Letters – Melbourne (SS 140)

SUCCESS STORY

I want to congratulate the Matrix Guild (Vic).

I went to the launch and the viewing of the three new (low rent) apartments, with full disability access, they have provided for lesbians over 65 and with minimal assets and low incomes. What a fabulous achievement. A first in Australia!

Thanks to a bequest in Heather Chapple’s will, three disadvantaged older lesbians, who have suffered lifelong discrimination, now have secure community housing in their most vulnerable years.

As if that were not enough, they also launched the booklet We Live Here Too: A guide to lesbian-inclusive practice in aged care. This is an excellent guide for aged-care service providers.

I hope members of the community will see the immense value in these two excellent initiatives and donate and leave funds in their wills.

I am proud of this great lesbian community success story. If you are too, support Matrix.

— Chris

NO CONFIDENCE

The recent ALSO Foundation and ALSO Care e-zines  of June 10 and 16 are far from correct in analysis of the resolution voting results.

To say the Committee of Management resolution was accepted by a ‘substantial majority of voters’ when it was only 14 percent of just 119 eligible voters is stretching the definition of ‘significant’. What is ‘significant’ is that only 119 votes of a possible 380 came in!

Where is the interest in ALSO now, and are members voting with their feet?

‘Significantly’, the Committee received little support from group, group-reciprocal, commercial and ‘advertising’ voters. Perhaps the latter two preferred not to be compromised, or were not pleased with the promised Directory ‘marketing’ results.

Probably, the coupling of all the Committee actions into one resolution that included the ‘emotional blackmail’ plea to ‘Save ALSO Foundation’ is all that got the Committee over the line.

On top of these damming figures, we find that 45.4 percent of voters voted ‘no confidence’ in the Committee, thus the Reform Group resolution fell short by less than a handful of votes. Some of the Committee’s own supporters even voted against them in this resolution.

Overall the result shows that the community is just as divided as ever over how ALSO should be managed and that will never change while the same CEO, treasurer and directors/Committee members remain. In fact, the Committee only survived its own dismissal, and the recall of the supposed ‘loan’ by fewer than 10 votes. Surely all that is ‘significant’.

ALSO CEO Crusader Hillis says the ALSO Foundation Directors and Care Committee members — they are the same — will continue to run both organisations. Can we can read this as meaning until the last cent left in ALSO Care, as no other significant actual source of funding is apparent.

Expect more unrealistic strategic plans, more unbelievable budgets with never-achieved income projections, coupled with continuing rampant expenses — regardless of income. Most of the expenditure never leaves the ALSO office.

There will never be confidence in ALSO by the business and our community and importantly project, fund and bequest donors while the current CEO, treasurer and directors remain. If they are, as their e-zine says, sharing with us their serious concerns for the community, they should get out now.

To expect qualified, experienced, fully informed, thinking and ethical persons to step up to sit on a board or committee alongside the current collection is unrealistic. Then again, these probably are not the type they would be seeking. Who would want to risk their own reputation by being tarnished by association?

— Geoffrey R Richards, ALSO Reform Group member