Former Silver Ferns selector Gail Parata believes Dame Noeline Taurua is the only netball coach capable of leading the national side and "heads need to roll" over her suspension.
Parata resigned in the wake of Taurua standing down last month.
Taurua and her coaching staff were stood down for the series against South Africa after a review was held into the environment within the camp.
They remain on the outer, with Yvette McCausland-Durie to continue as interim coach for the Constellation Cup series against Australia and November's tour to the United Kingdom.
"We want to win the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games and Dame Noeline and Debbie Fuller are the best coaches to take this team forward ... I believe there are no other high performance coaches in New Zealand currently that can take this team to the World Cup and win it," Parata told RNZ's Morning Report programme today.
Parata said the handling of the issue by Netball New Zealand had been poor.
"They need to be reinstated and then heads need to roll ... the decision-making people who made these terrible decisions in the first place."
RNZ has reported that some players felt the environment within the Silver Ferns camp was "psychologically unsafe".
But Parata believes that the review process that Netball New Zealand undertook was flawed.
"There are 31 people in the Silver Ferns environment including athletes and management. They only spoke to five Silver Ferns and two junior Silver Ferns, so there's a whole lot of people that got missed out, never knew that the process was going on, they went behind Dame Noeline's back."
She said there was no transparency.
"Dame Noeline has no idea what that review entailed and when you don't know, you don't know how to fix it.
"We all want a safe environment including the coaches, every player deserves that ... where it gets murky is the word unsafe, what does that mean?
"I've been in the environment and I have never ever seen an unsafe environment when Dame Noeline has been coaching. Knowing Dame Noeline for over 35 years I have never seen her be that type of coach that the players are saying, I believe that there is something else going on."
Parata said the ongoing saga would have wider implications.
"Now who wants to be a coach, when there is a risk an athlete could say something that is misrepresented and then a career is lost."
