The board room battle at Australian Wool Innovation has been one of the company's hallmarks for years, but the sniping and fighting has become so much for director Roger Fletcher that he's declared war on his colleagues in a bid for radical change at this year's election.
Mr Fletcher – Australia's largest sheepmeat and wool processor – has taken the gloves off and broken the rules on boardroom solidarity to expose what he says is a culture of secrets, ingrained factionalism and spending beyond its means which is doing nothing for farmers in the face of the mulesing fiasco and a free-fall on the wool market.
Mr Fletcher is not up for re-election this year, but is touted as a likely contender for the chairman's job.
He says woolgrowers must vote for a new and independent start and should look to "practical people not professional board sitters" to help turn the ailing industry around.
He cites several areas where the board has "got it wrong" over the past six years, but says that without a radical overhaul nothing will change.
The heightened politicisation of this year's election and last week's emergency board meeting which resulted in the censure of fellow-director, Chick Olsson, has triggered this snap from Mr Fletcher.
Mr Olsson was censured for allegedly misleading the board in relation to a media article calling for current chairman, Brian van Rooyen, to step aside.
Mr Fletcher says since joining the board 12 months ago he has been "gobsmacked" by the way some directors of AWI behave, while other directors have been gagged and are often powerless to do anything about the problems they see with the mulesing deadline or AWI's spending sprees.
He said the millions spent on the court case against PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the "spin doctors" formerly employed to counter animal rights campaigns, the "mysterious" sheep and wool taskforce and mulesing clips were all examples of impractical board decisions rendering the board "dysfunctional".
"There is massive pressure on the industry and this is doing nothing to solve it," Mr Fletcher said.
Mr Fletcher says he is past caring about being sanctioned by the board because he would prefer now that farmers know what he is talking about.
"The Chinese are not opening the letters of credit, the wool market is taking a slide. The customers are just not buying.
"We need people with their feet on the ground that understand the industry, not lynch jobs and spending sprees."
Mr Fletcher believes he has managed to get a few changes in the short time he's been there, including cut backs on massive outside consultancy fees, which he said were only making "careers out of grower levies".
He said when he's raised questions about exorbitant executive salaries he's been told AWI "was in the big end of town" and those salaries were warranted.
He said AWI was not "living within its means" and should be operating under more realistic terms given the downturn in the wool industry and subsequently in levies.
In Mr Fletcher's opinion, the board is dysfunctional because it was operating as two groups - he lamented the board had never gone out to dinner or for a beer together.
"When I came onto the board, I found out there were two boards, there's an upper board and a lower board," he said.
"The upper board don't tell the lower board what's going on.
"Yet I've had world marketing experience, I export more meat into Europe than anyone else in the country, I've done negotiations on quotas and WTO stuff and I wasn't even worth being given a phone call for some advice to try and help them (with the mulesing crisis in Sweden in March).
Mr Fletcher said with $5.9m being spent on non-surgical mulesing clips, and 35,000 being used this year, AWI was clearly "not moving forward" in this area.
He said TriSulfen has virtually had no backing from AWI but "everyone's using it".
"You can't put a deadline on R&D. AWI should have invested more research time and dollars into ways of breeding the need for mulesing out of Merino flocks.
"That's one thing we're putting a lot of effort into on my properties and most farmers are doing that privately."
NOTE: Group sheep and wool writer MARIUS CUMING has interviewed all 10 candidates for the AWI board.
He asked all candidates the same questions. Their answers are published on FarmOnline in full, unedited.
You can read their replies under National News - or under the Related Articles list on this page.
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