Why do you publish Ian Scandrett’s bile and misinformation (yesterday Item 14)?The bloke is obsessed with me. Perhaps this relates to my having topped the poll for the NRMA board on the only two occasions I ran for election, in 1995 and 1999; perhaps it’s because I led tickets which won 13 of the 16 positions contested on those two occasions.

Scandrett has run for the NRMA board countless times over the last twenty years, and has never come within coo-ee of winning the members’ confidence.

Some of his untruths you have chosen to publish in the last two days include:

  1. That in winning my first election to the NRMA board I opposed the demutualization of NRMA Insurance: not true, I was “agnostic” in 1995 and in 1999, with a proposal that would keep the NRMA itself a mutual, I supported the demutualization of NRMA Insurance — for a number of reasons, including the fact that it would neuter ratbags like Scandrett;
  2. That by some strange calculus, whereby you should count those who do not participate in a vote as supporting your side, Scandrett can claim that NRMA Insurance members did not support its demutualization : the fact is that about one million members participated in the 2000 vote and 82% of them voted for it;
  3. That I wasn’t going to pay the Wollongong and Coff’s Harbour flood claimants in 1998 (as if it were my decision alone), when in fact I led the board charge to ensure that they were paid; and
  4. That I supported the QRS car repair centres: I didn’t; as soon as I worked out what the then NRMA management was up to I convinced a majority of the board to kill it, and we did.

I’m in favour of free and open debate, but you really should identify some of your correspondents.

Scandrett, the proprietor of a Rozelle shoe emporium which specializes in cheap imports, may wish to describe himself as “long time mutualist” and a “mutualisation boffin”, but I know him to be a self-promoter who has never enjoyed any substantive support among NRMA members.