By the time the final motion was put to delegates at RSL NSW’s annual congress last year, the mood on the high table was bleak. The state’s largest ex-servicemen’s organisation needed urgent reform. But motion after motion put by the board had been voted down by the crowd of mostly grey men who filled the convention centre.

Running the meeting was RSL NSW president Mick Bainbridge, fresh from a bruising conflict with the former chair that ended in her resignation, and allegations that he had overcharged veterans in his private legal practice (which he denies). But the delegates were more concerned by what seemed to them an underlying agenda to castrate their local sub-branches and centralise money and power in the headquarters at Anzac House.

RSL NSW faces a relevance crisis, with over $

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