Growers 'self-destructing'

By Philippa Stevenson

This week's abrupt resignation by Apple and Pear Board chief executive Gary Smith was partly the result of attacks on him by growers and the "inane political ideology" driving industry structural reforms.

The trouble-shooting Australian, who joined the board three years ago, was on a $600,000 a year salary before renewing his contract just three months ago.

His salary for the new deal, to end in December next year, will not be known until the board's annual report is published.

Growers were mystified by the resignation despite some of them calling for his head in the wake of a price collapse for their mainstay braeburn apples.

Mr Smith and board chairman John McCliskie had said that the resignation was mutually agreed because both felt the restructured organisation needed a chief executive who would stay past 2000.

But Mr Smith yesterday revealed other reasons and fired off some broadsides during the pipfruit growers conference in Hastings.

He said "pastings" at the hands of Hawkes Bay and Nelson growers after the news that their incomes could halve because of the price collapse had taken a personal toll and figured in his decision to quit.

He said growers mistrusted the board, focused on internal issues instead of the market and were "forgetting who the enemy is.

"I see an industry which is pulling itself apart ... [with its] finger very firmly on the self-destruct button."

He and the board had to accept some responsibility for grower suspicion "because there has been a major communication gap somewhere in the process" which he found personally and professionally discomforting.

Yesterday, Mr McCliskie announced a new series of industry forums to give growers a platform to comment on industry changes and market developments.

Mr Smith said he hoped these would be helpful, "but if it is another means of letting things fester and keeping a [firmer] finger on the self-destruct button, then they will be a waste of time."

He said the industry's political environment was terrible, and the reform debate had been awful. "Having to deal with inane political ideology ... I don't care for."

The Government-driven industry deregulation had resulted in a new structure which was the "best we could do."

"Yes, there are some belts and braces around the edge which I think are creating enormous unnecessary compliance issues which wouldn't apply to any other organisation. But that was the cost of getting ownership, and the cost of getting a platform from which the industry can build a future."

The restructuring, which began in May 1998 with the Government's call for deregulation plans to be presented in November that year, had cost growers in money spent on the process as well as in foregone returns because of the distraction from focussing on marketing.

He urged retention of the single-seller structure which he said gave the industry a premium on its market returns which had been valued at between $79 million and $100 million a year.