VFF members vote to oust leaders: Board set to ignore result

Victorian Farmers Federation members held an extraordinary general meeting to vote on ousting their president. See the result.

United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free said VFF president Emma Germano and vice-president Danyel Cucinotta needed to accept they had been “voted out”.

All but one of the 381 farmers who voted at an extraordinary general meeting of Victorian Farmers Federation members this week backed a motion to oust the lobby’s sitting president and vice-president.

Friday’s St Arnaud meeting was the culmination of three attempts by disgruntled members to remove president Emma Germano and vice-president Danyel Cucinotta from their roles, and as VFF leaders and directors.

United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free called the EGM, with support of VFF Grains Group president Craig Henderson and Livestock Group president Scott Young.

Mr Free said the next step was to present the results - made up of in person and proxy votes - to the VFF board and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

“They (Ms Germano and Cucinotta) were voted out today and need to accept that the members have spoken,” Mr Free said.

But the VFF board has already indicated it will ignore the EGM result, having issued an email to members the meeting was “invalid”.

“Any attempt to hold a meeting about the VFF and its governance is inconsequential to the operations of the VFF and its democratically elected leaders,” the board’s April email stated.

Leaders of the VFF’s three largest commodity groups have been at loggerheads with Ms Germano and her board for months over staff and resource cutbacks, as well as a failed push to rewrite the constitution to strip branches and commodity groups of power.

The Weekly Times recently reported that VFF membership had fallen off a cliff, with 1000 farmers failing to renew their subscriptions since October

Former Grains Group president Andrew Weidemann, who played a key role in gathering proxies for the EGM, said there was a lot of talk among the 67 members who attended the meeting in person, of the “lack of trust in the current processes at Farrer House” (the VFF’s Collins St headquarters).

He said even the board have even failed to make good on a commitment at the VFF’s February AGM to try and reconcile differences with the commodity groups.

The VFF’s financials show it has already dramatically slashed staff costs, from $3.86 million in 2022 to $2.95m for the 12 months to September 30, 2023.

The federation’s ongoing financial woes forced it to cash out the Grains Group’s $9.8m deed poll early last year, after more than doubling its borrowings from $4 million in 2018 to $8.2 million in 2022.