Australian Dairy Farmers in chaos: Eight Victorian councillors ousted

The ADF has been forced to defer its presidential election after eight Victorian national councillors were removed and not replaced by the VFF.

Newly confirmed United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free has dismissed the state’s eight Australian Dairy Farmers national councillors. Picture: Karla Northcott

The Victorian Farmers Federation has dismissed its representatives on the Australian Dairy Farmers’ national council, over conflict of interest concerns, but then refused to replace them.

The move has left ADF without any Victorians on its 15-member national council, despite the state producing two-thirds of the nation’s milk.

The decision has forced ADF to defer the election of a new president, which was due to have occurred yesterday, immediately after the peak dairy lobby’s annual general meeting.

United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free, who was only confirmed in the role on Monday, led the push to oust eight of his own state’s ADF councillors, notifying them via email on Wednesday that their positions had been “revoked”.

“Most of them had a conflict of interest, so we decided, with advice from the VFF president (Emma Germano), that we remove them all,” Mr Free said.

He said that “conflict was in being Dairy Farmers Victoria members”, plus “most of them had already served their two year terms”.

ADF sources say Mr Free and his UDV policy council had nominated eight Victorian farmers to replace those he had dismissed on Wednesday.

But they said VFF president Emma Germano and her board stepped in and withdrew the nominations, overriding the UDV.

Just why such action was taken remains a mystery, with Ms Germano and the VFF refusing to answer questions on the issue.

However the relationship between the two farmer lobby groups remains tense, after the VFF refused to pay $360,000 in affiliation fees to ADF, which were due more than 12 months ago.

The Weekly Times asked Ms Germano if the VFF intends to withdraw from the ADF, but was sent an email that simply stated “we’ll decline to comment on this one at the current time”.

The ADF is hopeful that the VFF will resubmit its nominees, allowing an election for the president to be held on Friday of next week.

Even if the VFF fails to resubmit its nominees the ADF is still able to run an election without Victorian representation on the national council.

Under the ADF’s complex constitution its full complement of 15 national councillors – eight from Victoria and seven from interstate, would play the key role of electing a new president.

But without Victorian representatives the ADF’s board of four directors each gain two votes each, while the only national councillors to get a vote are the two from Tasmania, one vote each, plus the Western Australian councillor – two votes.

It means that incumbent president Rick Gladigau faces an uphill battle in retaining the job against the only Victorian left within the ADF – director and Pomborneit farmer Ben Bennett.

Meanwhile former UDV president Mark Billing, who was one of the eight dismissed Victorian

ADF national councillors, said the whole process was a mess.

Larpent dairy farmer Mark Billing said he and other ADF national councillors were “democratically appointed, but summarily dismissed.”

He said the first he, and the other councillors, heard of their dismissal was from ADF.

“I rang (then) Bernie and he said an email was coming,” Mr Billing said, which arrived Wednesday.

“It was disappointing to just get an email, given the time and effort we’ve put in on behalf of dairy farmers.”

As for the accusation that he and other ADF councillors were dismissed due to a conflict of interest over forming a rival Dairy Farmers Victoria lobby group to the UDV, Mr Billing said he and the other councillors were still “UDV members and are all ADF business members”.

“(Fellow ADF councillor) Bruce Knowles and I went through an election to represent the south west (on ADF national council),” Mr Billing said. “We were all democratically appointed, but summarily dismissed.”

As for their terms being up, Mr Billing said that was not the case for two of the ousted councillors and that ultimately UDV had the discretion to vary terms.