Update: Newington Tradition Supporters Fund

In line with all our correspondence to date, this information and the attachments contained within are to be considered ‘open’ correspondence - we do this for transparency.

The legal team have been working tirelessly and diligently over the past ten weeks, leaving no stone unturned in their fight against the Council and their decision to take Newington co-ed.

Attached is a timeline of the various legal letters that have been sent, listed via date order, including what response, if any, has been received to give you an idea of the effort that has been taking place over the last eight weeks.

Click here to view the legal letters referred above.

The more research and hours spent trawling over documents more than 160 years old, along with more current documents that the Council has used to rely on when making their decision, the clearer the position is that this is much more than an argument simply over whether the Council had the legal right to convert Newington into a co-education school, this is about transparency, accountability, integrity, governance and the ambivalence of the Council in all matters relating to the greater Newington community who didn’t share the same view of the world.

From the attached timeline of correspondence, you will see that our first letter was sent to the College on the 29 November 2023, merely one week following the Council’s announcement. Since that date, Brown Wright Stein, the law firm acting on our behalf in this matter, have sent no fewer than twenty-two letters and follow up requests to various parties involved in this process, seeking information. To date, we are yet to receive any substantial response from any of the parties we have written to, other than the Attorney General, who appears to be taking a keen interest in this process.

We are unsure why:

• the school appears to be deliberately stonewalling our requests for information,

• Ernst & Young, have been deliberately abrasive in their responses, whilst advising us in their last correspondence that they are no longer acting as the auditors of either Newington College or the Newington Foundation following the 2022 audit, or answering any of the questions we had posed to them,

• the Newington Foundation, supposedly an independent charity to Newington College, referred us back to the Carrol O’Dea letter from Newington College, with no consideration to the fact that they are not controlled by the Council of Newington College or answering any of the questions we had posed to them,

• the councillors have chosen to respond to our letters, not individually as we had written to them, but united via the Chairman, Tony McDonald, again referring us back to Carrol O’Dea response, without answering any of the questions we had posed to them,

• the Church is taking so long to provide information, which, by all accounts, in todays day and age should be readily available at the click of a button.

The word ‘why’ seems to be reoccurring, and all stems from the Council’s initial decision, in which they still can’t explain, why.

From the beginning, whilst not in favour of the decision to go co-ed, our intent was merely to seek out information in relation to the establishment of Newington College, around trust deeds and other pertinent documents in order to better understand whether the Council was actually entitled, to not simply make the decision to move to co-ed, but, in fact, whether they could even research or expense any funds on anything that does not involve the education of boys and young men (youth).

Since our initial correspondence, and the more we investigate how the College has been run, including the consultation process that provided the Council with the confidence to make their decision, the more we begin to question the governance of the school and the parties in position of power.

Whilst we do not want to bombard you all with legal letters and responses that have been sent to date, we are attaching several of the various correspondence (redacted for personal email addresses only) so that you can read for yourselves the information that we are seeking and the questions that we would like answered. You will see that, if Newington, the Newington Foundation and the Uniting Church were transparent organisations, the information requested should not only be readily available, but should be provided willingly, and not due to parents chasing and threatening legal action. Whilst all of the correspondence is important, we specifically draw your attention to the attachment 2023.12.20 - Letter from Carroll O'Dea to Brown Wright Stein Lawyers_Redacted. Rather than seeking to answer the valid questions and requests for information, the Council through their Lawyers have instead chosen to attempt to question whether anybody can actually take action (has standing) against the Council's decision. The actions of the Councillors, Foundation and Church do not uphold the values that we, as current Newington parents, along with the Old Boys and greater Newington community have come to expect from the executive in charge of the School and responsible for educating our boys and young men.

Again, thank you to all of you who are supporting our current challenge against the College and College Councillors.

For all those who have contributed funds to this action, we again thank you. You will, if you haven't already, be receiving a receipt for your contributed amount for your records shortly.

This important work cannot continue without funds! Please dig deep and donate by clicking here.

As this email may be caught up in peoples spam or junk folders, please feel free to forward this email on to all parties who it may be of interest to.

Kind Regards,

Newington Traditions Support Fund