TWENTY-ONE people expressed their interest in joining the new board of the Dunghutti Elders Council (DEC) at its Annual General Meeting held in Kempsey last Thursday.
The DEC was placed under special administration by the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations in September 2011.
The meeting also adopted new rules about membership eligibility and payments to directors.
Tim Gumbleton from chartered accountants RSM Bird Cameron is one of the special administrators appointed with the responsibility for selecting the board.
“I will be sitting down with the people who have put themselves forward to come up with the new board,” he said.
“You get a sense of who the people really want on the board and who are the best equipped to do the job.
“Ultimately I make the decision but you want it to be as representative as possible.
“One thing I will be looking for is a strong desire to do what is best in the interests of all the Dunghutti people.”
The new board will take responsibility for the running of the corporation when the administration period ends at midnight on March 1.
Mr Gumbleton said changes to the rules regarding membership and directors' remuneration would also be beneficial to the running of the DEC.
“One of the biggest problems we found was how members were admitted or denied membership, and how they proved their Dunghutti heritage,” he said.
“Their will now be a master list of names that you can trace back to that will end a lot of the disputes.
“There will also be simple access to native title search records and the membership list will be constantly updated.”
Directors of the new DEC board will receive only an industry standard $750 per annum as payment, plus minor expenses.
They are also prohibited from being an employee of the corporation at the same time they are directors, which is a breach of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Corporations act.
Anthony Beven is the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations and he also attended the meeting on Thursday.
“I was told it was an extremely good turnout given the floods and other things going on,” he said.
“But I think the DEC has deeper problems that neither my office, nor the special administrator, are best placed to sort out.
“There are some basic issues of who the DEC represents and what their function is.”
Mr Beven was disappointed with one of the decisions taken by the members at the AGM.
“When it came to appointing an auditor the membership voted to accept a quote of $15,000,” he said.
“The other two quotes for the work were $6000 and $3000. I don’t have any problem with the competence of the auditor they selected but one of the critical issues with the DEC that led to special administration was the way trust monies were spent.
“The difference of $12,000 is effectively 24 Dunghutti kids not getting their $500 school scholarship money if you think of it like that.”
Mr Beven said former directors continued to insist they were blameless for any problems at the DEC.
“One of the former directors defended the expenditure of nearly $7000 for a trip to last year's Indigenous All Stars rugby league game and insisted all the money spent on legal fees was fully justified,” he said.
Mr Beven will be back in Kempsey on March 2 for the official handover of the running of the Dunghutti Elders Council to the new board.
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