Rudman's city: Ageing veterans deserve benefits from RSA trust

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Old soldiers never die, says the old music hall song, they simply fade away. But one thing the old digs do have in common with the rest of us is that they can't take anything with them into the hereafter.

It is a lesson you would have thought the leadership of the Auckland Returned Services Association would have taken to heart. But it seems not.

Here we have a self-help organisation with assets and funds totalling just on $2 million and a membership of about 500 - most of them Second World War veterans well into their 70s and fading away fast.

If I were one of the gallant 500, I'd be looking forward to being spoiled rotten with the help of this sizeable nest-egg.

Yet in the year before last, the Auckland RSA managed to scratch together a miserly $29,003 in welfare support to its members. Less, in fact, than the $33,023 plus car paid in wages to the welfare officer distributing the money and much less than the $116,957 it cost to run the organisation that year.

It makes ones wonder what on earth branch president Chris Yates was on about in his annual report for 2000 when he declared that "the fundamental cornerstone of the Returned Services Association is welfare".

To me that would mean digging into the reserves to finance hip operations and new hearing aids and home-nursing support and the like. But the closest to that is a pitiful $8101 for total medical expense payments spread across the whole membership and a minuscule $120 for something called "hospital comforts".

It is little wonder that former Auckland president Les Pipes and former executive members Bill Grupen and Jim Newman have been fighting in the courts and with the Attorney-General's office for a shakeup in the organisation - so far with mixed success.

The Auckland RSA was once a thriving social club, centred on a prosperous High St bar and restaurant complex. But as the inner-city workforce declined in numbers and the RSA members retired to the suburbs, patronage and income declined. In the 1970s the club moved its operations to a more modest site in Fort St, but business continued to decline and in the 1980s the bars and restaurant closed.

The branch's assets were cashed up and the money put into two charitable trusts. The trusts were designed to avoid tax and to provide welfare support for members.

In the Weekend Herald, James Gardiner outlined the chequered history of Mr Yates, a former policeman and cadet force officer, and one of his key lieutenants at the Auckland RSA, disbarred lawyer Peter Desmond Swain, who has convictions for misappropriating a client's money.

The report outlined an aborted plan to invest $150,000 of the RSA money in "buildings" at North Shore Stadium, which turned out to be 50 leased portaloos. It all sounded very curious and certainly backed up the call from Mr Pipes and his team for a probe into what was going on in the club.

Sadly, their approaches to the Attorney-General to investigate the workings of the two trusts reached deaf ears. The disgruntled members also went to the High Court seeking help. One demand was that the club be forced to prepare the corporate plan the 1999 annual meeting had voted for.

The preparation of a corporate plan would have forced the organisation to set out its aims and to examine whether the trusts were doing the job they intended. The High Court ordered the corporate plan be prepared. That was more than three months ago.

Since then a three-man group of Mr Yates, Mr Gruppen and Colin Topp, senior vice-president of the NZRSA, has been formed to select a three-strong corporate planning team to do the work.

Unfortunately, the discussions have stalled over the third member of this team. There is unanimous agreement on two names, but Mr Yates refuses to endorse the third nominee - a retired senior officer.

In the meantime, members continue to fade away with little or no support from their wealthy club.

I have always thought the perfect retirement plan would involve cashing up one's wealth during one's dotage in such a way that you left this world owing nothing and with just enough left in the bank account to buy a decent send-off.

Surely that is the sort of philosophy that should now be guiding the allocation of Auckland RSA funds. The vast majority of members are Second World War veterans. The money raised over the bars which now fills the coffers was squirrelled away to provide welfare for these old diggers.

If now isn't the time to start digging into this capital fund for exactly the rainy day it was set up to provide, I can't imagine when will be.