AHIA, if you're looking for 'big picture' strategies within which to frame the new organisation's ethos/raison détre/lobbying framework....here's
Virginia Chadwick (RIP), NSW Libs, trying to head off the private members bill introduced at the last minute by Sandra Nori (anti-Sydney-helipad NIMBY-in-Chief back in the mid 90's) to blindside the (theoretically-approved) site at Darling Harbour:
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/hanstrans.nsf/V3ByKey/LC19940308?open&refNavID=HA2_1Another point to be carefully considered is the need for a strong helicopter industry. No one disputes the emergency value of helicopters. After experiencing the trauma of the recent bushfires in New South Wales I defy anyone to say helicopters are not of great value to our community. We need a strong helicopter industry. These facilities have to be put in place. It appears that everyone loves a helicopter and during the bushfires everyone was grateful for them as long as they did not land anywhere near a backyard unless, of course, there was a fire or an emergency and then they were needed in a hurry. Currently there are no secure open area landing sites close to the CBD that have fuel and are available in an emergency. Everyone who lives or works in the CBD should seriously consider that matter. Normal, light commercial helicopters and pilots are our most important reserve when faced with an emergency. The January bushfires are the most recent display of the invaluable role helicopters play in meeting a State emergency.
The Hon. Franca Arena: No one is disputing that; we just do not want them in residential areas.
See, to me, there-in lies THE lay down misere approach for any halfway decent HAA to prosecute, especially in the wake of floods, fires, etc. That's the 'sell': help us build a strong h/c industry, so that we're there when you need us. This was a big underlying part of the way the HAA/Sydney Media Club got so close (even just on this one small, parochial ádvance). Incidentally, it's worth us younger guys educating ourselves on what that generation did come close to achieving. Not to blow smoke up their arse; but to get an idea of what it means to lobby for an industry. The sheer issue grunt work you can see for yourself, if you want to kill a couple of hours trolling through old Hansard debates: the studies commissioned, the individuals lobbied, the paperwork churned out...meetings, debates, media slots. No-one should be under any illusion about how hard and time-consuming it is to represent your industry well. Just that one localised helipad project took decades, really, and a shedload of unpaid leeeeerve.
So I think that people shoud be a little relaxed about the whole 'self-interest' thing, as such. Fact: changing the industry takes enormous energy, time, slog. So you're going to need
some source of motivation with legs, as any given Association individual mover and shaker. My own caution doesn't really lie in the 'self-interest' angle as such: I wouldn't have any problem at all being a member of a national association based, say, up on the Gold Coast, and run by, say, industry leaders up there whose key immediate focus was on things that affected their operations (training sector, say). In fact, the way I see it - having just watched my bro go through the endless blood-from-a-stone bureaucratic épic that is...securing an AOC - is that about the ONLY industry figures with the drive, self-belief, work-rate, grit, ego and savvy that would be needed to run any
meaningful industry association, will be those who got their own company up and running first. Same kind of person needed for either start-from-scratch journey, IMHO. One of the less admirable things about (many) pilots is that (many of us) tend to sit back on our arse when it comes to starting new things; many of us prefer to let a few blokes take the risks, try to create something out of nothing, while we mumble behind our hands that it's all gunna fail dismally...then, only when it's up and running, do (most of us) stick up our hands up enthusiastically, clap and hooray, shout: 'Well done mate...(now, gimme a job - oh, and how much you gunna pay me, btw...!??)
To me, when óne h/c company does well, there will nearly always be trickle-down benefits of some kind or other. So whoever you are, AHIA, good luck to you. Except for the Funds Disclaimer...as I said, or alluded to, above, with reference to the demise of the last incarnation of HAA: what I WOULD (more generally) be very hesitant about is paying subs to any group that had any but
purely administrative staff on a payroll. I am a bit hazy on what happened after the Nori blocker bill above passed and stymied that a-l-m-o-s-t Sydney pad...except that I know there was a big wodge of NSW compo paid to the HAA (?) afterwards (because the EPA had already approved the tender/bid when Nori's bill rendered the approval useless).
So the NSW taxpayer had to foot the compo bill. (Yay, good one, u NIMBY clots.)
Anyway: point being that it was, as far as I can tell (these days everyone in the know talks in hushed whispers only about it!), the subsequent melting away of this wodge of dough which has now caused a bit of stink to waft down the last few years of HAA revival talk. I am too johnny-come-lately, helopolitically-ignorant and ambivalent to be sure of deciding where exactly the truth lies, but - as a general rule - my own STRONG preference for any trade/professional association I join is:
elected/answerable office bearers must be voluntary positions. Expenses, sure. Maybe a single Board member (auditor, no connection to helo industry) could get a small retainer. Phone answerer, data puncher, low-level admin/office management job...sure, pay something enough to ensure they're slick and on-the-ball with
all member concerns/queries (nothing dries up subs quicker than an Answering Machine that never does and a Monthly Newsletter that never is). But the rest - Pres/Sec/Project Officers/lobbyists....sorry, but you do it as a labor of love...with the quid pro quo being, necessarily, that your membership have to accept that you guys doing the lobbying grunt work will have a natural bias towards/expertise in industry-wide improvements grounded in their own external commercial interests. How could it be any other way?
But if such connections are transparent, then I begrudge no-one who gets out and does the grinding time. Authentic transparency ensures that if you get to the point that a majority reckons the skew IS becoming too outrageously self-interested, with not enough general trickle-down gain as a by-product....then OK, you vote them out. Volunteerism also means, btw, that those who take on those elected slots protect themselves against accusations of financial shabbiness/jobs-for-mates, etc (justified or not).
Sorry for the length, BS. Just a few thoughts, is all. One thing that might be refreshing would be if a few older guys - who know - spoke candidly about what happened with/to the HAA over the last decade or so. But really - every time you watch the telly, you see this or that Sector flogging themselves relentlessly to the Grate Orstrayun Public (right now in NSW it's 'Public Education' and the bloody Opera House)...and it drives me bonkers that we helicopter drivers - the coolest human beings on the planet, ever - just ain't getting a good enough collective press. Time we got our PR poo in one sock.