With another Board election just two months away, we sat down with the SSAA Victoria President and Chief Executive Officer to find out how the Association was tracking.
Below is the transcript of the interviews:
Jack Wegman, SSAA Victoria Chief Executive Officer
What was SSAA Victoria’s focus for the past three years?
The focus for past three years – and I’ve got to say I can’t believe how quickly three years has gone – but since I’ve been in the role of Chief Executive Officer, which will be two and a half years, the focus has been on getting our house in order.
One of our really big challenges has been the mindset of the membership and the Organisation. For many, many years we were structured as a club when what we were was a corporation and we needed to be managed as that. So what we faced were some challenges in relation to transitioning from a club-based mentality through to a corporate, professional company with responsibilities under the Corporations Act.
How is SSAA Victoria placed financially?
I’m really pleased to be able report that our balance sheet position is very strong now. We’ve been able to increase our net assets by 20 per cent – from $5 million net assets to $6 million – in the last year. That’s been a result of a lot of hard work and discipline and very focused management by the team at State Office. We had under a million dollars in cash holdings just over two years ago and now we have $2.5 million in cash holdings – all attracting interest.
I can report that now we are in the strongest position ever and, if we had to, we could buy Springvale Range pretty much out of our own finances, without seeking funding support from our national body. And, of course, we’ve been able to commit to substantial infrastructure works at our ranges.
Will the result of the Federal Election affect SSAA Victoria?
With a reduced majority and greater dependence on independents like Bob Katter, who is pro-shooting, things could be better. But if the party in Government needs the support of others who are anti-gun we could have some real issues.
One of the things that has worked in our favour is that the Nationals are now in a stronger position and the Nationals tend to be more supportive of shooters. Our own Victorian Senator, Bridget McKenzie, helped found the Friends of Shooting group in Federal Parliament, so we would look to support from the Nationals. As I say, it is reassuring to see they are in a stronger position than they were in the last Parliament.
What has SSAA Victoria done over the past three years to influence Government and regulators?
We’ve actually done a lot in the last three years to influence Government and regulators. You won’t necessarily read about it out in public. We work very strongly behind the scenes with other shooting organisations through our peak political body the Combined Firearms Council of Victoria. We worked very hard to support pro-shooter candidates, for example, during the Federal Election and we will work even harder when it comes to the State Election.
We have a formal position on a ministerial committee, the Victorian Firearms Consultative Committee, and we meet quarterly. That committee seeks to assess and have input into government policy. It reports through the Department of Justice to the Police Minister and the Attorney General, so we have a direct conduit to the political base that exerts influence on decisions.
I think that’s a much better approach than we may have had in the past. Marches are terrific and demonstrations are terrific, but the real power lies in the corridors of Parliament. That’s where we now are focusing our efforts through advocacy and through building our relationships with politicians and senior bureaucrats, which we have been able to do over the last few years.
What are the plans for SSAA Victoria moving forward?
I think we’ve got a pretty exciting time ahead of us, certainly in the next few years. We have spent a number of years putting the house in order, addressing a number of issues with operations and management. In the next few years we’ll need to really get the strategic plan happening to position ourselves for the next five, 10, even 20 years. Within that plan we need to address ourselves to the infrastructure challenges that we’ve got at Springvale and Eagle Park. There’s a lot to be done there and the Board has committed significant funds to doing that.
On a membership level, it’s going to be about retention. It’s about keeping our members. But also it’s about tapping into the many shooters who are not members of a shooting organisation. We have a lot of potential to grow our membership from that base. So we need to understand why people aren’t members and we need to be offering something that will encourage them to become members. Overall there are two challenges: one is about the nuts and bolts of our operations on a day-to-day basis; but also philosophically how we build, how we change attitudes and how we get our potential members to actually be our members.
Denis Moroney, President of the Board
In terms of boosting professionalism, what has SSAA Victoria done in recent years?
One of the ways we are doing this is we are presenting a better, more professional attitude to the public, to our members and to the people who come on to our website. All of these areas have been cleaned up and made far more professional. The Board itself acts far more professionally these days, which is reflected in the good results we’ve had. We have also designed new uniforms with a new logo for Victoria, which is an adaptation of the national logo.
Letterheads and so on have all been altered to the new logo so it’s the same logo going out all the time. We’ve also looked at all of our policies to make sure that they’re up to date and reflect more professional attitudes. Some of the policies we were using were 30 years old and they had to be made more modern.
What are you doing to improve the experience for visitors at SSAA Victoria’s ranges?
In the last few years we’ve only kept up with repairs and maintenance at both ranges but we now have the funds to invest in a capital works program. It shows itself in such ways at Eagle Park for instance as extending and finishing the concreting of the main range; we built a concrete ramp into the café area; we’re in the process of building an all-abilities ramp to give access to the main range for the people who need it; we’ve also improved the security system at Springvale and we’re in the process of doing more of that work at Eagle Park.
The Range Officers have now all been trained to the same new Range Officer Accreditation Course. We’re employing more Range Officers so that we can have an established base of trained personnel that we can call.
How is membership growth tracking?
Memberships are showing fairly strong growth now, approximately 5 per cent every year. It is in line with the national figures and slightly better than several of the states, so we’re quite pleased with those.
How is Cobaw’s centrefire certification going?
As you know it took several years to get the .22 rimfire certification in place at Cobaw, which has now been running nicely for a couple of years. We now have centrefire certification as well but we’re not happy just with that. We want to have it extended so that the centrefire range can be used more frequently than it is at present.
When are we going to see the results of the past financial year?
They’ll be available (at the end of August). They’ve all been audited by an independent auditor, as they have been since 1973. The ones for the last three years came unqualified and we’re very proud that the Organisation is in such a strong financial position. Members can access these financial reports on our SSAA website (ssaavic.com.au). If they don’t have access to the internet they can contact the State Office and a printed copy will be forwarded to them.
