The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Annual General Meeting was held Saturday, January 29. None of the original motions were debated, in a vote marked by technical delays.At the beginning of the AGM, a procedural motion was raised by 78ers Diane Minnis and Ken Davis, co-chairs of the group First Mardi Gras, that “motions 1-5 not be heard.” This motion was passed with 67% of the vote.As soon as the results were announced, Kyle Olsen and Troy Murphy, proposers of motions 1-5, called a second procedural motion requesting that “motions 6-14 not be heard.”This second procedural motion passed with 52% of the vote.

As a result, motions 6-14 could not be heard or debated.This included Motion 10 which affirmed transition leave being “a right for any trans worker in any industry.”According to SGLMG member and former board member, Charlie Murphy, the first procedural motion was “put up on the basis that it sets a very bad precedent for the democracy of the organisation to hear the motions.“I think Kyle and Troy putting forward the second procedural was about a sense of retaliation.

In that, they did not want the Pride In Protest motions to be put up because they couldn’t get their anti-democratic stuff up.”According to Troy Murphy, “Unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of time to consider each of their motions separately, we were unable to participate in the election due to Vero Votings technical difficulties, whilst holding a significant number of proxies.

We first called for the meeting to be halted via every chat platform available to us during the AGM, however, these calls were not observed.

Original Motions Not Debated at Mardi Gras AGM

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