Why Melbourne Demons board contender Peter Lawrence doesn’t regret spending $700k suing the club over electoral constitution

Peter Lawrence has put $700,000 into suing the Melbourne Demons over the club’s electoral constitution. Despite losing the battle, he tells JON RALPH why he won the war.

Melbourne board contender Peter Lawrence has found that you can, in fact, put a price on integrity.

For Lawrence, his legal bill to force Melbourne into key changes to its electoral constitution ahead of another contested election is over $700,000.

As Demons diehard Lawrence said this week, that eye-watering figure could have been put into personal club donations and is matched by a similar bill the Demons spent fighting his changes to their electoral processes.

And yet as the Demons prepare for a critical Board meeting tomorrow and go to their annual general meeting with two open board spots – and a question on their presidency – it has been money well spent.

Finance expert Lawrence will again put himself forward this week for one of those vacant board positions in an eight-person board that is currently helmed by club great Brad Green.

Call him stubborn or crazy or simply prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

Dees board challenger Peter Lawrence.

But at the end of a four-year struggle to win key concessions from Melbourne he had lost the battle but won the war.

Even though he officially lost his most recent Federal court case against Melbourne the club had made all but one of the key changes to its board process he had been seeking.

As a result he and the Demons will pay their own costs for that protracted fight instead of businessman Lawrence absorbing any of the Club’s costs.

“The Federal Court case cost the club about $650,000 and I spent more on it as the applicant. It was all a terrible waste of money,” Lawrence told the Herald Sun this week.

“I wrote to the club last October and said here are the four or five changes. Please let’s not go to court again. Melbourne rejected us again. At the end of the day we ended up with four of the five changes I asked for anyway.

Green’s Melbourne board is preparing to put forward two preferred candidates in addition to current board members Sally Freeman and Dr Angela Williams, who are both seeking election.

As a side note, the results of the club’s own twin reviews of the board and its football department will be revealed in “early November”.

But even if Lawrence is not selected in one of the four board spots up for grabs he will believe he has left a legacy of transparency on a board he once saw as a closed shop.

A Melbourne diehard since the age of six who grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks” in Traralgon, the chartered accountant returned in 2013 from 26 years working in Hong Kong and Manila.

He joined the Inner Sanctum supporter group, sponsored players including Kade Chandler, hosted AFLW players in his home and made financial contributions.

He has a background in fundraising given his work raising capital in business and for the British School in Manila and believes it is exactly the kind of expertise a club needing to raise $70 million for a Caulfield base would need.

But when he tried to get onto the board under Glen Bartlett he ran into what he labelled ‘The Melbourne Way’.

Former Demons president Glen Bartlett. Picture: Adam Trafford/AFL Media.

No term limits for directors, only postal voting for elections, little or no direct notification to members about upcoming board vacancies.

In 2020 he secured 47 per cent of those who voted but failed to win a board seat, then won a court case seeking access to the members’ data base so that he could push his group’s proposed changes to the Demons constitution.

This year his Federal Court case failed yet he secured a number of key democratic concessions, as Justice David O’Callaghan noted his board tilt it 2020 was the first MFC contested election “since at least 2004”.

“Melbourne has always portrayed me as the passionate fan we don’t need. They have always said, ‘We are full’, and they have used those same tactics since,” Lawrence said, who has been told by Demons chief executive Gary Pert that “we will no longer accept any financial donations from you.”

“I believe the way the Melbourne board compiles itself is at the heart of the club’s cultural problems. It’s why I fought back originally and it’s why the fight continues today.

“I sued my own Club twice — there was no other choice. It’s time the MFC leadership took governance seriously.”

He says the changes made by Melbourne now allow a more open and democratic process for board aspirants.

“In the old days they would put a little ad in the classifieds next to the escort agency pages in late October and it was the only time you were told board nominations were open. Now they have to let all voting members know about the nomination period, which opens on October 31.

Dees board challenger Peter Lawrence (R) has spent an eye-watering sum trying to force the club to change how board members are elected.

‘’The second change is they would get someone to retire early to create a casual vacancy and they would bring someone in as the incumbent and they would get re-elected on a unity and harmony ticket. Now they can’t make those appointments after October 1.

“As you go through the process you then have a candidate assessment committee.

“In the past it was a majority of existing board members and one external HR specialist or headhunter. It was a ‘Kangaroo Court’ and if you were successful at the bottom of your candidate statement you would get a board endorsement. But they never explained why you didn’t get one. So now that committee must be a majority of external people.

“The last one is access to the register of members so you can send communications to members as someone keen to be on the board.”

Former Demons player and MCC boss Steven Smith is seen as a future president but is not ready to join the board, although that might change soon.

Lawrence still wonders if Smith might end up as a Demons board member this year then taking over from Green when he has had time to decompress after recently retiring after 40 years as a lawyer.

Does Lawrence have any regrets at the financial toll?

“I don’t regret doing it. I wish it didn’t cost so much and that they had taken a different position last year. But it’s one of those things where once you start the fight the costs start to add up.

“It starts at the top with the board and they way you compile a board.

“If you have a proper electoral process you get good people who are willing to step forward. And that can only help the club.”

At a time when Melbourne want some “clear air” and a positive way forward, it will be fascinating to see whether the MFC board embrace Lawrence, or the contest will continue?

Originally published as Why Melbourne Demons board contender Peter Lawrence doesn’t regret spending $700k suing the club over electoral constitution