Opinion
Equestrian Australia Jumping & World Cup™ Committee member and Australian equestrian pioneer George Sanna has had a front-row seat to the Equestrian Australia consultation process over the last two years. No stranger to top-level sport and performance, George is an accomplished Olympian and coach with over 40 years of involvement in the equestrian industry and is well respected within the sport.
I read with interest Heath’s recent article covering a wide range of topics including the current state of Equestrian Australia (EA), the restructure process, high performance, and IT to name just a few. Heath is truly a national treasure in our sport and very thoughtful and passionate, so I’m always interested to hear his views on the equestrian world.
However, I would like to make a couple of comments by way of partial rebuttal of some of the points he makes. I would also like to reference the excellent Facebook article posted by Ulli Klatte regarding the ongoing debacle surrounding the current IT system and the urgent need to fix it. I totally endorse Ulli’s views and, Heath, I believe you’re wrong on this one. Loyalty does have its limits.
The first point that Heath tries to make is that EA’s focus on the restructure of our sport is adversely affecting our push for sporting excellence, both now and also looking forward to the Brisbane Olympic Games.
The fact is that EA as an administrative organisation has very limited impact on the High Performance (HP) program which is funded completely by the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) with little or no contribution from EA members funds. In fact, not only is it funded by ASC, but the parameters around spending the HP money are firmly controlled by ASC. EA has very limited influence on this process.
Thus, because Eventing and Para Dressage are considered by ASC to be the only disciplines with a realistic chance of medalling, all of the HP funding is directed solely to those two disciplines. Dressage, Jumping, and the other disciplines receive effectively no funding for national programs.
Given the above, it’s really hard to argue that if EA as an administrative organisation were to abandon the goal of necessary restructure, it would really have much of a positive impact on our goal of sporting excellence. The current Board is a diverse and highly capable group and is well able to both walk and chew gum at the same time. Further, the plans and goals that Heath talks about are in the hands of the HP group and that is separate to the EA Board.
In fact, the premise of a discipline-based model favoured by the Board would empower and fund ALL the disciplines to manage their own affairs and move their sport forward as their elected national representatives, working in conjunction with the HP Group and the State Discipline Committees, see fit.
For example, currently the National Discipline Committees have virtually no funding whatever with little or no prospect under the existing structure of attracting any because they are not able to have their own bank account and members funds available to EA are limited and most are retained by the State Branches. Further under the current structure, it is the States who are charged with the management of equestrian sports in their states and so the ability for National Discipline Committees to be able to influence what is to happen in their particular sport is limited.
So apart from the two disciplines involved in the HP program, there is no funding to support National squads and training clinics etc. So these initiatives don’t even exist. This is one of the many examples where a restructure of EA can make a huge difference to the future prospects of our new generation of riders.
Currently, however, we seem to be content to coast along spending vast sums of money on seven separate administrations (1 x National and 6 x State) to run our sport. Much of this members’ money is spent on duplicating things across the States and that are already being done in the National office.
The pure form of a discipline model proposes to shrink the role of the State Branches to form smaller and more agile State Councils, representing the disciplines and other interest groups, to deal with state-based funding and facility issues. Several other high-profile sports have recently worked their way through this process and have successfully negotiated the continuation of state funding and their arrangements in relation to sporting facilities.
The very considerable savings derived would then be applied to better fund the disciplines to be able to run themselves more effectively and returning more money to members rather than wasting it on over-administration.
Heath also talks at length about the Voluntary Administration (VA) issue. The fact is that VA was a very painful and divisive process for our sport. However, I believe that the outcome, while by no means perfect, has actually been worth the cost and the angst.
Prior to that crisis, the State Branches were the only stakeholders in EA so they held the six votes that controlled the membership of the EA Board. As Heath has pointed out, the ASC precipitated the VA by holding back future funding required by EA to continue operating into the future. The reason why they took this course of action was because EA had become a total basket case with a constantly revolving door of Board members and CEOs. The main reason for this was that the States were at constant loggerheads and couldn’t agree on anything, especially issues of national significance to the sport. This resulted in the States using their votes in a game of musical chairs with Board members and EA staff.
The positive outcome of the VA process was that all 20,000 EA members can now vote for the people they would like to represent them on the EA Board and we can all expect some long-needed stability. The VA has given us a once in a lifetime opportunity to effect meaningful change and we mustn’t let it pass us by. The proposed changes might initially seem a little radical, but the fact is that tinkering at the edges will definitely not get the job done to properly fix a structure that has been broken for over 50 years. We need to get behind the Board and get it over the line.
It is salient to point out that all of the current elected Board members were voted in on a strong reform/restructure platform.
Heath finishes by alluding to several other ongoing issues like coaching, education and retention of officials, and horse welfare to name a few. While restructuring to a discipline-based model is not going to resolve every single running issue overnight we believe that empowering the disciplines to be able to take on more roles, along with a clearer understanding of the division of responsibilities that would come with the shared services model, will make many of these issues much easier to resolve.
Signed,
George Sanna
