CWA of NSW: Potts Point sale was the right move

Was it a policy issue or bad political decision that caused the challenge to arise? Maybe it was something that we needed to respond to quickly and with substantive support?

No. The issue that challenged us most was an internal one that was entirely of our own making.

It was the sale of our significant property asset at Potts Point.

Many readers would be aware of the emotional debate that occurred within our membership on this issue.

The reason I write about this is that, a couple of weeks ago, I presided over my first executive committee meeting as the new state president.

Thankfully, I did not have the job of navigating the tricky waters surrounding the property sale. We were ably served by our immediate past president in this regard.

At this recent meeting though, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that although the evolution was hard, it was definitely worth it.

During this meeting, our elected representatives doled out grants to our regional and rural branches for improvements and works to CWA properties.

They included Cobargo, Coffs Harbour, Ariah Park, Milton, Warialda, Yass and Berridale. All were possible because of the Potts Point sale.

We are injecting real and tangible benefits into these communities and will continue to do so for many years to come.

I can’t help but notice the struggles around the concept of change being faced by other member-based organisations, particularly in the pages of this paper.

Change can be hard. We attach values to certain objects, and ways of doing things as we try to hold on to relevance, and a memory of the way things used to be.

The memories can be kept, but holding on too hard to the rest will undoubtedly lead to the thing many of us dread the most: irrelevance.

We had our identity tied to a building. In the same way as other organisations might have their identity tied to a person, a place, or a position on an issue. 

The truth is that in order to evolve, we needed to go back to the basics. Why are we here? What do we do? For us, the answer was clear in our aims and objectives. We are here to try and make a difference.

We are now in Mascot, the sky hasn’t fallen and we are getting on with the job in a modern way, and in a much more financially stable position.

We still have work to do, but this episode reminds us that change is not a recent phenomenon: we’ve been doing it since 1922.

To use a metaphor, sometimes the train needs to leave the station and not everyone gets on board, however, we do hope to pick up more people as we go down the track.

A train with momentum is better than having it waiting at the station doing nothing.