Mardi Gras Doesn’t Have a People Problem. It Has a Governance Problem.

A former director on the structural problem the 4 July EGM cannot solve.

On 4 July, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras members will gather at Harold Park Community Hall, and online, to vote on seven resolutions. Four are about removing or disciplining people. As a former director, I have watched the lead-up with a familiar weariness, because I have seen this before, and I have seen what it costs once the meeting ends and someone still has to balance the budget, satisfy funders and keep the organisation delivering on its promises.

I am not going to tell anyone how to vote. The resolutions are not what I want to write about, because whichever way they fall, I have stopped believing this cycle is helping Mardi Gras do the one thing it exists to do. I have watched too many capable people worn down by it, and too much energy spent on who should be in the room rather than what the room is for.

What worries me is not any single motion. It is the pattern.

Pride in Protest moves to remove the co-chairs. If that fails, the dispute does not end. It moves to the next election. If Pride in Protest is then disciplined or excluded, it moves to the election after. Remove the directors aligned with Pride in Protest and the instability does not end. It simply relocates. A membership that feels unrepresented can call the next extraordinary meeting just as easily, and every cycle erodes the trust of sponsors, funders and stakeholders. More importantly, it erodes trust within the community itself, and legitimacy is far harder to rebuild than a balance sheet.

The obvious reply writes itself. Petitions, motions and extraordinary meetings are not governance failures, they are democracy, and I would defend every one of those rights. The question is not whether members should hold them. It is whether an organisation can function when they become the main way it is governed, rather than the safeguard of last resort.

Mardi Gras is not a small activist collective. It is one of the country’s most significant LGBTQIA+ institutions, generating around $39 million a year for the New South Wales economy, funded in part by government, sponsors and thousands of volunteer hours. That scale carries obligations, budgets, funding conditions and risk, and every governance crisis burns time and money that should be going into the parade, the artists, accessibility and the community outcomes that justify the funding in the first place.

It also carries a human cost we rarely name. Directors are volunteers with jobs and lives outside the boardroom, expected to absorb public criticism and personal conflict without showing the strain.

Good people leave, not because they stop caring, but because the cost of caring gets too high.

I know that pressure from the inside. I am autistic, and when I sat on a board there was no language for it in the room and no framework for it in the governance. The unspoken rule, then as now, is that a director absorbs the pressure and shows none of it. Diversity is not only about who gets elected. It is about whether the environment lets diverse people stay once they arrive.

None of this means a board should be unsackable. Sometimes removing a director is exactly how accountability works, and members must keep that power. The problem is not that removal exists. It is that removal has become the default setting, the first tool reached for rather than the last.

Which brings me to the part most people would rather not say.

The problem may not be the individuals at all. It may be the structure they are all operating inside. People change. Factions change. Governance structures endure.

Mardi Gras needs to evolve. It manages major events, public funding and serious reputational risk through a structure permanently exposed to whoever can organise enough numbers to call a meeting. The irony is that every side believes it is protecting Mardi Gras, while the cumulative effect of these battles is to weaken the institution everyone claims to care about.

None of this is new for me. I have always argued for a professional board but the answer is not to strip out community control. It is to hold community representation and organisational stability at once: a professional board under a new constitution that protects elected community seats. Members would not lose their voice. They would gain a more meaningful one, shifting from refereeing operational disputes to holding the organisation accountable for its outcomes, its strategy and its impact.

A fair question is who chooses these directors, and what stops a professional board becoming its own closed shop. That has to be answered in the constitution, not left to trust. Members would continue electing community directors directly. Professional directors would be selected through an independent nominations process and ratified by members. Members would retain control of the constitution itself. Professional expertise on the board, member authority over the board.

The power of members to remove the people who govern is not the disease. It is the floor of democratic accountability, and it stays. The goal of reform is not to prevent accountability. It is to stop removal becoming the first response to every disagreement, by giving the organisation the internal conduct, complaint and safety mechanisms it currently lacks, so a director who is out of line, or a volunteer who needs protecting, is handled internally rather than at the next extraordinary meeting.

A professional model would not remove politics from Mardi Gras, nor should it. Mardi Gras was born from activism and remains a vital platform for advocacy. What it would reduce is the risk that any organised faction, regardless of ideology, can repeatedly destabilise the organisation. The purpose of reform is not to win any current fight. It is to make sure the next disagreement does not have to become a crisis.

There is a contradiction worth naming. Mardi Gras receives public support because governments recognise its cultural, social and economic value, and that support carries expectations. Not about what Mardi Gras may say or who it may challenge, but about how it is run: financial stewardship, risk and accountability. Strong advocacy and strong governance are not in tension. The contradiction sits in wanting the reach, influence and resources of a major institution while resisting the governance and stewardship expected of one.

Mardi Gras has survived police violence, public hostility and decades of change. It will survive this EGM too. New directors will arrive, new factions will emerge, new disagreements will follow. The question is whether they inherit an organisation that can withstand them without descending into crisis.

The future of Mardi Gras will be decided by whether we finally have the courage to build a governance model fit for the institution Mardi Gras has become. That is the conversation I hope begins once the votes are counted.

First published on LinkedIn, 3 July 2026.