Earlier this year a very small group of people got together and exercised their constitutional right to request a Special General Meeting (SGM) of the board of the .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), seeking to remove the Chair, the CEO, and the two female independent directors from the board.
Their motives were not always entirely synchronous and often changed depending on which member you asked, but today I am pleased to say that common sense has prevailed and this group has failed to get the support of the majority of members in either class per the constitution.
It is clear that this group now needs to step back, take a breath, and allow due process to take its course without the destabilising behaviour that has unnecessarily cost Australian domain name consumers more than $250,000 to hold the fruitless SGM. We must now also allow the board to get on with implementing the recommendations from the Australian Government’s review without further distraction.
Unfortunately, it is already apparent that this group will not take their loss with dignity, and have shifted their rhetoric to attacking accredited registrars with nonsensical claims of cartels and deplorable personal attacks against their management and staff members.
In 2016, then First Lady Michelle Obama famously said “when they go low, we go high”, and that is precisely what I intend to do. I will not sink to their level of personal attacks and racial slurs, instead, I plan to focus on my job which is representing my customers to the very best of my ability.
I hold genuine hope that these people will soon see reason, and allow a line to be drawn in the sand so that all stakeholders can move forward and embrace a new constitution based on the government recommendations and the work of the Constitutional Model Working Group (CMWG) and the Policy Review Panel (PRP).
Regards,
Cheyne Jonstone
Executive Chairman
