Yachting Australia welcomes Sports Commission Governance Principles

by Craig Heydon on 25 Mar 2013 Yachting Australia has welcomed the Governance Principles released by the Australian Sports Commission last week. Yachting Australia President, David Gotze, fully supports the new governance standards announced earlier this week by Australian Sports Commission.

'In the past, the Australian Sports Commission published from time to time a set of Sports Governance Principles,' said Mr Gotze. 'For many years now the Board of Yachting Australia has been an early and enthusiastic adopter of those principles and has always been committed to achieving and demonstrating high standards of corporate governance.

'Yachting Australia receives significant public funding and expects a level of scrutiny in meeting agreed outcomes. It’s entirely reasonable for the Australian Sports Commission to satisfy itself that processes are in place to ensure that funding is well directly and properly acquitted,' he said. 'Yachting Australia is pleased that recent governance audits confirm that the organisation largely complies with the latest release of the Commission’s Governance Principles.

'These Governance Principles contain some stringent requirements which are additional to guidelines previously released by the Commission,' said Mr Gotze. 'Yachting Australia will be pleased to work closely with the Australian Sports Commission to implement the required changes. One significant change is to make the transition of Yachting Australia’s legal status of its corporate structure from an incorporated body to a company limited by guarantee. The significance of that seemingly simple change cannot be underestimated, sailing, like so many other sports, currently operates under a federated and incorporated structure.'

Sailing secured two gold medals and one silver medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and three gold medals and one silver medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

'The track record of sailing’s success would not have been possible without Yachting Australia first ensuring that appropriate standards of corporate governance and management were in place,' said Mr Gotze. 'Whilst good governance doesn't ensure success, there is certainly ample evidence of how poor governance can prevent it. This is true in all areas of sport administration, not only high performance.'

Yachting Australia congratulates the Australian Sports Commission on its initiative and is confident that the organisation can maintain its position as a 'best practice' National Sporting Organisation.
Yachting Australia