Stress forces out Grey Power head

Colin Murray has resigned after a turbulent four months as president of Marlborough Grey Power.

Mr Murray said yesterday he handed in his letter of resignation a few days after a Grey Power meeting in Motueka on October 3 and 4, but members had not yet been sent official notice of this.

Mr Murray's resignation leaves the organisation without a leader as Maureen Bennett quit as vice-president in August because of the in-fighting on the regional executive committee.

Marlborough Grey Power will hold an extraordinary general meeting at 4.30pm on November 18 at the St Mary's Parish centre to elect a new president and more committee members.

Mrs Bennett said the committee was sounding out people about the available positions. "Hopefully there will be two or three [people] to put their hands up," she said.

A month after he became president of Marlborough Grey Power in June, Mr Murray was challenged by committee members. They accused him of being too political, while some members said they were concerned about some of his public comments.

Mrs Bennett called a vote of no confidence at an emergency meeting, but the meeting was never organised because Mr Murray would not accept the request.

Speaking to The Marlborough Express yesterday for the first time in several months, he said the decision to step down was based on the stress on his family.

"When a volunteer service impacts badly on family and family life, then it's time to give up volunteer service," he said.

He planned to remain a member of Grey Power, but said he was unhappy about its structure.

"The federation is not really democratic. It's not fairly representative of the people because the voting is weighted in favour of the smaller associations," he said.

"Smaller associations receive the same number of votes as the larger associations such as Nelson, which made it easy for the smaller factions to outvote the bigger ones. For this reason [Grey Power] will always struggle with governance."

Mr Murray was the only person nominated as president in June when Jean Wilson retired after two years in the position.

"They [Grey Power] were short of a leader so I stepped in. It's an experience I won't want to repeat."

He had not taken much attention of the executive committee before becoming president and would not pay much heed now, he said.

Mrs Bennett said Mr Murray had spoken to a few members about his resignation before giving the letter to committee secretary Jewel Perfect. Neither Mrs Perfect nor treasurer Dennis Paget would comment yesterday on Mr Murray's resignation.

The Express understands it is several months since the committee has had an official meeting because it has been unable to get enough elected members together for a quorum. The latest of those failed meetings was yesterday morning.

SIMON WONG - The Marlborough Express

Last updated 12:00 29/10/2010