Fish & Game boss resigns suddenly amid internal tension

Friday, 18 December 2020

Former Fish & Game chief executive Martin Taylor, who has resigned.

The head of Fish & Game has resigned suddenly amid an ongoing dispute with the organisation.

It caps off a year of dysfunction at the group tasked with managing freshwater fishing and game bird hunting nationwide.

Martin Taylor, the organisation's chief executive since 2017, cleared out his desk on Thursday.

His resignation was announced in a brief statement by Fish & Game national council chairman Ray Grubb on Friday morning.

* Time for change for Fish and Game

* Fish and Game 'imploding' as Government plans intervention**

It came as a surprise to staff, who only learned of Taylor's resignation on the day he finished. He was three years into a five-year contract.

While both Taylor and the organisation have publicly wished each other well, it is understood there had been tension, according to several current and former Fish & Game members.

Taylor did not return a request for comment.

It has been a rocky period for the organisation, which is one of the country's most effective environmental lobby groups, responsible for a string of significant legal victories protecting water quality.

Since the start of the year, it has had three chairpersons, undergone an independent governance review, taken a significant financial hit due to Covid-19 restrictions, and now lost its chief executive.

Behind the scenes, there had been a struggle between the organisation's central body, responsible for advocacy and national policy, and its regional councils, which operate semi-autonomously.

Although the regions and the national body have different responsibilities, the national body comprises people appointed by the regions. There has been significant turnover on the national council: Of its 12 members, only one remains from when Taylor was hired in 2017.

MODERNISATION

Since he was hired, Taylor – who has a corporate background – sought to modernise the organisation, which has kept the same structure since it was formed in 1990.

It is understood he struggled to get access to basic information from the regions, such as a breakdown of staff salaries.

A subsequent staff audit commissioned in 2018 found little consistency in remuneration policies across the regions: A manager in one region was paid nearly $200,000, while managers in other regions received around half that, despite doing the same job.

'The role titles are inconsistent and the number of staff or size of the geographical area they are responsible for is not reflected in the level of remuneration,' the audit, obtained by Stuff, said.

In at least one region, the manager's salary exceeded the annual revenue from licence fees.

Fish and Game is tasked with managing freshwater fishing and game bird hunting nationwide.

Taylor was also concerned about other audits which found issues ranging from financial mismanagement to cultural issues in three of the 12 regions.

Some regional staff saw Taylor's efforts as dictatorial, overstating the issues in an effort to centralise control. In February, numerous staff members wrote to the national council saying Taylor's actions were authoritarian and causing low morale.

Some regional staff were also worried about the prospect of Government intervention. It is understood some members of the organisation – including Taylor and former chairman Lindsay Lyons – wanted an independent governance review, which they saw as necessary to streamline the organisation.

A review was put in place by the previous Government and was due to report back before Christmas, but is likely to be released in the new year.

FEDERATED FARMERS

Another major bone of contention has been an effort by some councillors to seek a better relationship with Federated Farmers.

Six members of the national council met with counterparts from the agricultural lobby group in November. Afterwards, they issued a joint press release which said the groups 'were looking at combining our strengths to improve freshwater'.

Taylor did not attend the meeting, and is understood to have strongly disagreed with the notion of working alongside Federated Farmers. A week before the meeting took place, Taylor presented a lengthy memo to councillors pointing out the many ways in which the two organisations had fundamentally disagreed on issues.

'It is clear Federated Farmers as an organisation is opposed not just to the position [Fish & Game] take on freshwater, but also our statutory mandate,' the memo said, going on to describe the organisations' views as 'starkly divergent'.

Nevertheless, the meeting took place, in an unusually blatant circumvention of the chief executive.

Desire for such a move had long been signalled. Late last year, the national council ordered Taylor not to make public comments that could be perceived as disparaging to farmers.

It had followed a campaign by Federated Farmers to have farmers elected onto Fish & Game councils at the previous election, which had moderate success.

Following the elections, at least one region wrote to the national council raising concerns about how farming was specifically highlighted in its freshwater advocacy.

The gag order was rescinded in May, after a Colmar Brunton survey commissioned by Fish & Game found two-thirds of licence holders supported specific criticism of farming in its environmental advocacy.

The same survey found most Fish & Game councillors, however, favoured a move away from highlighting farming, again showing a split between the national and region level bodies.

In the statement announcing Taylor's resignation, Fish & Game said it would soon begin advertising for a new chief executive.