AUSTRALIAN Wool Innovation (AWI) has refused to backdown on the five recommendations it says are for shareholder consideration in their Review of Performance (RoP) implementation plan.
AWI were asked for additional information on the implementation plan for all 82 recommendations made by the Federal Agriculture and Water Resources Minister Agriculture, David Littleproud, after he described its first attempt as “short in detail” and “vague”.
At the Senate estimates hearing last week, AWI secretary Jim Story reneged on the proxy position saying that the proxy voting system didn’t need to be placed in front of shareholders for voting.
It seems AWI is still considering it as one of the five recommendations to go before shareholders.
AWI chief executive officer Stuart McCullough highlighted that AWI’s implementation plan specified how the organisation would address all 82 recommendations included in the RoP.
“Let me express AWI’s support for implementing all 82 recommendations included in the RoP,” Mr McCullough said.
“Our implementation plan provides a comprehensive three-year roadmap to successfully complete this process.
“In implementing each of the 82 recommendations, our actions in the plan fall into three categories.
“The first are the 75 recommendations that relate to operational matters, the implementation of which I am pleased to report are already under way and some of which are already complete.
“The second category, of which there are two items, are those which are agreed in principle.
“We are working to identify a best approach to implementation.”
Mr McCullough said the third category included five recommendations that the board believed would result in significant change to the make-up of AWI, and as a result, were highlighted for special consideration by AWI shareholders.
“As all changes to AWI’s constitution require support from its shareholders, AWI will put those recommendations requiring shareholder deliberations to an extraordinary general meeting to be held in March 2019,” he said.
“In preparing our implementation plan, we have listened to woolgrowers and thought hard about what we do.
“Our plan provides a clear roadmap for continual improvement to the organisation and demonstrates our commitment to maintaining our industry leadership position and acting in the best interests of Australian woolgrowers.”
Mr McCullough said transparency and information flow with woolgrowers and industry was of critical importance to AWI throughout the review as it embraced all the recommendations.
“In addition to our implementation plan, AWI has launched a Review of Performance Implementation Portal to publish our implementation plan and report on our progress implementing the 82 recommendations.
Mr McCullough said the portal was there for everyone to monitor changes.
“We see great value in ongoing business improvement to ensure we continue to deliver benefits for woolgrowers.”
p WoolPoll vote closes tomorrow, see page 14.
