GrainGrowers to elect new director at annual general meeting

A new director will be decided at GrainGrowers annual general meeting (AGM) which will be held online via zoom due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 16,000 GrainGrowers members will cast their vote either by post or online to replace outgoing director Andrew Carberry, Narrabri, who will step down from the role he has held for 12 years.

Current director Nigel Corish, Goondiwindi, Qld, will be looking to retain his place on GrainGrowers' board of directors while Ian Gourley, Narrabri, is aiming to sit on the board for the first time.

"More than those two nominated, but Ian Gourley and Nigel Corish were the two that proceeded with their nominations to be on the ballot paper," said GrainGrowers chair Brett Hosking.

"Nigel is currently a director, so he is nominating for a second term, while Ian, if successful, would be a first time GrainGrowers director.

"The meeting will be live on Zoom and the more than 16,000 GrainGrowers members have been either sent a postal vote form or an email link to a voting platform, depending on how they have indicated they wanted to vote.

"Those links and postal vote forms went out about two and half weeks ago, so we have already started to see some votes starting to flow in."

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Two other items were slated to be on the meeting's agenda including proposed changes to the organisation's constitution, which included updating job descriptions to be gender inclusive and a proposed change in the method of members casting votes on resolutions.

However, the latter was deferred until next year's AGM after it sparked concerns from members, including Lockhart producer Gerry Lane, who said the changes included removing an option to vote no on motions.

"I had a bit of a look at the constitution and I believe the options to vote yes, no, or abstain should remain intact," Mr Lane said.

"However, the changes would only allow members to vote yes or to abstain, which I don't agree with."

Mr Hosking said the board had opted to defer from making changes to the constitution until consultation with members had been conducted.

"At the AGM, there was also due to be a vote on two other resolutions, one was an ordinary resolution for a change of auditors," he said.

"We had been using Price Waterhouse Cooper for a bit more than 15 years now and decided it was time for a change, so we went out to tender and it was awarded to BDO, which has quite a good reputation as an auditor.

"What we have done is withdrawn the second resolution regarding the constitution to allow more time to iron out those details."

Mr Hosking, a grower at Quambatook, Vic, said members would be given the options to vote yes for either of the candidates or to opt to abstain.

"Typically, with our director elections we generally only have a for, or abstain options," he said.

"So whichever director gets the most votes in favour wins in a first-past-the-post-style election.

"The legal advice we got was that we should have a for and abstain option for all resolutions, but that turned out to be not quite correct.

"We were getting quite a bit of feedback from members surrounding that resolution and the perception that members wouldn't be allowed to vote in objection to that resolution, so as chairman, I made the decision to defer that resolution.

"It has been a good chance for us to engage with our members about it, so over the next 12 months we will engage with our members, make sure everyone is comfortable with it and make sure we have the legal advice in place about how to present it at next year's AGM."

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