Coroner & Legal
RSPCA in internal row crisis
Once again, the Tasmanian branch of the RSPCA is in turmoil, the Hobart Mercury reported today (28.09.2012 here), having stood down its Chief Executive Officer pending an investigation into ‘wide ranging allegations’ of misconduct. StopTAC understands that the staff veterinarian has also been stood down, and only three members of the Board remain with the others all having quit.
‘The RSPCA’s Vice President, Angela Ayling, asserted today in the Mercury that it is ‘standard industrial practice’ to conduct such an investigation’, said StopTAC’s Suzanne Cass, who was herself expelled by the Society in 2010 for publicly criticising the employment of a large administrative bureaucracy. Ms Cass asserted strongly at the time that available funds should be ‘spend on animals, not people’, and was summarily expelled.
‘What would have been “standard industrial practice” would have been to employ a CEO who met the advertised selection criteria, not one who did not, then stand them down and investigate them later’, continued Ms Cass. ‘it is this adversarial, confrontational approach to any dispute which I believe has cost the Tasmanian branch massive sums of money it could not afford in legal fees; money it should have been spending on the animals’.
The CEO who has been stood down is Ben Sturges, who according to the Mercury is the son of Labor MP Graeme Sturges, who was removed from the RSPCA Board at the 2010 Annual General Meeting, when those present, including Ms Cass, were “horrified by his … behaviour towards those who asked questions at the meeting”.
The Mercury further reported that an ugly, unpleasant scene developed last Friday at the Mornington headquarters when Board appointed HR investigators arrived and demanded access to the IT server, and that the staff were sufficiently distressed to call in union intervention.
Ms Cass claims that the selection criteria included a university degree, qualifications in management and a background in the not for profit sector, and believes that Mr Sturges met none of those criteria.
‘What is particularly alarming, as we see yet another destructive “trainwreck” is that this is the organisation which the State government funds to administer and enforce the Animal Welfare Act, and potentially it receives funding, including from the community, to run its three remaining shelters’, said Ms Cass. ‘It is impossible for the government, and the community, to have the slightest confidence that it can do any of these things when it clearly cannot run itself. I was critical of it employing “managers” for everything, and the RSPCA mantra is always about fundraising. The animals are the inconvenient vehicle they use to do that, and as always happens, the people who really DO care are driven out.
‘It is just unsustainable for the RSPCA in Tasmania to have any role in enforcing animal protection legislation, and, given the number of people who have reportedly left in the year or so that Ben Sturges has been there, it seems that it cannot run shelters with any degree of integrity either. It is difficult to believe that the RSPCA can continue to operate at all in the state after this, because its credibility is once again in tatters’.
Suzanne Cass
Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty
PO Box 252
BRIDGEWATER TAS 7030
www.animaljusticeparty.org
www.stoptac.org
www.liveexportshame.com