Face-to-face Board meeting 2025 - Vaughn Bennison

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Graeme Innes 0:30

Hello and welcome to this episode of New Horizons. I'm Graeme Innes, thanks for joining us. BCA had its first board meeting for 2025 recently, and it was chaired by new President, Vaughn Bennison. He's here today to speak with us about what took place at the meeting. So welcome, Vaughn.

Vaughn Bennison 0:52

Thanks, Graeme, thanks for having me on the program. And just to point out for the listeners, it was actually the third meeting, but it was our first face-to-face meeting for the year.

Graeme Innes 1:00

Tell me about the board meeting. What are your reactions after chairing those first few meetings for 2025?

Vaughn Bennison 1:06

Well, I think in answering your question, Graham, it's important to look at the board from the perspective of someone like me, who is not only coming in as a first time President to Blind Citizens Australia, but joining the board for the first time this year. And it's worth pointing out that, along with me, there were three other directors who were recently appointed to the board, in fact, appointed as of the annual general meeting in December last year. So that's almost 50% of the board. One of the board members had just returned from three months leave. 

And so when you think about it, a significant portion of the board is fairly new. And when you think about the fact that BCA has sort of rotating directors, and by that, I mean that different board members are elected in different years, a significant portion of the BCA board is fairly new, if you think about, you know, the last sort of two to three years. So really... getting more precisely to the answer of your question, it's it's really about spending a couple of days together, getting to know each other as well. Deb Deshayes has only been the CEO for about 15 months, so it was a chance for me to really get to know her really well, and it was a chance for me to get to know all of the other board members, many of whom I've known personally for quite a long time, but also many of whom I've never met and certainly never worked with. 

So it was a really good opportunity for me as the President, to sort of learn all the strengths of the existing board members and to some extent, their weaknesses as well. But you know, we all have our strengths and weaknesses when we we join things like a board, but really just to get it, get to know each other personally, spend some time together and find out, you know what? What makes people tick?

Graeme Innes 1:21

And that's the advantage, isn't it? Of face to face meetings?

Vaughn Bennison 1:30

I think you're right. I think there's, there is a big advantage to when you're having multi-day meetings, to doing them face-to-face, because it's what happens outside the actual meeting that can be just as important, if not more important, than what happens at the meeting. And often, the conversations that you have around the water cooler or the coffee machine often informed some of the discussion this discussion points that happened throughout the rest of the meeting. So it was really important, I think, to have those discussions. 

And you're absolutely right - I think it's really important for any board of an organisation like BCA to have face-to-face meetings periodically throughout the year, so that you can have those free and open discussions, even, as I said, outside the formal part of the meeting.

Graeme Innes 3:48

Renewal and change on any board can be challenging to the... continuity of the processes and the way the board operates. How do you intend to take that into account going forward?

Vaughn Bennison 3:59

I guess the main thing, Graeme, to make sure with any board is, that you're all working from the same... Braille volume, and making sure that you all understand the basis for the operations of the board where you stand, in terms of your legal liabilities, your duty to the organisation, your duty of care, your obligations under ASIC and ACC regulations, and, you know, just general governance principles, just to make sure that when you have a discussion about something, everybody understands where you're coming from. 

So one of the things that that we did as part of this, part of this meeting, possibly not as much as we will do in the future, but we did have a bit of a discussion about some of the basic governance principles. Things like the importance of minutes, risk, delegation of authority, financial literacy and financial management, and a whole lot of other things like that that we focused on a little bit, just to make sure that everybody understood - particularly as... some board members are very new to not only to the board of BCA, but to boards in general. 

And it's really important, I think, for us as an organisation, that the board that governs the... strategy of the organisation... actually fundamentally understands what it's doing.

Graeme Innes 5:18

So let's talk about what the Board decided or determined during the meeting. Vaughan, what were some of the key decisions or processes that you put in place at the meeting?

Vaughn Bennison 5:28

Not sure that I'd say we really put a lot of processes in place, but we did agree to some new policies and processes around delegation of authority that we particularly want to sign off on at the next meeting. So there's just one or two changes that need to be made to the document. And the agreement was that we would expect to sign off on it at the meeting in February. 

We also talked about how we would go about developing the strategic plan. So you might recall that a new strategic plan was agreed and adopted by the Board in 2022, and that's due for renewal at the end of this year, or sometime this year, because the current strategic plan is 2022 to 25... so we agreed that that we would undergo a process, an externally facilitated process, and we would create an engagement opportunity for members, and we'll be able to talk a little bit more about that soon, but we believe that it's really important that the members have a say in how BCA is able to move forward and what its strategy should be, and that also the Board and staff will meet to discuss further ways that the strategies can be implemented and how they can be operationalised. 

And of course, it's important for the staff to have a say in the way that the strategy of the organisation is set as well, because effectively, they're the ones who are carrying most of it, most of the strategies, out. Once it gets operationalised into the business plan, as I said, it will be an externally facilitated process, because we believe strongly that it's not appropriate for for the Board to do this in isolation, and it's always good to have somebody who is an external person to be able to bounce ideas off and make sure that the ideas come fresh - and with a non-biased sort of viewpoint. 

So that will be happening sort of more towards the end of the year, remembering that the key focus at the moment is on the Convention, which is coming up in mid-June. So if you haven't already registered, Graeme... you might want to get in and do that before the closing date of registrations and before space runs out. But we also talked a bit about membership engagement, and again, you'll be hearing more about that in in future months. And we did have a very key discussion about something which is very close to my heart and, of course, to yours as well, Graeme, and that is the program to which you're now listening, New Horizons, and we'll be able to talk more about that in the next month or so, as well as we prepare a couple of strategies around that.

Graeme Innes 8:08

So you're ceasing your involvement with New Horizons, because, of course, you need to focus on being president of BCA, but you indicated a handover process. Are you saying that the board will tailor that in the next couple of months and keep people advised?

Vaughn Bennison 8:26

To be clear, I.... have ceased presenting New Horizons because I don't believe that it's appropriate for me as President to be the presenter of New Horizons and to be in control of the content. New Horizons has always been considered independent from... BCA, and it's not been considered appropriate for a board member or a staff member to be presenting the program. We don't know yet what New Horizons will look like in its final stages, but we have a plan to move forward with, and it's something that... you know as... obviously, having conducted the program for nearly ten years, is something very close to me and something that I feel very strongly about. So we'll be managing that over the next couple of weeks.

Graeme Innes 9:12

Vaughn, I just want to talk about some public events that are coming up. And the first one that is going to come up very soon for all of us, is the federal election - and you're chairing an event about that. Can you tell us about when that is and what's going to take place?

Vaughn Bennison 9:31

Well, Graeme, if you'd asked me tomorrow night, I'd probably know a lot more about it, because I'm going to be meeting with Jackson, Jackson Reynolds-Ryan, who provides the Secretariat to the NPC, and he's our senior policy officer, and he and I tomorrow will be going over some of the things that we'll be talking about at next Tuesday's BCA Inform event. BCA Inform, of course, is the first Tuesday of the month, and we are focusing, as you say, on the federal election. 

And it's really important that people attend this BCA Inform, because we will be talking about some of the things that are important to the blind community that we can put into a statement around the election, about promises or expectations that we have of whatever party becomes our new government. And so what we will often do is put together a statement of expectations that says as part of the election, we want governments to promise X, Y and Z, and that statement can then be used by BCA members and advocates to support their ask for whatever their local MP is offering in terms of promises at the coming election for their local area. 

So some of those things might be, for example, audio description. And there's been a little bit of movement on audio description just in the last few months. So we'll be talking about that. It might be significant reform that's coming towards changes to the NDIS and, of course, recommendations from the disability Royal Commission. We'll also be having a bit of a look at if there are any MPs or any of the parties who've made specific indications in terms of disability support or disability relevance. 

One of the things that I know that is a particular ask for the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations at the moment is that whichever party forms government, or parties form government at the next election, that they implement a Minister for Disability, Equity and Inclusion. Now I don't know what that would actually look like, necessarily, but we have for some years Graeme, had the Minister for the NDIS and ABDO and BCA certainly supports this position... is calling for there to be an actual Minister for Disability, and I think that's really important. And we'll certainly be looking to see if any of the MPs respond to that.

Graeme Innes 11:53

That will certainly be an interesting topic for discussion. Vaughn, the other public event that you, as a an effective broadcaster, as we all know you are, have managed to get into the conversation earlier, is the BCA Convention - and it's an important one, because it's 50th Convention. Tell us about what people need to do, and thank you for the registration reminder - I'll get on and do that.

Vaughn Bennison

Yes as will I Graeme - I haven't registered for it either. (Both laugh) Look, the Convention's coming up in mid June, and interestingly, we haven't had a convention in June for quite some time. Our most recent convention was in April 2019, and that was some six years ago. But the conventions have historically been held in June of each year or each second year. I don't know when they changed, and they obviously changed for very good reason, but we are having one in June this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Blind Citizens Australia. And I certainly will be there. 

It'll be held in Melbourne at the Nova... Novotel hotel in Glen Waverley. I'd encourage you to get in and register. Last I heard, we had somewhere in the order of 30 registrations. That was a little while ago. So it's probably more significant than that now, but we're hoping that this will be the biggest convention that BCA has ever had, for its 50th anniversary. And while I'm thinking about the 50th anniversary, BCA also has a campaign to get 50 BCA backers by 50th anniversary. So we've got about four months, and we've got around 35 at the moment. 

So if you can spare a little bit each month to provide a donation to Blind Citizens Australia as part of the BCA backers program, we would encourage you to do that, because we really would like to have 50 backers by 50 years. So I'd encourage you to have a look at the BCA website if you are unable to find it or can't use the website, get in touch with Blind Citizens Australia, and I'm sure that one of our lovely staff members will be delighted to help.

Graeme Innes

Thanks very much Vaughn - as always, an informative conversation about where the board's up to and what's happening in the future and some of the new presences on the board. If you'd like to get in touch with BCA, then you can visit bca.org.au or call one 800 O, double three, double six oh - that's 1800 O33 660 including to talk about the BCA backers program, which Vaughn has already outlined. Thanks for joining me on New Horizons. The program will come back next week, and we'll look forward to being with you.

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