By David

Silence is golden. Except in a situation like this, it is dark and ominous. It reeks of compromise, deception and defeat. Gone are the almost daily reports from Swimming Bay of Plenty. Vanished are reams of suggested improvements to New Zealand swimming from Auckland Swimming. The opposition has been silenced. Even the daily vitriol being posted on Swimming New Zealand’s website has faded. A conflict both sides once happily described as a battle is now a love-fest of reason and common sense.

The Miramar Golf Club chardonnay and cheese tutorial didn’t work, so my guess is that, someone somewhere decided to do a backroom deal. Lots of pats on the back, lots of “we have responsibilities to our members,” lots of muttering about being the sport’s last chance, secret meetings in corporate Board rooms in Wellington or Auckland and the leaders of the Coalition of Region’s folded. And I think it stinks.
The climax of the new union between Swimming New Zealand and the Coalition of Regions came in the form of a press release posted on the Swimming New Zealand website. This is what they are going to do.

1. “We plan to work towards the development of a business case to SPARC. We believe that the review should consider our governance, the basis of membership, the role of our Board, Regions / NZSCTA and Clubs, and the way we engage with our stakeholders including the swimmers. The review would consider our Constitution and other guiding documents, and would take account of best practice developments in other sporting organisations.”
2. “However, we are committed to working together in a productive and responsible manner, consistent with our Swimming NZ values of respect and integrity.”
3. “We propose to do so away from the glare of publicity, and we will therefore not be making any further public statements.”

All this effort and the best the Coalition of Regions and Swimming New Zealand can offer is another bloody review. All this time spent naval gazing – no wonder there is never time to do anything. But before considering the number of reviews, I am obliged to comment on the following wording – “and the way we engage with our stakeholders including the swimmers.” Swimmers tacked on as an afterthought. Butler would never write this insult if he had watched swimmers labour through 10,000 meter swims or applied Vaseline to their stinging chlorine burns. Swimmers are not stakeholders in this sport. They are the sport. It belongs to them. It is their journey. Anyway back to the number of reviews. In the last six months this is review number four.

1. Swimming New Zealand has already spent $250,000 on review number one – called Project Vanguard. This is still described on Swimming New Zealand’s website as a project to determine, “how should we organize and run swimming in New Zealand to support growth and success in this new decade” – pretty much the same words used by Butler to describe this latest bit of visionary management.
2. The second review was the Ineson Report. I have no idea what it cost, but it certainly would not have been cheap. The objective was to “analyse Swimming NZ’s current high performance programme.” Although the Report was aimed at the High Performance program it did reach a number of conclusions on the incompetence of the current Board and its senior management.
3. The third review was the fortune spent by Butler wandering around the country as Chairman of the High Performance Governance Committee. Swimming New Zealand’s website tells me that was, “to ensure clear reporting lines and greater board oversight, accountability, and contestability of SNZs HPP.”

I really love the second comment about “Swimming NZ values of respect and integrity”. Remember, it is Butler writing this stuff. He’s the guy who stood up in a Nelson Annual General Meeting recently and promised to do all in his power to destroy the personal reputation of anyone who questioned his management of the organization. That’s his idea of respect and integrity. And, as for the Coalition of Regions, they have done a deal with people they believe show little respect or integrity. What does that say about their judgement?

The third comment is a gem of great value. Swimming New Zealand and the Coalition have decided that their work is going to be “away from the glare of publicity, and we will therefore not be making any further public statements.” Are these really the same people who said just four weeks ago that because, “this is a serious issue affecting all members of SNZ, the board has determined that in the interests of openness and transparency that all correspondence regarding this matter should be available on the SNZ website.” Four weeks and suddenly “openness and transparency” don’t matter. Now it’s about staying away from the “glare of publicity”. And, in this regard, the Coalition of Regions is no better. What does it have to hide? What skulduggery is it up to? If the Coalition can’t tell us what it is doing, it shouldn’t be doing it.

This announcement essentially confirms that the Regions have been duped by negotiators far, far more skilled in getting their way. For the third or fourth time in a decade, good but naive Regions have fallen short of their goal. Perhaps it was always too much to expect Regional officials to take on the chief executives of Brierley Investments and Comalco. During the next month these men will tack on important Project Vanguard changes to the minor revisions they concede. That’s the way these men operate. Suck in the Coalition of Regions, join them in the process and screw them blind.

Thanks to their powerful friends the insurance salesman from Nelson and his mate, Mike Byrne, could well survive. The really bad thing about all this is that any compromise that results from this month of negotiations will leave New Zealand swimming worse off than when the struggle began. Without question I would prefer Cameron and Coulter back at Swimming New Zealand than accept a conclusion that is three quarters Project Vanguard, one quarter Regional idealism. Regular Swimwatch readers can imagine the effort it took for me to express that thought. I have fought for ten years to see the Cameron regime replaced by something better. However, there is no satisfaction in seeing Cameron go when the prospect is that Byrne, Butler and McDonald will be designing its replacement. Are we worse off right now? Yes, without question.

Those who began this fight had an obligation to see it through. Remember the line, “We began this thing. I guess we’d better finish it.” Any malcontent can initiate a rebellion. It demands courage and vision to reach a conclusion; to put in place a better regime. I thought the Coalition of Regions had that vision; offered that resolve. Instead, this episode in Swimming New Zealand’s history will be known as another victory for central control. Mike Byrne and Ross Butler will go on the record as bringing a few disruptive Regional lightweights into line. By bailing out to the prospect of negotiation the Coalition of Regions has abandoned the sport of swimming. Worse than that, New Zealand’s best swimmers have been deserted by those they should have been able to trust. Our youth have a right to expect more of their elders. There was a duty to, “finish it.”

However Swimwatch has stood alone before and is happy to stand alone again. I have two goals. I want to see honest people replace the crooks that currently run Swimming New Zealand. I want to see New Zealand coaches empowered and given the responsibility of producing world championship swimmers; a regime Swimwatch has labelled “rugged individualism”. It was heady stuff when the Coalition of Regions looked like they were pushing hard in the same direction. It now seems that the Coalition of Regions has chickened out; has agreed to compromise and negotiate with those they once sought to depose. That is a shame. Perhaps next time we will find leaders with sufficient character and talent to lead this sport properly. New Zealand’s swimmers deserve no less. On this occasion the swimmers have been let down by those who promised a brighter future. That is a shame. It is a setback, but it is not the end. Swimwatch is hated because SPARC and Swimming New Zealand know we cannot be bought, we cannot be intimidated and we will not be compromised out of our beliefs. We will not negotiate with those who are responsible for the shortcomings identified by Ineson. The dark side may have nullified a weak Coalition of Regions but that just makes the battle ahead more interesting and more important.

You see this battle was not begun in the past twelve months. Lincoln Hurring, Duncan Laing, Tony Keenan and Ross Anderson were pushing for the independent delivery of elite swimming long before many of today’s Coalition of Region officials were drinking out of elite swimming’s socialist trough. But this announcement means reform will have to wait until another generation of swimmers has been failed by New Zealand’s socialist method of delivering elite sport; failed by the Millennium folly. Byrne and Butler will blame the disappointment of missing their London goal of five finalists and one medal on the disruption of the rebellious Coalition of Regions. SPARC will agree and will deliver Butler and Byrne four more years of funding. The next call for reform will not be until 2016 when New Zealand swimming fails again in Rio.
Those responsible for the Coalition of Regions have condemned this sport to five more years of socialist failure. They cannot be trusted. Soon they will move on to other things. They will leave behind a broken sport that they tore apart but lacked the character to put something better in its place. To promise and then fail to deliver is worse than Cameron and Coulter. At least we knew not to expect anything from them. The Coalition offered a better way. Just read the documents on the Swimming Auckland website. Instead, my guess is that they have sold out to the dark side and have the sport’s GPS firmly programmed to deliver a socialist destination.

However, there is a way out. Independent coaches around New Zealand can work harder to produce more international champions from outside the system. We can do it the old way – the way Duncan Laing, Arthur Lydiard and Arch Jelley did it; without SPARC’s money or Byrne’s interference. Private enterprise does deliver elite swimming best. I guess its up to us to prove that’s true.