SSAA NSW

2 Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc. President's Message WELCOME TO MY THIRD QUARTERLY REPORT. In this report I will cover the following topics: • SSAA National AGM • Insurance • Registry Forum meeting – Queanbeyan • Market research • Securing grants to meet current needs • SSAA NSW state staff – their roles and how to provide them with the support to maximise their capabilities • Firearms researcher The SSAA National AGM was held on the weekend of 28 & 29 April. The AGM was preceded by a Board meeting on the 27 April. The National Board remains unchanged with Geoff Jones (QLD) as President, Paul McNabb (NSW) as SVP and Denis Moroney (VIC) as JVP. Alf Bastion (SA) is Treasurer, Kaye McIntyre (ACT) is Secretary and Andrew Judd (TAS) is Discipline Coordinator. Lead is a serious topic. Health and safety investigations are beginning to look at atmospheric lead and environmental lead in any shooting environment, including hunting. This is a trend overseas and has begun in Queensland with regulators showing interest in requiring mandatory reporting. This will impact on new and existing Indoor ranges as well as potentially on baffled ranges. SSAA NSW will be investigating this to determine the potential impact in New South Wales. There is also an international attempt to make any country's rules on migratory species cross state boundaries, which means if lead is banned for migratory bird shooting in one state it becomes banned in all. This is being fought at the international level. Transport restrictions are potentially a risk to firearms buyers and sellers. In Western Australia a battle is being fought where firearms need to be freighted. The attempted rules all but banned firearms transport. This has the serious potential to damage firearms ownership, reduce retail outlets and must be high on our watch list. Ron Bryant of SSAA WA, along with the WA Dealers Association and others have managed to reduce the initial impact but they have a way to go to return to a fair freight system. The questions raised in Western Australia may flow into our jurisdiction and it is currently on the agenda of the Firearms Registry Legislation Group. SSAA National have a strong balance sheet and next year's AGM will be in Perth. Insurance – in order to maintain our public liability insurance, we need to minimise our claims and the greatest number of claims are coming from hunting incidents, rather than from ranges. This provides an opportunity for well managed organisations like SSAA to assist with hunter training and thereby help reduce our premiums. Private hunting will struggle to find insurance now. SSAA NSW is well on the way to manage this risk, as well as providing more hunting activities, by training our members to a higher level and then offering those additional skills to farmers, land management groups and even to government agencies such as the SPC program. Some thoughts discussed for better insurance premiums were: • Insurance officer committee member in each Branch/ Affiliate Club. • Supervision on ranges to be 100%. • Safety equipment on ranges – hearing, footwear, eyewear etc. • Training for hunters including first aid, marksmanship, target identification, firearms handling & safety, recommended kit etc. These are not insurance rules, just talking points, but every range and every hunter needs public liability insurance and the above are general practice in most places anyway. Formalising something like this into our insurance applications would help. Something to think about. Firearms Registry Forum meeting in Queanbeyan – these meetings are in two parts. Firstly, there is a consultative group meeting that brings together Registry, appointed members of the various shooting organisations, ranking government advisers and lawyers. The public forum follows after that meeting, where the shooting community has access to the firearms regulators. Some of the discussion points were: • Outstanding issues from the recent Firearms Regulation review. Pre-consulting has begun for the next Regulation review as the last review was late and the response time was too short. • Why we can, rather than why we can't – Registry's process model for interaction. This was a commitment from the Registry Director that carried over into the public forum. • Risk management as a range approval model was discussed, but no conclusion as yet. More research is needed, but the theory is palatable to discuss at this level. • Appearance laws – there was a continued push for function to rule versus appearance as is the current view. The new Appearance Committee was discussed with a strong push to broaden the scope of the committee. This also came up in the public forum where the preponderance of police representation was debated.

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