Equestrian Australia is back in business after going into voluntary administration.
By Equestrian Life
The new Equestrian Australia Board of Directors has released an update for its members as the organisation maps out its new chapter.
EA has spent the past few months building itself back up after it went into voluntary administration mid-last year.
Chair of new EA Board Mark Bradley provided a statement on Wednesday saying he was pleased to see the organisation and sport become active again since Covid restrictions began easing.
“In terms of the new board, the first thing to note is that the deed of company arrangement was finalised on the 11th of February,” said Mr Bradley. “That means that the management of EA is back in the hands of the new board and our management team. We are right now in the process of recruiting the next permanent CEO for Equestrian Australia. We’re conducting some interviews, we did a global search, we’ve found some outstanding candidates and I look forward to sharing the news with you of that appointment over the next few weeks.”
“All of the business of the board is carrying on as you’d expect. And our board subcommittees are now in place with some fantastic representation there from state bodies and also the national committees.”
“On behalf of the new Board, I thank you for your support to date. I know that we’ve got the members riding along on the journey with us. There’s a big expectation that things are going to improve and we’re putting the foundations in place to deliver against those expectations.”
EA out of financial hot water
Mr Bradley explained that the past year has been financially challenging for EA, but there is now light at the end of the tunnel.
“Our reserves are significantly depleted from what they once were,” he said. “We’ve run a very expensive voluntary administration process. We haven’t as yet received any Federal Government funding this financial year and like most organisations, EA both lost revenue and also incurred some extraordinary expenses in responding to the Covid crisis. So all of those things have taken their toll.”
“We are working with Sport Australia as the agency for the Federal Government to see our core investment funding returned and that’ll hopefully be over the next few weeks, we’ll reach an agreement with them to have that back-paid to the first of July last year.”
Despite these challenges, Mr Bradley said he viewed the position of the organisation as strong and was comfortable with its current position.
Old battles, new Board
Mr Bradley also addressed the on-going disputes involving EA that have been carried over from the previous Board and management.
“There are a number of these,” he said. “Some of them [are] very, very long-term and very ugly.”
“The new Board has inherited them and of course we can’t just magically click our fingers and solve all of these long-reigning matters. We’re working through them as best we can. Some of these matters look to be really genuine and we can see and have great empathy for individuals who have really suffered, and these disputes have taken a toll on them. We’re very committed to working through a process to resolve those issues.”
“There are some others where it looks like people are opportunistically trying to extract some money from EA or in some cases just restore their reputation maybe at the expense of somebody else. We don’t have a lot of time obviously for those matters and if you are in one of those positions, we’d seriously recommend that you have a think about your position, talk to the parties in the aggrievements, and let’s try and get them resolved to the benefit of everybody so we can move on in a positive way as a sport.”
“The new Board is committed to providing a level playing field for all participants in our sport. One where there’s equitable and easy access to dispute-resolution framework and where everybody gets that opportunity to be heard. We encourage anybody in these situations to talk with us. Let’s try and resolved these things as quickly and painlessly as we can within the framework that we have to work with.”
Olympic outlook
The thought that has been present in most of the high-level Australian riders’ minds has been what options and plans will be available to EA in selecting teams for the Tokyo Olympics.
So far, the IOC has insisted the Olympics will go ahead and Mr Bradley said EA has been in talks to formulate a plan for Australia.
“We’re also very busy talking with the Australian Olympic Committee to ensure that EA is in a position to be able to nominate our athletes to represent us in both the Olympics and Para-Olympic games coming up in Japan.”
You can watch Mark Bradley’s full update here.
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