Welcome to a new financial year and another year where the WCBIA has a full agenda of issues to address on behalf of its members.

Our  membership continues to grow, and over the last twelve months we have welcomed Beautiful Whitsundays (Habibi and Fury), Apollo Charters, Real Sail (Iceberg), See Whitsundays (Anaconda III and Prima) and True Blue Sailing (Atlantic Clipper, New Horizons and Tongarra) onboard as members.

From an operational perspective, we have also gone back to the drawing board and are currently in the process of reviewing policies and procedures.  For example, the compliance committee and its procedures will need some direct attention given 2007-8 saw the formal introduction of the Vessel Rating System. This means all members’ vessels must be compliant under this system to ensure ongoing membership to the association. I will touch on this later as I progress through this year’s highlights and activities for the association.

Before I report on the last twelve months, however, I would like to sincerely thank the management committee team who has once again worked so very hard to address industry issues and manage the operations on behalf of you, the members of the WCBIA.

And of course a special thanks must once again go to Deb Lewis who works tirelessly on our behalf and has earned the enormous respect from agencies within our industry sector and the wider Government bodies.

Firstly, you would all be aware our WCBIA team is growing with Trevor Cook and Blue Gray joining us during this year.

As most of you probably are aware by now Trevor has been contracted as the assessor for the Vessel Rating System and has been working with all members in a proactive manner to ensure our association continues to set the benchmark for best practice in the commercial marine industry.

The Vessel Rating Instrument has gone through many reviews by the Standards Committee and will continue to do so over time to ensure best practice benchmarking.  Trevor uses this tool to provide a ‘gap analysis’ for operators, determining how each vessel rates against current best practice standards.

Where a vessel fails to meet the minimum benchmark, Trevor works with that operator over time to bring the vessel up to the standard.  As at the 1st August most of the WCBIA fleet vessels was compliant and those that aren’t continue to work with Trevor to ensure compliance as soon as is practicable.

The VRS has received widespread acclaim and it is a credit to members of the association as to how well received the introduction of this new process has been.  The intent behind the VRS will ensure our members directly influence the future direction of the marine tourism industry and thanks must go to all members for doing their best to embrace this change to membership procedures.

You should all be aware of our plan to develop a Multi Company Agreement (MCA)for members of the WCBIA.  The key objective in doing this is to protect and preserve the contents of the Whitsunday Charter Boat industry Award (2005) in a time of uncertainty in the Federal Industrial Relations arena.  With the Labor government intent on reforms across the board, we need to stay on track when addressing wage rates and conditions.  We all worked so hard and expended huge resources to introduce the WCBI Award, it is critical we do not lose what we built in order to provide continued sustainability for our unique industry.

Jacques Franken, our Industrial Relations Consultant and Deb Lewis met with national heads of the AWU and MUA in July to discuss our commitment to developing our MCA, as well as our perpetual commitment to wider issues such as employee training, skilling and providing longer term employment and career pathway opportunities into the future.

Both unions are now working in a stronger alliance with each other and made it very clear each union is very supportive of our efforts to not only develop an MCA, but to ensure relevant skilling and training issues are addressed for the longer term benefit of our industry.

We will keep you informed of our progress. We need to get the application to develop the MCA approved by the Workplace Authority before we can proceed onto the actual development of the Agreement.  With both the MUA and AWU on side, we now have a stronger case to put forward to the government and from our discussions with the unions and it appears we have exponentially increased our chances of success in bringing the MCA over the line.

Another 20,000 corporate WCBIA brochures were printed in the first half of this year, with only a few minor changes. However, we do currently have the marketing committee working on a totally new design.  The WCBIA ‘tick’ has achieved strong marketplace recognition, even with limited resources going into marketing.  We are doing our best to change that over the next twelve months with a more strategic communications plan being considered by the marketing committee.  It is important at this point to thank each member’s marketing representatives because they are the ‘foot soldiers’ who get the Tick logo and our message into the marketplace.

Thanks to Richard Barrett (Meridien Marinas) and Maria Dwyer (Oceanic Insurance Brokers) we now have an office base and a Crew Resource Centre at Abel Point Marina.  The crew Resource Centre brings to fruition a 3 year plan to establish a place for Crew to access relevant information on their industry.  The WCBIA will continue to directly support this initiative and on behalf of members I would like to sincerely thank Richard Barrett for supporting our submission to Meridien Marina for office space, and Maria Dwyer for donating much of the furniture and equipment that underpins the operations of both our office and the Crew Centre.  Maria’s team also need to be acknowledged and enthusiastically thanked for all the hard work they did over the Boat Show weekend in raising funds that went directly to the Crew Resource Centre.

Support like this is invaluable and has not gone unnoticed.

We were able to have Minister for Transport Trade and Industrial Relations the Hon John Mickel MP visit the Centre in July.  He also officially opened the facility and commented on the fact that what we are achieving in the Whitsundays through the WCBIA and our Marine Safe Projects should be promoted by government both nationally and internationally.

We have also had some successful meetings with other State Ministers and their senior representatives this year as part of our efforts to ramp up the association’s government lobbying strategy.

In May meetings were held at Parliament House with Desley Boyle,  (Minister for Tourism Industry and Regional Development), Judy Spence, (Minister for Police), Andrew McNamara(EPA Minister) and Gary Fenlon (Parliamentary Secretary for Transport).

The WCBIA had a very clear strategy for these meetings that our local member Jan Jarratt facilitated and also attended.  We wanted to show these Ministers what we do, how we do it and what successes we have had for our regional industry. We also wanted to ‘flag’ issues and seek continued dialogue at that level of government.

It was a very worthwhile exercise and we will be continuing to used these relationships into the future. 

For example, our concerns over Shale Oil Mining need to be formalised and a strategy developed around how we will proceed forward on this issue.  No doubt formal meetings with relevant State Ministers will be scheduled in the near future.

This project has recently received national and international acclaim as it clearly demonstrated how industry and government can work in partnership to establish practical guidelines for not only compliance but best practice.  When the Food Act changed in 2006, there was a huge concern by both industry and government that the regulations would create a heavy impost on the charter industry and the Shire Council’s compliance team.

Most of you would be aware of the Pilot Project implemented between the council and the industry to develop practical guidelines to assist operators to meet standards of compliance as many of you were directly involved in the Pilot Project.  It took six drafts of the Food Safety Guidelines developed in direct engagement with industry before there was mutual agreement and sign off.  This is a significant factor as these Guidelines now underpin the auditing process conducted by the Council as part of their regulatory duties under the Food Act.

So successful and ground breaking was this initiative, Michael Shelly from Council and Deb Lewis from the WCBIA presented to an International Congress on Environmental Health in May on the process undertaken and outcomes achieved.  This project clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of industry government relationship.  Open dialogue and a willingness to work together has achieved great things for our association and our industry – not least of all being a practical and realistic approach by the local and state governments with regard to Food Licensing of Charter Vessels.

Although MSQ has finalized all its funding commitments for the Marine Safe Project in the Whitsundays, the WCBIA continues to convene Marine Safe Committee meetings and progress safety related initiatives in the region.  The next Marine Safe Committee meeting is scheduled for September and the future of this committee and its work to improve the safety culture of the commercial marine industry will be key agenda items.

Deb Lewis and Blue Gray are currently looking at specific safety initiatives that can continue to progress under the banner of the WCBIA even if the Marine Safe Committee (Airlie Beach) is disbanded for the time being.

The WCBIA management committee is mindful of members resources being utilised wisely and as there is no project funding coming in for marine safe initiatives, all safety related projects currently being implemented under Marine Safe will be analysed against such criteria as:

a.)    Cost of actual and in-kind resources required to progress and implement;

b.)    The  level of priority with regard to industry issues as well as

c.)    The possibility of alternative funding for specific projects

Currently the only funding we can plan for is $10,000 from Shipowners Mutual who have given a 10 year commitment to fund marine safety related projects in our area.  Charles Hume, CEO of Shipowners has identified a direct correlation between the decrease in regional claims and the period over which we have run marine safe initiatives.  I would also like to take this opportunity to formally thank Charles Hume and Shipowners for the commitment to the safety of our industry.

This accreditation program has been the result of three years work for the Marine Safe Committee.  Although Eco Tourism is keen to take this program on and roll it out nationally, this program cannot be finalized until a benefits’ package for accredited operators is developed and additional funds are secured to finalise the development of Marine Safe Accreditation.

The association has been directly involved in National marine license harmonization across all states, the future delivery of competency-based training that allows for more work-placed based training and assessment and strategies to address the skills shortage in the marine industry over the last twelve months and it appears these issues will be high on our working agenda for the next few years. We are actively involved at local, state and national level on these issues and will continue to work behind the scenes for our members.  For example Blue and Deb represent us on the Whitsunday Skills Strategy Steering Committee, the local Marine Training Advisory Group and TAFE’s Industry Training Advisory Group.  Deb this year was national industry representative on a national working group convened by the NMSC to look at the future of assessment models moving towards license harmonization.  We cannot afford to ignore these human resource issues and locally once again we have been instrumental in developing a crew induction program which is workbook based.  MSQ also recently developed a resource book to supplement the induction program as a result of the work done by us locally.

This induction program concept once finalized will more than likely become a state-wide initiative as the wider commercial marine industry is desperate for such training resources.

Locally we remain committed to empowering and resourcing crew.  Opening the crew resource centre last month was direct evidence of our commitment to our local crew and their professional development. 

Our first Professional Development Seminar was held in the Training Room just down from the Crew Resource Centre on the 5th August and was a resounding success with over fifty-five attendees learning more about how Search and Rescues are co-ordinated globally, nationally and locally.  Brett Norris from the Water Police who now sits on our Crew Committee  gave a summary on a local and recent SAR event, and Chris Coxon the WH&S Dive Office also gave a presentation on how to review emergency procedures and assess dive and snorkelling practices and equipment.

There will be a rolling calendar of these kinds of seminars now the Crew Resource Centre is up and running.  Gary McCrae as the Crew Committee Chair must be acknowledged and thanked for his significant contribution to marine safe initiatives, as well as the Training and Crew Committees.  He is an example of the kind of volunteer input that is necessary to keep our industry moving into the future.

Infrastructure in the Marine Park that protects the environment that we are all working to sustain is another topical and critical issue at the moment.  We have heard about GBRMPA PIPI (Private sector Investment in Public Infrastructure) scheme and by all accounts this appears to be developing.  What many of you may not know, is that the WCBIA, along with the WBOA has been working with the Whitsunday Development Corporation on a submission for federal funding to establish a Whitsunday Reef Protection Trust, the proposed charter for which will be reef and other marine park environmental protection and sustainability.  We received over thirteen letters of support and have established a partnership with QPW to develop a relevant education and awareness project.

Once successfully established this Trust will provide a new and exciting way for our industry and other stakeholders to provide tangible stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Islands. 

Closer relationship continues to develop with the WBOA and there has been recent discussion in regard to WBOA members becoming members of the WCBIA.

The WCBIA has developed a strategy to build new and effective relationships with the new regional council.  This is critical with the end of the Shire Council, came the end of marine related project funding.  Over the last three (3) years we received a total of $161,000 for marine related projects that formed the basis for many of the WCBIA best practice development projects. The Council has been acknowledged and thanked for their direct support to our industry; however, we now need to basically begin again by demonstrating to the new council how significant we are to our region and how diligently we use any funding we receive.  I cannot stress how the critical the next twelve months will be with regard to local government lobbying.

And at this point I would just like to give you an indication of the kinds of forums we are now represented on and believe me this is not a finite list:

• Marine Safe Committee (Airlie Beach)
• Minister’s Tourism Parks Forum
• Whitsunday Skills Forum Steering Committee
• Building Safer Communities Action Team
• Marine Safe Accreditation Steering Committee
• Climate Change Certification Pilot Group
• Whitsunday Local Marine Advisory Committee
• Whitsunday Training Advisory Committee
• NMSC National Training and Assessment Working Group
• Dive Sector Marketing Group (TW)

As well, we have representation on Backbacking Queensland, Tourism Whitsunday, AMPTO Boards and the Tourism Reef and Recreational Advisory Group

Current WCBIA committees include:

·         Management Committee,

·         VRS / Standards Committee,

·         Marketing Committee

·         Compliance Committee (currently under review)

In summary,  each year brings its own set of issues and the ‘big ticket items’ for our association moving into 2008-9 will be:

·         the Federal Industrial Relations Reform,

·         skilling and training,

·         government’s approach to Climate Change and

·         within ‘our own back yard’ the proposed Shale Oil Mine! 

I strongly encourage all members to stay abreast of the Shale Oil Mine issue in particular.  The management committee is already developing a strategy to counter any moves to develop this mine. For example, we are currently developing a template letter for members to place onboard their vessel which will inform passengers of such potentially disastrous development and ask all tourists concerned to voice their opposition by signing such a letter.

We will also mount a stringent government lobbying campaign and collaborate with all stakeholders in our community as required.   I urge all members of the WCBIA to provide suggestions to Deb Lewis or Blue Gray on just how you think we can be effective in blocking any mining development planned for our pristine part of the world.

Greg Lambert.
President
WCBIA Inc.