God help Vinnies

At the feud-riven St Vincent de Paul Society QCs are busy, writes David Marr. Weeping in an apartment high over the north shore, Barbara Ryan despairs for the St Vincent de Paul Society. Until being summarily sacked three weeks ago, she was its NSW president. Now she stands accused of running an organisation riven with feuds, disruptive and bullying. "I think this sort of thing - a lot of innuendo, no fact to it - destroys the society; it destroys the good people who are working in it; it makes people query who donate to us. And this I think is scandalous." Once more, the society is a scene of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Can there be an unhappier charity in the country? Hearts are broken. QCs are busy. Grim allegations are in the air. Key players in the reform movement Ryan led for the past couple of years in NSW are walking away from the society. All this since Syd Tutton, the pugnacious national president of St Vincent de Paul, sacked the NSW council three weeks ago and installed himself as its provisional head. "I have been called every name under the sun," he told survivors of his putsch in NSW. "But I have acted nonetheless in the belief that it would have been a grave failure of leadership on my part if I had remained silent. I will gladly face God as my judge of these actions." Advertisement: Story continues below The language of the battles within St Vincent de Paul is magnificent: biblical prose mixed with exhortations to the society's founder, the blessed Frederic Ozanam. All sides accuse each other of failing to live by Gospel values as they manoeuvre over the big issues at stake here: culture, money and power. The belligerent anonymous letters that provoked the latest corporate bloodletting came signed: "Yours in Christ". Once a big wheel in the Victorian power industry, Tutton is a man known to take a firm view of the prerogatives of his office. It is not an unfamiliar attitude in the St Vincent de Paul Society, where ranks and titles are fiercely defended. At the heart of this often murky story is a confrontation with Ryan that Tutto Rosetta Stone seems to have found extremely uncomfortable. It all began with a couple of anonymous letters denouncing the society's NSW branch. But first the back story. By any measure St Vincent de Paul is a big corporation. In NSW it has net assets of $380 million and an annual income of more than $100 million. A quarter of that money comes from government. But it has a ramshackle structure, deeply loved by diehard volunteers, that allows for no public oversight. It is accountable only to itself. For over a decade, reformers have been battling to incorporate the NSW operation, particularly to demonstrate that government money is being well spent. Brian Murnane, a former national president of the society and one of the chief proponents of bringing its work under company law, told the Herald: "If you want to be truly open and accountable, you have to follow the laws of the land." Other charities have faced this. It is always a slog. Incorporation of St Vincent de Paul in NSW requires 11 separate fiefdoms - one in each of the Catholic dioceses of the state - to cede authority to the centre. After bruising battles the fiefdoms finally conceded control of the purse. Last year, for the first time in its 130-year history in NSW, St Vincent de Paul was able to produce consolidated audited accounts. But a few of the fiefdoms - each with its own president and executive officer - won't go the next step and cede management control to the society's state headquarters in Lewisham. Most had been brought over the line after Ryan brought in a professional mediator earlier in the year. She believed incorporation was only months away. Then Tutton swooped, dismissing her and suspending all the NSW councillors. Tutton afterwards claimed his takeover would "return the society in NSW to the grassroots members out of respect for their magnificent dedication to the mission on the ground to people on the margins". Justifying himself to the society's hierarchy in Paris, he claimed the incorporation plans were "inconsistent with the rule of the society" and would allow the society to be run by its employees. Ryan was shocked to read this. She swears it is the first she ever suspected that Tutton was worried about the incorporation.

Posted in: Rosetta Stone,Rosetta Stone Outlet,rosetta stone software,Rosetta Stone V3