SSAA NSW

2 Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc. President's Message WELCOME TO MY SECOND QUARTERLY REPORT WHICH COVERS HUNTING, THE ONGOING QUEST FOR A UNIFIED FIREARMS LOBBY AND SOME CLARIFICATION ON YOUR DIRECTORS. Hunting Over 80% of our members identify as hunters and even members who primarily think of themselves as competition shooters tend to hunt if the opportunity is available. This makes us by far the largest hunting organisation in NSW. I am a hunter. But, I am happy helping at competitions, I enjoy the comradery and believe that competition shooters are vital to our organisation as so many of our contributing volunteers and working bee supporters come from the various disciplines. We must support the disciplines as they provide, build and support a significant amount of infrastructure that all our members enjoy. My passion and engagement in SSAA NSW is as a hunter. My first week as the new President was spent on a hunting trip with some Coffs Harbour members where we snuck across the border into Queensland and reduced the feral pig population and took some goats for meat. Another part of hunting is training. Many of our new licence holders are new to shooting and most have a desire to hunt. Our expertise as an organisation that supports all shooting activities and firearms types, including hunting, provides an environment that is very well suited to take up what the Firearms Registry and Police started – they approve a law abiding person to own a firearm and we then provide the leadership and training to help that new shooter be the best, safest and most ethical sportsperson that they can be. As an organisation we already have our H&C accreditation model. We have trainers for R Licence and are working to achieve RTO accreditation. We have trained members to the exacting standards that National Parks expect in their SPC program. Originally, I was one of four volunteers who trialled and fine tuned the training for the SPC program. SSAA NSW provides access to Farmer Assist and is an AHO that supports the R Licence for state forest and game hunting. SSAA NSW also provided access to the National Parks SPC program which we expect to continue after the very successful three-year trial. We provide training and practice at ranges that our Branches manage. Hunting opportunities can and will continue to expand, but right now we provide more genuine hunting opportunities for all members than any other hunting organisation in NSW. Uniting the shooting sports Unifying shooting in NSW is like herding cats. We all want the same outcome, in fact we all need the same outcome. For example, within the Board we have Directors supporting three different pathways to success to achieve that outcome. We have the SFF party model, the aggressive confrontational model, and the communicate, negotiate and lead the reasonable debate model. Currently, I believe the majority of Directors support the communicate, negotiate and lead the reasonable debate model because they elected me President and that is my preferred model. None of the Directors are wrong in their preferred pathway – it is an essential asset of a Director to manage their expectations and decisions forthrightly and openly. Anything else is hypocrisy, which has no place in any Board. The only difficulty is trying to keep the debate relevant and moving toward a solution that the Board and the membership supports. In my last report I committed to try to work closely with all organisations and political parties that are not opposed to shooting and SSAA NSW. Some of those parties have responded very positively with open lines of communication. We have achieved real cut through in the areas of interpretation and application of the laws governing our sport. This takes a significant amount of time to bring to fruition as the responsible parties like the Police and the government have to check and recheck the impact of any changes before approving them. There are also interest parties that lobby against our recommendations. Our recommendations are based on, and backed by, facts and evidence that always helps the decision makers mitigate the hysteria and emotive positions of some lobbyists. A major frustration for me has been the rejection of any attempts to meet with the upper house representatives of the Shooters, Fishers & Farmers Party. Our two organisations have many synergies that, if combined,

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