By David

Back in the days of Coulter and Byrne the Swimming New Zealand Board meetings leaked a torrent of information. Nothing was secret. Actually, the sieve-like nature of that Board wasn’t all that important. Within a few days the old Swimming New Zealand Board posted their minutes on the organization’s website. Unofficial chit-chat plus the official record gave a pretty clear picture of the Board’s deliberations.

I thought those days had gone. Certainly the new Board stopped publishing their minutes. It is sad when any sport’s organization feels it must hide information from its membership. I wonder what they have to hide. I have little time for directors of public organizations who feel their decisions are above the scrutiny of the membership. The danger is that the arrogance of secrecy can quickly get out of hand, can quickly lead to an abuse of power. Good governance requires that public sporting Boards have their decisions examined.

I also thought that the people Swimming New Zealand now have on their Board would be leak-proof. The new “Institute of Director” sorts have accumulated power by doing deals, almost always behind closed doors. They are people who understand the power of information, who appreciate the value of secrecy, who live by mushroom-managing the membership – feed them shit and keep them in the dark. Or as a friend of mine said today, “goldfish never question the bowl”.

But I was wrong. The Swimming New Zealand Board Room does leak – probably more than the old Board. I confess this only to tell you that my source tells me I featured on the Agenda of their most recent meeting. I’m told the item was listed under the heading, “David Wright – Legal”. For a Board determined to conduct their affairs in secret this Board is not very good. They talk way too much.

I was told the David Wright item was on the Board Agenda for two reasons. First because, after the young girl from Raumati lost her teeth diving into the Wellington Pool, I filed papers with the Disputes Tribunal asking for my 2011 Protest Fee to be returned. It is a pity when, it seems that, the only way to get this new Board to address the safety of its members is to threaten them with the loss of $50.00. Charles Dickens wrote a Christmas story about that sort of behaviour. Certainly if I was ever in any doubt about the value of filing the Tribunal papers, the fact that the tragedy of this young swimmer’s misfortune made it onto the Agenda of Swimming New Zealand’s precious Board Meeting dispelled my concern. It is a pity, but not unexpected, that their Agenda referred to the incident by my name rather than the person who could be considered a victim in all this. I hope we have not reached a point where a young girl’s teeth are of little consequence when there is $50.00 at stake.

And, I was told, the second motive for putting me on their Agenda was to consider whether they could put a stop to the publication of Swimwatch. Achieving that would actually be very simple. Just reverse the current obsession with central power and national uniformity, privatize the Auckland and Wellington high performance programs, start promoting swimming around the regions, restore and increase Regional decentralized power and change swimming from a state run socialist empire to a private and free enterprise dynamic sporting market – do that and Swimwatch will either disappear or will be stacked full of feel good niceness.

Like all extreme socialist movements this New Zealand swimming version will eventually fail. However that will take time. Until then Swimwatch is here to stay. Oh, SNZ can try and close us down, they can knock themselves out with legal fees and Board Room debate but we ‘aint going nowhere.

Of course Swimming New Zealand may feel there is a case for libel. And they may be right. If Chris Moller did not use a Special General Meeting to call for the resignation of Brian Palmer, if Alex Baumann’s children did not train with Millennium High Performance swimmers, if Philip Rush did not get stopped in Mirimar with twice an illegal amount of alcohol on his breath, if Valerie Adams did not meet with the Minister of Sport to “arm wrestle” herself out of the system, if a young swimmer did not lose her teeth diving into a pool I warned Swimming New Zealand about a year earlier, if Swimming New Zealand didn’t call two candidates for two vacancies an election, if Swimming New Zealand did not initially schedule their 2013 AGM at the same time and on the same day as heats were being swum at the National Swimming Championships, if Swimming New Zealand didn’t provide the national press with false information about the performance of New Zealand swimmers at the World Championships and if someone at a National Camp did not ask one of my swimmers to swim 100×25 meter sprints in the middle of distance conditioning, then a case for libel could well succeed. But if all of those things did happen, the merits of a case for libel seem slim.

However the following data may help Swimming New Zealand’s legal team decide in which jurisdiction to file libel proceedings. I write most of the articles published in Swimwatch and I live in Auckland New Zealand. The blog however is published in London. The server hosting the website is in Brea, California. And the blog’s lawyer lives in Tampa, Florida. If SNZ need the physical address or email details of any of the above just leave a message in the comments section. We will get them to you straight away.

Sadly I suspect the lesson that will be debated at the next Swimming New Zealand Board Meeting is where are the leaks coming from? Who is talking to the wrong people? How can the Board tighten security? Who is the Swimming New Zealand mole? Does Swimming New Zealand have a “Deep Throat” in its midst?

That will be a shame. The moral of this story should highlight the benefits of an open, honest and inclusive relationship between the Board and the membership. It should not be seen as an excuse to increase secrecy and concealment. But in the new Swimming New Zealand I’m guessing that’s exactly what’s going to happen.