Peter Maniaty
Serious concerns have been raised around both the process and cost of the upcoming AusCycling Special General Meeting (SGM).
The issues were raised in an email sent directly to AusCycling club presidents and committees on Tuesday by Michael Smith AO who will Chair the SGM on April 23.
The contents of the email have since been shared widely on social media.
Just eight days out from the meeting, Smith declared ‘an SGM is an extreme measure, to be used only as a last resort after all other consultation and dispute resolution mechanisms have been genuinely exhausted.’
He then warned that several key conditions for the SGM had not been adequately satisfied—a situation that risked undermining cycling’s status under the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and also in the eyes of AusCycling partners both in Australia and abroad including international bodies, presumedly the UCI and IOC.
“I am asking the proposers, urgently, to meet these conditions before the meeting proceeds,” Smith wrote as Chair, suggesting critical information surrounding the SGM had been provided by the movers to some AusCycling clubs but not others.
“That is directly contrary to the ASC’s requirements, and it means that clubs are not currently in a position to cast an equally informed vote. This needs to be remedied.”
‘ASC support is not unconditional’
Smith warned the stakes of the SGM were high for AusCycling and its members, explaining AusCycling’s status as a National Sporting Organisation and the public funding that flows from that status is granted at the sole discretion of the ASC.
Somewhat ominously, he then added that ASC support ‘is not unconditional’ and warned that ASC powerbrokers will be watching the SGM developments closely.
“The ASC’s guidance makes clear that an SGM should be called only after these avenues have been genuinely pursued and found inadequate, that threshold has not been demonstrated here,” he said.
“If this SGM proceeds without the proposers having met the ASC’s conditions… then the integrity of any outcome will be questionable. The ASC will scrutinise what occurs. So will others with an interest in cycling’s future.”
Smith also drew the attention of clubs to the cost of the current process which will take place less than a month before the AusCycling Annual General Meeting.
“The hard cost of this SGM is approximately $60,000 – funds that cannot be spent on cycling,” he said.
“The full cost from a resourcing perspective and time lost on key priorities will be substantially more.
Clubs are entitled to ask why that expenditure was necessary now rather than in four weeks through the normal process.”
Michael Smith has been a Director of AusCycling since February 2020 but will not be standing for re-election at this year’s AGM.
You can read the full statement from Michael Smith AO here.
Peter Maniaty
Peter Maniaty - Peter is Bicycling Australia’s senior journalist, and highly respected in the world of cycling. From bike reviews, to destination features and nitty gritty opinion pieces, he’s a gun writer.
