Maybe Simon should not have voted to support them at the start and while he was Director.... He is partly responsible for the mess that the .au namespace is now suffering from at the hands of current auDA Management and Board.
A lot of people who have run auDA over the years are directly associated with the Victorian Liberal Party and specifically this Mentone Liberal Party branch.
auDA has been used as a "slush fund" by them and their mates for jobs, Board positions and contracts / Consulting expenses.
The Fact is $millions have been wasted and trust me it will all come out in the wash...
Speak up Simon about them or you will just go down as someone who helped them get their snouts into auDA's money ripping off .au domain name Consumers and Fu$$ing up the whole .au namespace plus its reputation globally.
He abstained because he was against Boardman being appointed.
auDA plays funny buggers with the minutes, basically if a director votes against something, first they other directors will school them about how they need to tow the party line so it looks like everything they do is correct because it is "unanimous".
Then finally if they hold course they then have to fight with dominant directors to get things minuted correctly. I don't know the situation with this but I would guess Simon had to fight them to get that in the minutes.