{"id":981,"date":"2014-10-19T11:53:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T00:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=981"},"modified":"2014-10-19T11:53:15","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T00:53:15","slug":"ra-aus-agm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=981","title":{"rendered":"RA-Aus AGM – membership apathy reigns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lots<\/a>

Lots of empty chairs at the AGM<\/p><\/div>\n

On Saturday 18 October I flew over from Tyabb to Lethbridge for the Recreational Aviation Australia (RA-Aus) Annual General Meeting (AGM). It was a great day for flying – high cloud filtering the warm sun and light northerly breezes. A perfect day for my first visit to an RA-Aus AGM.<\/p>\n

However, out of a total membership said to be approaching 10,000 people, only around 50-55 attended and 15 of those\u00a0were board and committee members and executive. That makes 35-40 ordinary members\u00a0out of 10,000 willing to make the effort to go. Says a lot about something…<\/p>\n

I know that AGMs in any sphere are not renowned for high attendance rates. However, RA-Aus does not have any electronic voting and proxy voting or live\u00a0AGM web-casting, all of which would potentially reduce physical attendance. \u00a0So I was stunned by the tiny numbers. A mountain of pre-meeting burgers and bangers (‘snags’ to my Australian friends) went to waste. As did over\u00a0100 empty\u00a0chairs in the meeting hangar.<\/p>\n

I want to say right out that I make no direct criticism of the officials – elected and employed – who have clearly been putting a lot of work into turning round the disastrous\u00a0mess left by previous RA-Aus administrations. Solving and resolving the problems of registrations and re-registrations, sorting out the technical issues and dealing with the mighty bureaucracy that is CASA isn’t\u00a0an enviable task. Also, it cannot be easy to report mounting financial losses, particularly when CASA pays RA-Aus about $7 per member per year for the $170 per member per year value of RA-Aus services CASA\u00a0receives\u00a0in return.<\/p>\n

I was also stunned by the interminable questions from the floor – mostly inaudible and not repeated by the recipient using the microphone – about rearranging the deck-chairs. The new CEO, Michael Linke, made two\u00a0short presentations (he only joined in July) about what he saw as the recent achievements and what’s on the radar to deliver. He seems to have a good\u00a0grip after only such a short tenure and he was at least trying to look forward. Jim Tatlock, the Treasurer, also deserves a mention for a commendably concise and clear presentation of the financials.\u00a0Much of the red ink is down to investing in technology and other things which should have been done long ago. It always costs five times as much to catch up as it does to keep up.<\/p>\n

But for the rest…too much concentration on the cost part of the equation as opposed to income generation. And nothing remotely inspiring to get your blood pumping about the future. Maybe that’s why attendance was so low – although Eugene Reid (a previous President of RA-Aus) said that it was about ‘average’ for these meetings.<\/p>\n

No doubt there will be a full report of the meeting on the RA-Aus website<\/a> in due course (please note: you’ll need to be a member of RA-Aus to access financial reports and other similar material). And lengthy analysis in\u00a0the forum chatrooms by\u00a0people who didn’t attend….<\/p>\n

I’m not going to end on a negative note. A few people – at least the 15 board \/committee members and\u00a0employees\u00a0at the meeting – have been willing to put up their hands and spend a lot of their time and energy working to get RA-Aus back into a state we can be proud of. The least we can do is show up and support them.<\/p>\n

So why couldn’t\u00a0you muster up the enthusiasm\u00a0to attend\u00a0the RA-Aus AGM?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

PS – One small point: I am wondering why RA-Aus has not formed a trade forum for recreational aircraft manufacturers and importers? After all, we\u00a0experience\u00a0at first hand the questions & reactions of buyers, all\u00a0of whom are\u00a0potential and existing RA-Aus members.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday 18 October I flew over from Tyabb to Lethbridge for the Recreational Aviation Australia (RA-Aus) Annual General Meeting (AGM). It was a great day for flying – high cloud filtering the warm sun and light northerly breezes. A … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[86,131,264,593,798,807,812],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}