Luge Australia : News

Mon, 24 Mar 2003

Hi Guys,

Thought it was time to update you again with what's happeing with AGRA. Firstly - INSURANCE - we have accepted a quote from the Government backed insurance scheme for non-profit associations. This quote was for approx $1900 for 12 months cover. During the time it took to arrange this insurance, the scheme changed and the insurance company nominated for this scheme advised the government they would be pulling out after 12 months, so therefore, we can only get insurance till 30 September this year. After this time a new insurance company will be involved. We have a couple of choices, we can either accept the quote, pro-rated from Feb till Sep (8 months cover) or choose not to accept the quote. We decided it would be better to accept the quote and see what happens in September (at least we know we have cover till then). We have had multiple conversations with the people involved to try and change this, but to no avail. Unfortunately we have also had several staff changes at the insurance company, and only two staff working on all of the non-profit association policies and it has been very slow getting paperwork. I've chased them up again and hopefully in the next week or so, we will have all the paperwork (policy number, invoice etc).

As you know, the plan is to have approx 4 events (one in each State). Whilst we have been waiting for the insurance both Richard in Queensland and Pat in Sydney have been trying to get the first two events up and running. Pat is in the process currently and we will advise when details are available. In Queensland we have run into some trouble which we thought we would share with you and hopefully it will help you when it's your turn to host an event. We were advised to go to the local council and obtain a road closure permit which would basically be a one page application and take 24 hours to process. Once we had this approval we were advised to go to the police for their road closure permit. We got the council application form, completed it and faxed it back, along with additional information such as our safety plan, traffic control plan etc. In the meantime we contacted the local police who advised us to letter box drop the street or talk to the residents affected by the closure (this would make their job easier). We did up an information pack and contacted 13 of the 15 residents on the street - the two that weren't home we left the pack for them to read later. We finally chased up the council to find out about our permit and were told that we had to organize a meeting with the local police as well as the council and ourselves (no one told us this to start with, even though we told them we were new to this and asked for all requirements!!). Richard rang the police who was more than happy to arrange a joint meeting and approximately four days later (while we were waiting for the council to get back to us with a suitable time for the meeting) they rang to advise us that the permit was knocked back. The reason they gave was because we had not given any information to the 'event co-ordinator' for that area!!!! (We weren't advised to do any of this). Upon further investigation (and were so angry we wanted to take it further!!!) we contacted the local councillor - who was the most ignorant person we have ever met! For reasons only known to him, he was the one who contacted the council and told them he wasn't happy with the event in his division and wouldn't give his approval. Without his approval we could not get the permit! (He apparently got one concerned resident contact him - one of the ones who weren't home when we called - and made his mind up there and then). He did not want to listen to reason, or even give us the time of day. We are now looking at other avenues in QLD and will keep you posted.

For something positive now - since the incident with Today Tonight a few months ago they have been hounding us for a follow up story - apparently they got a lot of emails of complaint about the last story (we wonder who sent all those??). We haven't been keen to follow it up too soon, as the old story would still be in people's minds and they wouldn't guarantee a positive spin on the story, until now. So Craig "our media representive in QLD" arranged for a reporter and camera crew to come out last Sunday for the positive follow up story. Seven hours later!!!! and lots of fun - we hopefully will have a great story concentrating on safety, safety and safety!!! This story should be aired sometime this week unless the war stories push it over to next week. Keep an eye out for it. For your information we were paid no money for this story - all we received was a free lunch and a promise of the footage later on. Craig has liased with this crew for several months and hopefully bigger and better things will come. Will advise.

Thanks guys for your patience - we hope that when your memberships are due, you pay up again. It's the only way we can keep this association going. Any queries please email/call.

AGRA MANAGEMENT Pat, Richard and Julie