cameron don’t know how to run the place. Giving them a Club Focused or a British Swimming Model or a Super Regions structure or a Centralised Services and Governance option won’t make any difference. The people need to change; not the structure. Mike Byrne says he is unable to make the existing structure work. Then he should move over and make way for executives who understand how to run the place. Good managers will thrive and prosper working inside the current Regional model – and it won’t cost a penny.
The “Operating Model Options Report – March 2011” highlights the waste we will all be buying into if the current structure of swimming in New Zealand is changed. Their Report is stacked full of the most outrageous double speak, marketing, trendy, vacant, rubbish I’ve read in a long time. Just imagine what Duncan Laing, Arthur Lydiard, Rusty Robertson, Fred Allan, Ross Anderson, Edmund Hillary and Colin Meads would make of this selection.
- Accountabilities do not exist in any effective way to deliver outcomes demanded by all stakeholders.
- The national office equally needs to rely on alignment of the organisation on major business deliverables.
Just think about it for a moment, do you want an organization that’s full of that sort of stuff or do you want the sort of tough, lean, practical achievement that is represented by the names of New Zealanders who do or did know how to win a sporting event.
And finally, and as usual, Swimming New Zealand lie like there is no tomorrow. All through this Report they claim that a majority of the membership support the abolition of the Regions. I’ve heard reports that the Project Vanguard committee is forever claiming they have a popular mandate for dismantling the regional structure. What else does this line in their Report mean? “And most importantly you, the members, have said “there is room for improvement so we cannot continue the way we are going.” Please, don’t lie to us Swimming New Zealand. The membership hasn’t said that at all. In fact Coulter is the guy who is too gutless to go to the membership and ask for a mandate to proceed to the next stage of the Project Vanguard process. Remember the AGM remit requiring him to do that? Eventually, though Swimming New Zealand are going to have to go to the Regions. Eventually they are going to have to find 45 votes. And do you know what, no matter what inducements and bribes Swimming New Zealand offer, no matter what lies they tell or contractual obligations they ignore – I don’t think they are going to get them.
