Hi Tony,
I didn`t mean to lead you to believe that there were "politics" involved. I don`t know if there are in Aus, certainly not in S.Africa. I think the resistance of the existing class members in Aus to vote in favour of adding a spinnaker to the Mozzie comes from a small group who would rather leave the boat exactly as it was designed 38 years ago, which would be fine if other classes were not offering a more exciting product as they evolve, or what happens when new designs come on the market is that sailors in established classes move on to newer more exciting or challenging boats. Their argument is that if you change anything on the boat, the existing core group which makes up the class will stop sailing and the class will die. More often than not, however, a change in a positive direction which adds more excitement, crewmember participation, and makes the boat more competitive with other offerings, all at a reasonable add-on cost, has the tendency to not only re-ignite many existing class member`s interest in sailing, but also attracts other sailors/non-sailors to the class who would otherwise have not even looked at the boat.
Of course this is just my opinion, it may be totally different in Aus to what we found happened here.
Even if the spinnaker remains a non-class item, what does it hurt to have one for open-class racing and having fun with the faster boats, and removing it for Mozzie-only events, you have the best of both worlds then.

Steve