Phil Parkinson sat on the board of the AIDS Foundation from 1988-93, is a former deputy chair, and devised the original constitution wording which has led the current board to make conclusions about how the Foundation should approach Treaty of Waitangi relations. Since leaving the board, Parkinson has been the author of several monographs on the documentation of early Maori texts. He says he prepared a detailed submission which explained why the current board's cancelled proposal to adopt a form of Maori quota for board members based on legal requirements in the constitution was a “nonsense”, but he says this went unacknowledged by the board. He accuses the board of silencing Foundation staff and ignoring Foundation members. He calls for all six remaining board members to resign over what he calls an “extraordinary error of judgement” and “a dereliction of governance responsibilities”. He believes the board members have shown themselves to be incompetent in their support of a form of Maori quota for board members. “As regards what has been called the ‘Ma¯ori quota', it was ill-conceived and insupportable. That any member of the current Board should support it, let alone, according to the statement of the current Chair, that all seven members of the Board should have done so, beggars my imagination,” he says. “The current Board stated that this quota for four Ma¯ori board members was “legally” necessary,” he continues. “In my view there is no constitutional or legal necessity for the claim, and I have yet to see any evidence put forward in support of the Board's ‘legal' position. Despite the rejection of this position, however, members of the Board have continued to pursue it.” Parkinson gives a lengthy history of the translations and mistranslations of certain Maori terms which have led to wildly different interpretations of the Treaty, specifically the current board's interpretation, which Parkinson describes as “radical”. He proposes that all references to the Treaty be struck from current constitution and replaced instead with a specific commitment to takatapui health programmes: “An explicit acknowledgement of the takata¯pui stake in NZAF, as a subset of men who have sex with men, still seems appropriate, and that issue should be addressed.” He says the idea of the Foundation forming partnerships with Maori at board level is not new, as the board seem to think. Originally, the Foundation's constitution decreed that liaisons with Maori were to be exclusively through the Te Roopu Tautoko organisation, for which a seat was reserved on the board. By 1993, it was decided that this group could not speak for all Maori, so the reference to it in the consitution was deleted and replaced with a clause that called for partnerships to be established with a range of groups, without privileging any one. This was a clause retained, Parkinson notes, after the next major constitutional review in 2001. Specific seats on the board had been set aside for takatapui representation in the past, says Parkinson, as well as for HIV+ people, but it was recognised that this system did not work and the quotas were removed in 2001. He cites a memorandum from the then-executive director of the NZAF which states in part: “in the case of the takatapui positions their existence may actually have added to the Foundation's confusion about its Treaty responsibilities”. Parkinson comments: “This seems to be a case where the road to hell had been paved with good intentions.” In addition, he says he is concerned about major structural changes that have been made since his departure which have left the board with “tyrannical” power. He says the Foundation as a whole has been deprived of democratic balance of powers which should exist in an organisation which professes to be community-based. He also says it is strange that a previous constitutional commitment to representation for gay men has now been removed. Calum Bennachie has been active in human rights advocacy work since 1992, and has worked as a volunteer with the NZAF from 1993 – 1997, working with the Gay Men's Health Team. In his submission, he also takes issue with the board stating that its quota proposals were a “legal requirement”. He says the board refused to answer any of an extensive series of questions about what legal advice they had taken to arrive at their conclusions, and what discussions had taken place on the subject. These questions included whether any precedents existed for such a policy either inside or outside the Foundation and what conclusions had been reached about the effectiveness of such policies, whether the policy was consistent with human rights laws, whether the Treaty of Waitangi was binding for a non-Crown entity, what would happen in the event of insufficient numbers of Maori being available to fill a quota, and whether the board intended to pursue other quotas for representation (eg. refugees). He was responded to in a manner which he feels to be “offhand” and “dismissive”: “We are of the view that the questions you have asked do not need to be addressed in order for you to effectively participate in the consultation process,” the board said in reply to Bennachie's questions. In refusing to answer his questions, Bennachie feels the board members are seeking to stifle debate, have made innaccurate comments which they are attempting to find justification for, and have shown ignorance of the facts. Any one the above calls the competency of the entire board into question, he says. There is no evidence that a legal requirement for such a policy exists, he continues, and for the board to say there is shows they are either being untruthful, or withholding information from members. However, the board does have a constitutional duty to protect the good name of the Foundation, something which it has not done by pursuing its quota proposals. Bennachie notes the political fallout from the proposals is already evident. A race-based quota is an insult to Maori, suggesting that Maori with the appropriate skills will not stand for election and need to be co-opted onto the board, he continues. In addition, it suggests that not enough Maori possess the necessary skills and spaces need to be set aside to ensure representation. Both of these assertions are “evidentially false”, says Bennachie, but both are implied by the board's proposal. Bennachie is concerned about the effect of such proposals on the gay communities. He says the Foundation sought at its inception to empower the gay community by allowing them ownership of the Foundation, and questions how a race-based quota would affect “the (ever decreasing) sense of ownership the gay communities have over the Foundation”. The board's quota proposal also would have increased the board size from seven to eight, creating a potential deadlock situation for voting which Bennachie says is untenable, “will have a negative effect on the effectiveness and efficiency of the Board and of the Foundation, and will bring the name of the Foundation into disrepute.” He concludes by saying the constitution needs to be amended to explicitly state that board members are always to be appointed on the basis of skills, not race; that the board should always be made up of an odd number of people; and that no future changes should be made to the Foundation's constitution without a vote from members, with 75% support. Bennachie is also the author of a second remit before this weekend's AGM, which calls for the entire board to resign. He says he no longer has confidence in the board following their “apparent dishonesty... over the recent race based quota issue... Refusals to answer questions, a series of half truths, comments being made, withdrawn, restated, and then reworded have led to this lack of confidence.” Chris Banks - 17th November 2005