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ACA call for Blood!!! 17-Sep-2009 At 6:32:48 PM hotgemini

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Let me apologise in advance, this is going to be a bit long.

Secondly, I'd like to thank everyone for their input into this thread, it is important, in fact absolutely critical (IMHO) to have healthy discussions about how to approach community issues such as this.

For those who aren't aware, I'm a queensland climber and amongst other things I was the founding president of the ACAQ. The ACAQ being the Queensland state chapter of the ACA, we're seperately incorporated with our own constitution, documentation, representatives and finances but very much intended to be a state body operating under the national umbrella of the ACA.

For further background, Queensland has simply never had one club which took on an effective statewide representative role for climbers in the way the VCC and to perhaps a lesser degree (no disrespect intended, merely an assessment of the relative scale of the operations) the SRC has. For a variety of reasons the BRC largely opted out of such a role and quite reasonably focussed on a minimum adminstration and maximum climbing model.

With that as the backdrop and the closure of Mt. Flinders as the catalyst, the ACA (Qld) Inc was formed. The cornerstone of the ACAQ model is the crag representative, a single nominated person responsible for keeping abreast of issues at a given crag. The Crag reps, the president, secretary and treasurer make up the management committee with the option of adding additional roles (thus far the volunteer co-ordinator and media rep). This means the vast majority of activity can happen at the crag rep level, eg. if someone wants to report graffiti at a crag (as recently happened with tibro, maroon and greville).

Given that in the early days, there is little guarantee of tangible returns, the decision was made to set membership costs quite low, with the figure of $15/annum selected as this still gives some funding to support the organisation but keeps the cost within the threshold that the majority of climbers would be happy to view as a 'donation' with the goal of improved access, representation etc.

Furthermore we approached the existing clubs with the offer to affiliate (following the BMC model) whereby their members would receive a discounted rate of membership of $10/annum. There is a couple of reasons for this, firstly it helps to establish the body both in terms of member numbers and basic operating finance. Secondly it helps the clubs feel included in the organisation, avoiding any feeling that the ACAQ was seeking to exclude or otherwise overlook the fantastic contribution to climbing made by the numerous clubs in Queensland. Thirdly it simplifies the membership process for the people involved, they aren't chased up twice for money, forms etc.

I personally am a believer in the benefit of a national representative structure for climbers, however I also believe that the vast bulk of issues facing climbing happen at the state or local level. Because of this, I'd like to see the national body of the ACA do the minimum of tasks, basically where it is necessary or expedient to avoid duplication, with the vast bulk of the operational activities taking place at the state level.

I think in the longest term, it makes sense to seek to bring all clubs under that umbrella, but it is also crucial to understand such things will take time and the structure of the organisation has to be viable and sustainable at all stages in that evolution, so you can't rely on that support from day one.

I'd be interested in having a dialogue with the SRC, SURMC, NUMC and others (UTSOAC?) to try to understand how they feel about such a structure and to see if we can work collaboratively to establish a way for those organisations to interact with an ACA (NSW) body. Similarly with Tasmania and then SA and so on. I conciously omitted Victoria there as I believe that they're very much in the best place in terms of australian representation of climbers as it stands and as such there needs to be no urgency to develop it, but also I'd still be interested to have similar discussion in victoria with the VCC (and WVCC, LUMC and MUMC etc) but perhaps working on a 5 or even 10 year plan.

For the national organisation, my thoughts would be to simply draw its executives from the state executives, either by a rotating roster or by an election, whatever is deemed to be more suitable by the states, I don't imagine it being a contentious issue in the next decade at least.

-Adam Gibson
ACA (Qld) Kangaroo Point Crag Rep.