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The Opoutere youth hostel Backpackers (Photo supplied)
The Opoutere youth hostel Backpackers (Photo supplied)

SocietyMay 16, 2018

The YHA was set up by volunteer members. Now it’s refusing to listen to them

The Opoutere youth hostel Backpackers (Photo supplied)
The Opoutere youth hostel Backpackers (Photo supplied)

Former YHANZ board member and Opoutere YHA member Mark Ebrey argues that the national board of the Youth Hostel Association is losing touch with the people that really matter – it’s members. 

All over the country, organisations are losing touch with their stakeholders. The Plunket Society recently taking over local branch funds is just one example of organisations increasingly riding roughshod over the people who support them.

St John did the same late last year, by disbanding its Ohura branch committee and taking over its bank account. The account was said to contain hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by the branch.

More recently, we’ve seen Air New Zealand give the finger to regional airports such as Kapiti and Kaitaia in the name of corporate efficiency.

There is a battle currently underway between a member group of the Youth Hostel Association of New Zealand and the national board. It’s over the national board’s decision to effectively ignore a motion passed at the annual meeting in Wellington late last year: to defer closure of its iconic Opoutere Youth Hostel in the Coromandel for 12 months in order to enable all stakeholders to have an input into the hostel’s future.

The Opoutere YHA Members Group has received a legal opinion that says the national board’s decision to ignore the direction of the motion is unconstitutional, but we’re left with the impression the board doesn’t care. They have made no response to the legal opinion forwarded to them other than to say they will reply at an undefined time in the future.

The Opoutere decision is just a symptom of the problems faced by YHA members to rein in the board and get it to respect the wishes of its members.

YHANZ was set up originally by Cora Wilding to provide a means of helping poor urban families to get out into the country, and meet others in the same boat. At its peak, YHANZ had dozens of hostels spread across the country that were operated and maintained by voluntary member groups.

As time went on and the members aged, the voluntary member groups slowly disappeared and control of the hostels passed to YHANZ’s national office.

In recent years the national board has carried out an aggressive co-option programme, to create a board that now has only one member who could truly be said to be a YHA member in the traditional sense. He was elected last year amid growing member concerns.

At the same time, they have closed or sold all of the hostels that are not in main cities or tourist towns like Queenstown and Wanaka – effectively turning YHA into just another “flashpacker” chain. The decision to close the only “experiential” rural hostel left – Opoutere – at Easter this year was the last straw for the members who make up the Opoutere YHA Members Group.

Their frustrations about being able to get the board engaged last year led to a constitutional notice of motion calling for the introduction of a disputes resolution process, which failed to get the required 66% majority at the annual meeting. But group members say the way that process was handled has only fuelled their disquiet.

The problem is that the national office controls the information flow to members. With the disappearance of branches and member groups, that means anyone who disagrees with the national board has found it almost impossible to get their voices heard by the membership.

One of the more outspoken members of the Opoutere group has been threatened with expulsion from YHA, after he accused the national chair and senior staff of misleading members at the annual meeting, an accusation they say is “disrespectful”.

The current position is that the Opoutere Youth Hostel has been closed and we’ve been told negotiations are under way with a third party to run it as an outdoor education centre.

YHANZ chief executive Mark Wells has offered to work with the Opoutere YHA Members Group as part of this process – but they are reluctant to do so if it is on his terms. He and the national board have still failed to act on the outcome of the motions carried at the annual meeting as per the constitutional procedure.

It raises the question – who is the national board actually representing if it is prepared to ignore so many members? Complaints have been lodged with the Charities Commission and Department of Internal Affairs over the YHA board’s actions and its consistency with the Charities and Incorporated Societies Acts. What we want more than anything is for the board to show it is listening.


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This photograph of a bulldog attempting to squeeze through a cat door has been chosen in preference to yet another generic therapy stock image
This photograph of a bulldog attempting to squeeze through a cat door has been chosen in preference to yet another generic therapy stock image

SocietyMay 16, 2018

Chemo works, so we fund it properly. Why not do the same for counselling?

This photograph of a bulldog attempting to squeeze through a cat door has been chosen in preference to yet another generic therapy stock image
This photograph of a bulldog attempting to squeeze through a cat door has been chosen in preference to yet another generic therapy stock image

‘Mental disorders’ rank as the third-leading cause of health loss for New Zealanders. Kyle MacDonald makes the case for universal, free counselling for all.

What if I told you that one of the biggest and most expensive health problems in New Zealand was not only being ignored, but although we had the technology to treat it, we as a country weren’t funding the treatment? What if I told you that people were languishing in ill health because they couldn’t afford to get the treatment that we know would help them out of their illness?

What if I told you, as a nation, we were actively encouraging people to talk about their health difficulties, seek treatment, get help, and when they reached out there was no help available?

And what if I also told you that this epidemic was only going to get worse, predicted by the World Health Organisation to be the second most prevalent health condition in the world by 2020, and it was already killing over 600 people a year in New Zealand?

I am of course, talking about mental health, and more specifically depression and anxiety.

Just imagine for a moment if we didn’t fund chemotherapy for cancer patients, and if you needed to access chemotherapy you had to pay to access it privately, or risk waiting on the limited and patchy treatment available via the public health system.

It might sound far-fetched, but that is the reality for thousands of New Zealanders who are forced to go without counselling and talk therapy – which would help them overcome their depression and anxiety – simply because they can’t afford it.

And these are not small problems. The most recent data we have is from the 2012/13 New Zealand Health Survey. It showed that so-called “mental disorders” as a group are the third-leading cause of health loss for New Zealanders (11.1% of all health loss), behind only cancers (17.5%) and vascular and blood disorders (17.5%). And that one in six New Zealand adults (16%, or an estimated 582,000 adults) had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder at some time in their lives

Despite all the work we’ve done on anti-stigma campaigns, on changing people’s attitudes, this is one of the remaining vestiges of the deeply ingrained stigma and discrimination against those who struggle with their psychological health: we continue to deny people treatment – that we know works – based on ignorance, mis-information, and the idea that it is somehow a luxury.

However in New Zealand we do have a tradition of recognising our mistakes, and rectifying them. We sold our rail network and realised that privatising it didn’t work, so we swallowed our pride, bought it back and we dubbed it “KiwiRail”. We also recognised that after having sold all our banks (to Australians no less) we needed a locally owned bank. And so, “KiwiBank” was born.

More recently, staring down the barrel of a massive housing shortage in Auckland, we are embarking on “KiwiBuild”.

It is time we also recognised that the refusal to publicly fund counselling and talk therapy needs to be fixed. We need to build a national counselling and therapy service – free to all – and do everything we can to make sure those who need treatment in their darkest hours can access it.

It needs to be a service that is world leading, and that we as Kiwis can feel deeply proud of.

We need “KiwiTalk”: its time has come. That’s why I’ve started a campaign, via an Open Submission to the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction, calling on the review to recommend universal free counselling for all Kiwis.

To support my call for Free Counselling for all New Zealanders, go to www.freecounselling.nz

Kyle MacDonald is an Auckland-based psychotherapist.