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auDA explains secretive new regime in bid to save chair

Kevin Murphy, July 13, 2017, 12:26:30 (UTC), Domain Registries

auDA has explained why it has refused to put controversial new policies to a vote, as it recommended that members vote to save the job of chairman Stuart Benjamin.
In a letter to members published this week, the .au ccTLD administrator said it was not legally obliged to allow members to vote on its directors’ decisions to stop publishing their meeting minutes and to gag members from bad-mouthing auDA in the press.
As we reported earlier in the week, a group of domainers and others had signed a petition calling for four resolutions to be put to a vote of auDA’s members (largely domainers and registrars), but auDA only accepted one of them.
That resolution was to fire Benjamin. Members will vote July 31.
The new letter (pdf) seeks to explain why the other three resolutions were rejected.
The campaigners, organized by domainer/blogger Ned O’Meara at Grumpy.com.au, had demanded that auDA reverse its new policy of not publishing the minutes of its board meetings.
In response, auDA stated that it is under no legal obligation under Aussie corporation law or its own constitution to publish minutes and therefore under no obligation to put this policy to a member vote.
It did, however, agree to reinstate previously published and deleted minutes of meetings up to February 2017.
The Grumpy gang also wanted auDA to put is new member code of conduct, apparently unilaterally imposed by its board this May, to a member vote.
The code of conduct contains some innocuous policies about having a zero tolerance for members who abuse and harass auDA staff, but it also prevents members from saying bad things about the organization in public.
Members must agree:

In any forum, including in the media, where acting as an auDA member or identifiable as an auDA member, I will conduct myself in a manner that will not bring the organisation, Directors or staff, into disrepute.

This basically would prevent any member from criticizing auDA when talking to a journalist, under pain of having their membership suspended or revoked. Clearly uncool.
In auDA’s new letter, CEO Cameron Boardman explains that the ability of the board to suspend memberships has been removed from the policy, in response to feedback. Memberships can still be revoked by the board, however.
This U-turn appears to be a legal technicality designed to ensure that the policy does not change the organization’s constitution — which allows the board to revoke but not suspend memberships — and therefore does not need to be put to a member vote.
Finally, the Grumpy coalition had asked for auDa’s decision to create its own in-house registry — and to stop outsourcing its back-end to Neustar — to be put to a vote.
Boardman’s letter says that this decision was “a matter of management exclusively vested in the directors” and therefore legally not something it has to put out for member approval.
O’Meara and company were given the chance to recant on their fourth resolution — that Benjamin be fired — and apparently had indicated initially that they wished to do so.
However, they were so appalled by Boardman’s letter than they decided to go ahead with it anyway.
auDA’s recommendation that Benjamin keeps his job can be read in full here.

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