SAJC--report of inquiry into suitability of close associates - Portellos ...

Inquiry into the suitability of certain close associates of the
South Australian Jockey Club
Report
discovered, after the close of the membership validation process, that the class of
membership he held (corporate membership) did not entitle him to be a candidate for
the board. Mr O’Brien explained that he was disappointed with this outcome, noting
the long connection Mr Hayes and his family had had with South Australian racing.
He went on to explain that Mr Hayes could have been accepted as a candidate at the
election through a process which involved a unanimous vote of the then 5-member
SAJC board. This was not undertaken and Mr O’Brien noted that two of the 5
members were also candidates at the election.
Prior to the conclusion of the 2009 election, Mr O’Brien had communicated with the
Authority (by email) some concerns he had with the election process. The Authority
gave him the opportunity to raise those matters as part of his examination.
Mr O’Brien expressed concern that his group had been refused the opportunity to
send a mailing to all members of the SAJC when, as he saw it, Mr Peacock had sent a
long letter to as many as 500 members 9 . His request had been made to the SAJC
which, after taking advice from the Electoral Commission (as its election contractor),
had declined the request.
Mr O’Brien regarded that number as a significant proportion of the electorate, noting
that usually the number of votes cast is about 1000; he questioned whether such a
mailing could have been undertaken on the basis of members’ names and addresses as
known by the originator of the mailout. He told the Authority that a number of older
SAJC mailing lists existed and, indeed, that his group had been offered one of them
for use in its campaign. (Mr O’Brien had declined that offer.)
Mr O’Brien did not consider the election to have been contested on a level playing
field. At the time of appearing before the Authority, he and his group had not made a
decision about challenging the election—they were reserving their rights.
Mr O’Brien expressed particular concern about an article which appeared in the
Advertiser on 18 April 2009. The article was headed “Steve’s team or the other team”,
it included photographs of the Transparency Plus candidates and the Group of 9 (of
which he was a member) except for him. He expressed his frustration:
and later:
Believe it or not, I’m not even a candidate. Every candidate is mentioned there, but I’m not.
All they did constantly throughout this was just associate our group totally with Ploubidis.
Now, many members were offended by that, including me. I mean, I wrote the very next day I
called the Advertiser and I spoke to... I asked for Simon White, who was the journalist. He
was not there, so I was put through to Kim Wheatley, she’s chief of staff. I spoke to Kim
about it. I said, “Look, we want this resolved. This is terrible.” I mean, that is a quantum leap
to suggest that by any stretch of the imagination we recognise and accept the dismissal of
Steve Ploubidis. We had stated that. On that basis, to brand everyone in this group I mean, I
think one of the persons in our group had never even met Steve Ploubidis. It’s just pushing
one way all the time. I mean, it was constant.
9
Mr Peacock had put the number at “about 375”—see page 32.
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