Conceived and baseless allegations have been leveled at Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) regarding the AWI election and WoolPoll voting processes; claiming a lack of transparency.
Mr Charles Olsson, Mr Shane Edwards, Mr Don MacDonald, Mr Sam Stephens and Mr Chris Komor made these allegations, lodging an application with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
AWI Company Secretary, Mr Les Targ said this is clearly divisive mischief, aimed at raising doubts as to the integrity of the AWI election and WoolPoll processes.
These matters were never raised with AWI directly, and simply show a lack of understanding of the process.
Polling for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) is contracted to Link Market Services, a professional share register and returning officer company which also conducts polling for Qantas, Coles Myer, Bluescope, TABCorp, and Telstra.
These processes are audited externally by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and have always been found to be reliable. At no stage is AWI staff involved with counting the votes for either WoolPoll or the AWI elections, so to claim there is a lack of transparency is outrageous.
To compare AWI's professionally conducted voting process to the AWB scandal is scurrilous and grossly mischievous.
AWI has about 30,000 shareholders who are eligible to vote in the election of Directors. There are an additional 19,000 non-shareholders who are eligible to vote at WoolPoll, entitled to one vote for every $100 of wool levy paid in the past three financial years ended 30 June 2006.
marketing@alchempro.com
