2.30PM: A growing chasm between the NZ AIDS Foundation Board and its staff, and the job it was mandated to do, is one of the reasons the Board has found itself in a row with many of its stakeholders. It must get back to its roots, says Body Positive Auckland General Facilitator Bruce Kilmister. However, Kilmister says BP Auckland, New Zealand's largest organisation of HIV positive people, applauds the Board's proposal to return to a mandated two board positions for HIV positive people. A member of the first ever NZAF Board of Trustees, he says the current board has lost its way and needs to get back to its core objectives. “The whole direction of the NZAF is set by the board and the board has lost its way a little in that the reason for its existence is to serve the prevention and education needs of men who have sex with men plus the HIV positive community in terms of care and support,” he says. “All governance should be directed towards those aspects.” Kilmister believes the 50% Maori membership quota proposal was a confusing issue for the board, making it harder for its members to identify clearly the direction in which it should continue to work. Kilmister says the original direction and focus of the NZAF was clear and is still relevant. “At the beginning [of the HIV epidemic] the Ministry of Health publicly confessed that it could not adequately reach the main group at risk of transmission of HIV - which was the then illegalised homosexual community. They agreed for the set up of the NZAF to specifically reach gay men." Twenty years down the track, Kilmister believes, "while some circumstances such as the law have changed, the board direction is still to work with the gay community in terms of prevention and education. The board needs to reconnect with that community and look at those issues.” But he sees a ray of hope for such reconnection which could point the way ahead for the Board. “There was an excellent initiative which the AIDS Foundation took about year ago in recognition that they were becoming estranged from that community. The Foundation instituted a number of regional consultations with the gay community and starting to build bridges with the positive community. I was absolutely heartened to see that at the coal face the Foundation was looking to rebuild those bridges back to relevance.” Kilmister says Body Positive Auckland was appreciative of the NZAF Board's recent proposal to bring back the mandated two HIV positions on the board. “There were always two positions within the NZAF trust board for people living with the virus and I was personally most upset, as was Body Positive when they abolished those positions. But they halfway came back to address the issue by saying that new appointments had to have some connection with those most affected. They didn't necessarily have to be positive people but somebody who had to be connected.” He feels the most recent initiative to reintroduce those places was a good move “because the board has to hear the HIV positive perspective and they have to give a hearing to that group. That then empowers positive people to be involved with the NZAF and to help keep it on track." Finding appropriately skilled HIV positive people to sit on the board is not a problem, says Kilmister. “The previous two chairs, Michael Stevens and before him Jonathan Smith, were both appointed to be HIV positive spokespeople by Body Positive, to take the HIV positive voice into the board.” While he believes the Foundation was for a time drifting away from its 'men who have sex with men' constituents Kilmister also believes it has, since the most recent board appointments in April, been drifting away from the staff of the Foundation. “I see the coal-face of the NZAF and the staff who work there and I feel that a chasm was growing between the Trust Board and the Foundation itself, and also the work it was mandated to do. That chasm been growing in the last two or three months since the most recent appointments brought new members onto the board.” Kilmister will not be drawn on whether the Board or its now-controversial chair Clive Aspin should have followed calls to resign. “The current board members are good people” he says “and if they are able to identify the core mandate that the NZAF is there for, and to focus on that, they will go from strength to strength." Jay Bennie - 24th July 2005