Dip in voter total worries Wool Board

Wool Board chairman Bruce Munro says the level of participation in voting on remits at the board's annual meeting was disappointingly low.

About 20 per cent fewer people voted on the remits than voted earlier in the year on whether to accept the 10 recommendations of the $3.3 million McKinsey report.

The Wool Board hired the McKinsey consultants to report on ways the industry could be made more profitable.

But Mr Munro said that despite the low numbers, voting on remits had reinforced the call for reform of the wool industry. "The results were generally supportive of the course proposed by McKinsey and Co," he said. They had given the board useful feedback on areas where fine-tuning might be needed.

Results showed the effects of voting weighted according to numbers of sheep owned by the woolgrower, when the value of weighted votes showed up in two of the early remits. The first asked growers to support a remit that stated that the "yes" vote for McKinsey was a vote to get rid of the board and the levy.

It was lost even though 717 individual votes supported it and 597 opposed, as 13,647 weighted votes opposed it compared with support from 9061 votes.

Another contentious remit asked directors to honour the pledge to resign if the Fernmark brand failed, as McKinsey claimed it was not succeeding. The remit was lost on the weighted vote, but the individual vote would have passed the remit 744 votes to 523.

There was dual support for two remits demanding moneys transferred to Merino NZ, Strong Wool NZ, or any other similar entities be commercial loans and repayable on demand. Another remit calling for the board to be sold and all moneys to be returned to levypayers of the past three years was defeated on weighted and individual votes.

The growers' right to vote on levy levels at any time was approved, as was a remit demanding that the Fernmark be available to all woolgrowers. There was total support for the Woolnet electronic trading system to be funded and to become international by 2001.

Another Woolnet remit demanding that, if commercialised, all shares be held by growers until the real value was known, was lost on the weighted votes.

- NZPA