Wellie

Many of you may not be interested in the following good news, but if you aren’t told, you won’t know.

On 9th Nov, the evening prior to the ASRA 2007 AGM, John received the following email, sent to him by the then Vice President of the Caretaker Board. The decision was as follows:

G’day John

The ASRA Caretaker Board held a teleconference to assess the merits of Tim McClure’s complaint and decide if a Disciplinary Committee should be convened to formally process it and determine appropriate disciplinary action against you if the Committee upheld the complaint.

The purpose of the Caretaker Board teleconference did not include an assessment of the events surrounding the original suspensions.

The Caretaker Board did refer to the Mediation Report prepared by Mark Regan.

The Caretaker Board considered each of the charges raised by Tim McClure in turn.

After lengthy consideration the Caretaker Board has chosen not to refer the McClure complaint to a Disciplinary Committee.

The Caretaker Board now considers this matter closed and will not deliberate on it further.

Paul

So finally, John has been exonerated. And he feels great relief that he has been vindicated.

We thank the Caretaker Board for dealing with this issue.

If anyone is interested in the details surrounding this, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Email address: jl_evans@optusnet.com.au, or 02 4973 3998.

Llewella

russ

To the members of ASRA.

It is really no surprise to me that every year we get less and less people willing to put their hand up to work on the ASRA Board on behalf of the members.

The sh*tfight that is continuing to rear it ugly head is both destructive and time wasting to the current ASRA Board.

One of the first things I did in office was to move that all correspondence and reference to the "Hub bar" affair cease immediately. An affirmative vote from the Board was achieved.

This problem,resulting from an alleged non compliance to an ASRA airworthiness directive has been simmering away for over a year now with the original Board,that the people involved were on, unwilling or unable to fix the problem.

It is disappointing to see Llewella deliberately misrepresent the determination of the caretaker Board in dismissing Tim McClure's complaint concerning John Evan's conduct.

Llewella knows from discussions with board members that her interpretation that John has been exonerated is false.

The caretaker Board had serious reservations about John's behaviour in this dispute however it determined that with a lack of independent evidence a disciplinary committee would be unlikely to reach a verdict on Tim's complaint.

On these grounds alone it dismissed the complaint. In no way has the Caretaker Board or the present Board ever conveyed to either party that John has been exonerated.

The Board upholds the right of members to freely publish their thoughts and opinions on our forum however it is a pity when this privilege is abused by members pushing their own destructive agendas.

Murray Barker
President.

__________________
State of origin..........go the maroons

I intend living forever...........so far so good.

russ

Folks.......the above posting was copied from the asra site on request of asra president so it was also seen here, with the original thread..

__________________
State of origin..........go the maroons

I intend living forever...........so far so good.

Mitch

Thanks Muzza & Russ,

I thought it was pretty obvious myself that there had been a play on words.

Par for the course.

Mitch.

Wellie

Murray, you seem to have many of your facts very wrong in your statement below.

To save yourself embarrassment, I would respectfully suggest you check out the facts, and correct them, or it will be necessary for me to do it for you.

John

I am shocked at the apparent hostility displayed by M Barker, writing as President of ASRA. Perhaps it is just as well that he said this is the last he plans to say about it!

Nobody would like to see the end of this matter more than me.

My dictionary defines exonerate as “free from blame or a criminal charge”.

This is the first time I have been informed that “the Caretaker Board had serious reservations about John’s behaviour in this dispute ....”. Would be it too onerous to expect that I be informed of these serious reservations?

Surely Natural Justice dictates that I must be informed of these “serious reservations”, and that I be given an opportunity to clarify anything that has been misunderstood.

I would point out that there are serious errors and incorrect assumptions in the documentation used in deliberations.

My rebuttal to the “Letter of Complaint” deals with some of these. This document was given very limited circulation in an effort to avoid more controversy. But it is now available to any member who requests it.

It is a pity this matter has to be dealt with on the World Wide Web, but as shown in the attached letter to the Secretary of ASRA other avenues have been blocked by this Board. Please read the letter carefully.

I realise that the Board sees itself as being even-handed, but this can hardly be true when the official ASRA publication has been used to attack and vilify me for acting correctly as a responsible ASRA officer on a safety issue.

John

+++++++

John Evans
51 Balcolyn St
Balcolyn NSW 2264

6th December 2007

Paul Campbell
Secretary
ASRA
Via Email

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your email as Vice President of the Caretaker Board advising me of its findings regarding the “Letter of Complaint” from T McClure.

As requested by you, I have silently suffered the damaging claims made by this member – first of all while awaiting the findings of the Regan Report which contained serious errors of fact, and secondly while awaiting the Board’s determination of the matters Mark Regan left for Board decisions.

As the Board has cleared me of all the charges against me, please advise whether or not the Board intends to publish a definitive report on this decision without delay, with as wide a circulation as that given the Regan Report and the offensive outburst by T McClure in the Winter 2007 Gyro News. I would prefer the Board to do this so the matter can finally be put to rest. If this is left to me, it will inevitably have the undesirable effect of again raising this unfortunate episode for debate.

You will no doubt recall preventing publication of my moderate attempt to advise interested members of my willingness to answer their questions. This then ensured that members were unable to judge for themselves my suitability to continue to serve them as a Board member.

I would be interested to learn if there has been any progress on your suggested proposal to amend the By-Laws to ensure that members and Officers of our Association will not be subjected to such mischievous and frivolous accusations in the future; it is obvious that in this case the only purpose seems to have been a most successful attempt to provide a distraction from a very serious breach of our safety rules.

I am sure the current Board perceives that ASRA has suffered severe damage to its credibility, not to mention the distress and loss of credibility caused to Llewella and me over this period. We would appreciate steps being taken to alleviate the damage done to our reputations. A suitable statement published by the Board would go a long way to achieving this.

A further aspect which needs to be addressed by the Board is recognition of the fact that not only was the whole Board involved at that time (with the exception of T McClure), but it was then criticised in the Regan Report for acting beyond its powers, despite sincerely believing it was acting appropriately and in good faith on the information available to it within the Constitution and the Operations Manual, as we understood them. Of particular concern is the damage to the reputations of Allan Wardill and Adrian Stoffels. I understand that while amendments have been proposed to remedy our defective Constitution, they have not yet been passed.

We look forward to a satisfactory and early response, so that this matter can finally be put behind all of us.

Yours Sincerely,


John Evans

Brian

I would like to make it clear that the ASRA board supports Murray's position in the above matter unanimously

__________________
Brian Reid
Pooncarie
NSW

Wellie

Silly, silly me! I thought I was ending an unpleasant situation that has gone on far too long by posting some good news on the Forum, i.e. an email received from the Caretaker Board, just so members who are interested could be aware that John had been cleared, and was no longer under a cloud - a post that the Caretaker Board should have made public.

But sadly the President has chosen to open it all up again by making both untrue and insulting statements on a topic he said he was not going to discuss again (according to an email he sent out weeks ago!)

I await corrections to the outlandish statements in that post.

The only sense made was in a following post saying“[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']what I thought was one of the best ASRA boards we've had”. [/font][FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']W[/font]e will take that as a compliment – thank you for acknowledging it.

My dearest wish always was, and still is for ASRA to go on from strength to strength.

As we have said, we thought the matter was finished, and that John had been cleared (another word for exonerated!). But I guess not. We now eagerly await word on what the serious reservations were. I quote the President - “the Caretaker Board had serious reservations about John’s behaviour in this dispute”. What were they please?

Thank you to members for the support shown by private emails, phone calls, letters and cards received recently and during the last very difficult 16 months. It is really appreciated.

Llewella