Behind those glossy pictures of buckets of prawns on the deck overlooking our sparkling Laguna Bay, there’s a deeper, darker side to our coast’s highest profile club.

Noosa Heads Surf Club has seen a long overdue management shakeup just under three months since the publishing of bombshell allegations of a ‘toxic culture’, bullying and poor management.

Long-time President Ross Fisher has been replaced by John Roderick, while a recruitment firm searches for a new General Manager.

It’s not the first time John Roderick has been brought in to tidy up after Ross Fisher. Roderick was installed at Peregian Beach to set up the new club there after a brutal and divisive campaign by Fisher and the Noosa club to build a giant, pokie-funded club on the frontal dune at Peregian Beach, an idea roundly rejected by the Noosa Council and the local community.

A dysfunctional club hits the headlines

Brisbane’s Sunday Mail broke the story on February 23^rd, revealing that Noosa Heads Surf club President Ross Fisher would be stepping down following “a blistering email in which Mr Fisher slammed critics as “unfortunate clowns”, “spiteful and pathetic past members” out for revenge, and “psychopaths”. The email was followed by a letter from lawyers for Mr Fisher who said he made an “unequivocal retraction and apology” for “false and defamatory statements”.

The story went on to detail;

• the resignation of the club’s former General Manager
• several prominent members who had not had their memberships reviewed after speaking out about the running of the club
• critics claiming new rules had stripped members’ rights and allowed them to be kicked out of the club “with no right of appeal”.
• the club’s ‘obscene’ $14.7 million bank balance.

Dealing with the elephant in the surf club room 

While the management overhaul on Hastings Street is overdue, changing the culture of the movement that allowed these well-known issues to fester for years is another matter altogether.  Some in the surf scene see the intervention as little more than putting a bandaid on a gaping wound.

The business operating from public land overlooking Queensland’s most expensive bit of beachfront real estate is not really a surf club.  It’s a large, taxpayer supported hotel with poker machines and a massive annual income that it often struggles to spend, which helps to explain the multi-million dollar refurbishments, a property empire that recently expanded to Noosaville, cash in the bank of nearly $15-million and new plans for a complete and luxurious rebuild including underground parking.

Elsewhere in Noosa Matters we have written about the clear conflict of a business raking in millions of dollars from addicted ‘problem’ gamblers while purporting to be a family club teaching nippers the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.  It doesn’t take good management to switch on 25 highly addictive poker machines each morning.

Such is the gambling lobby takeover of Surf Lifesaving Queensland that the movement now operates more than a thousand poker machines along our beaches on the Gold and Sushine Coasts, with a ripple affect on broken families, domestic violence, financial crimes and suicide.  These are the by-products of a broken surf club movement.

The clubs have found all sorts of ways of rationalising their pokie funding.   The simple fact is they do not need those tainted millions.  They make more than enough without it.  And they only give a tiny fraction back to the community.

Along our coastline there are many examples of well-tanned but under-qualified boards and executives running multi-million dollar enterprises, all underpinned by pokies and public handouts.

For some – protecting privileged positions, perks and pokie profits has become a priority above the concept of managing an ethical club.

Only when the best and bravest of our surf club families speak out about the elephant in the room will we start to deal with the toxic nature of these million-dollar businesses.