Aerochute Kev

Kev,There are a number of special resolutions for constitutional amendment coming up at the General Meeting at Natfly that will require the minutes to record each Board members vote. They need to be supported

"Only the members have the power to change the REPs if they don't do it whose fault is it?"

We do........We did............ No additional accountability.

We voted in new Reps on the basis of their claims to want to see things change from what was happening before. Their behavior may be better now but none of the process seems to have changed. That behavior could change at any time and it may take along time for us to find out.

Of course it is within the power of the Board to change things, that is what they are there for. The secrecy and confidentiality agreements are not part of the constitution, merely a process, something that someone introduced at some time thinking it would be a good idea. Turned out it was, for the Board, but not such a good idea for the members wanting to be able to keep an eye on what the Board are doing.

Any one of our Board Members could raise a motion at any Board meeting to have that document scrapped or amended so it cannot be used to hide information from members that they would ordinarily have a right to know.Don't forget that some of the Reps well involved in previous deceptions are still there.

Of course if it did happen, we would not know who voted for or against that motion as the minutes we get are cleverly devoid of information on how our Reps individually vote, so we cant tell if any one of them are not actually supporting the ideals that they stated when we voted for them.

Yes I think you are correct there.I think we have some good board members now who need our support.

 

I don't think the confidentiality agreement is still as much of a significant problem as you appear to think.

 

When you went number 4 on the serial pest team I thought your time could be better spent.

I agree we have some good board Members but I also remember the mess created when we had no information or control of the Boards direction. Some of those Board members may not have been at any fault but the members demanded more accountability and demanded an EGM to push that point. We have since changed some Board members but have made no changes to the processes that allowed that situation to develop in the first place. Regardless of how good or honest we think our current Board is, we must change the system to ensure such a situation can never occur again. Interestingly none of the Board Members elected since have been able to show they have been making any attempt to change the way the Board operates to make it more accountable.

Members have been accused of being apathetic as a reason the problems occurred, and I could well have been one of those. Not so much apathy but simply a case of not actually knowing what was happening within our association. I was flying, I was happy. I now know and as I wish to continue with my flying privileges will do whatever I can to make sure I am kept informed as the Board, even the current one, seem unable to keep the members up to date with what is happening within our association.

I was hoping you were around to comment on this, Thanks Kaz

Edit: Would this mean that the confidentiality agreement we are speaking of would not be necessary as those things that should ordinarily be considered confidential are already covered by other legislation?

Kev

I don't really like commenting on politics but I do enjoy putting my ten cents in:chuffed:.In regards to what you are saying aero chute Kev I am a paid up member of RAA and they have all my details they know a lot of stuff about all of their members that is personal and needs to be kept confidential, so if someone wants access to all that info then I think it is absolutely necessary to have a confidentiality agreement to not do so would potentially be inviting big trouble. So I don't see the problem with holding confidential information back from someone who refused to agree to that. Obviously personal details would only be a small part of the confidential stuff involved in running RAA and I can see that there needs to be a clear line between what we need to know and what is needed to be kept confidential.

 

Yes we need a nice transparent process but we also need to be sensible about it.

36. Inspection of books.

The records, books and other documents of the Association shall be open to inspection at a place in the ACT, free of charge, by a Member of the Association on request at any reasonable hour.

I assume this section of the constitution is to ensure that the staff or Board are not able to hide or otherwise deny access to important information to the Members (in reality, the owners of the organisation).

Maybe we should use this clause more often!!

To me Kev that would be only half the truth and would be misleading and unacceptable. The answer I would expect in that situation is "Sorry but I am not able to comment on that". If anybody has evidence of anything this sort of thing happening then I am sure they would have said something.This the part you needed to understand.

I'm pretty sure I have not said one personally negative thing about Maj or the job he is doing in his role as our Rep. If you find one of my posts that I have, I will withdraw it or apologise unreservedly because that is not my intention. As said before, this is not about what the Reps are doing but a system that requires a duly elected Rep, with lawful access to all RAAus information granted by the constitution, being withheld by someone unless they sign a further document swearing them to secrecy/confidentiality. THAT is not part of our constitution and I doubt would be even lawful.

I'm not sure where you are going with this Techy, as we seem to believe in the same thing, that these documents should not exist and a duly elected Rep should have access to all information held by RAAus, as specified in the constitution, without having to swear allegiance to the Board "club". Communication with the members cannot be improved as long as it is in place. I have not claimed there should be no confidentiality at all, if the situation requires it, but that has to be determined by the Board on a case by case basis and not just a blanket secrecy on the whole of the Board activities.

Perhaps that raises another issue in that any other elected official will be sworn into that position. Maybe it is time we did a similar thing with swearing in elected officials where they swear to act in an honest, open and accountable manner to the benefit of the organisation. Maybe a sworn oath will negate the need for such a confidentiality agreement? Just a thought.

For me telling half truths and knowingly misleading somebody is the same as lying. If a question cannot be answered truthfully because of some agreement I expect to be told that is the case and at this stage I believe that would be the way it would happen, if I am wrong about this I will be more p!ssed than you realise.Don't you believe what Ross has said there?

As an example (fictitious)..... If i was looking to purchase an aircraft Brand xxx but heard on he grapevine that brand xxx had such bad safety problems that RAAus had grounded the fleet. I contact my Rep and ask if this is true that all Brand xxx aircraft have been grounded? My Rep tells me that the Board has in fact discussed this aircraft type and they have not been grounded. (this is true but only the information he is allowed to repeat) What he is not allowed to repeat at this time is that the RAAus has contacted the manufacturer of Brand xxx and demanded they show what actions they have done to remedy the situation or the fleet will be grounded.

I had been told 100% the truth, the RAAus had not grounded the fleet, but because I didn't know of the other actions taken, the second hand Brand xxx i just bought was grounded 3 months later and will likely never fly again. The Rep could not tell me the information that could have saved all that heartache because he had signed a confidentiality agreement and could have been disciplined if he had revealed the actions the Board had taken at that time.

Yes, its only a fictitious story but highlights you can be told the truth, but not everything you needed to know. The Rep answered honestly, I may have asked the wrong question (but he couldn't tell me that) and the only thing that stopped him volunteering more information was the confidentiality agreement.

I have no reason to disbelieve that Maj knows why other Board Members don't post on this forum.

In most dealings I think I can tell sooner or later if I am being lied to. If you are right and I am wrong then I believe I will find out and I will let you know.

I just got off the phone to an area rep the confidentiality agreement does exist and is used for sensitive issues which if made public could be detrimental to the well being of RAAus. I have regularly spoken to reps and this agreement has not been an issue or caused me concern. This has all been since the aircraft registration shambles when the confidentiality agreement may have been used to cover up serious management short comings. The board has changed a lot since those days, and it has been for the better.

It is very easy to be unconcerned with an answer if you believe it to be the truth, but that now raises the question of.. have things been left out of that answer because of confidentiality that would have led you to a different view of the answer? You may never know. Kind of makes it hard to believe whats being spruiked by our Reps when they are not allowed to tell what is actually happening.

There is no place for these agreements in the day to day running of the organisation.

Quote from Maj's post on 15 Nov 2013, in thread "Board Report". Sorry didn't know how to refer to it so cut and paste.

"As promised prior to my election to the board, I intend to report on this forum as best I can from time to time. It will be very general in nature, and no names will be mentioned as I have signed a confidentially agreement to allow me access to all board info."

I recall there was another post refrerring to not being effectual as a Rep if not signed but not found it yet. As can be clearly seen he was denied access to board information unless signed. As this was only 3 months ago can anyone claim things have changed and only have to keep confidential certain things?

How do you know they exist? I would have thought that would be illegal and fairly easy to prove. I have never had a rep refuse to answer a question so far.

There are definitely Board members who want to do the right thing by the members AND communicate what actions they have taken. The problem is the secrecy/confidentiality agreements. No one yet has been able to say WHO makes them sign the agreement or what authority they have to do so, complete with a threat of withholding information from a member not signing that agreement. In my opinion that is nothing short of corruption. We will not fix this by changing a few Board members, the ingrained corrupt practices just continue with the new members, effectively gagging them from doing what they had intended to do right from the start.

Here is a challenge for the few Board members who regularly appear here...

Post a copy of the agreement you were forced to sign (are we not entitled to see what is required of our board members?), State who required you to sign it and what authority they claimed to have to do so.

Surely there is nothing confidential being exposed in doing so.

I wont be placing bets on the response (or lack of it)

Kev

Or four, pretty hard to trust an organisation's management that lives on secrecy agreements.

Kevin, tap on members....tap meetings....tap minutes...sign in......select minutes Sept 13 AGM......done....read

Kevin, If you look at the RAA website...the minutes you seek are there........Maj....

It would seem that decisions have been made and members not informed. We have no way to confirm this unless the requires documents are released so I fail to see how you can not be annoyed as you claim you would be.

The usual response to any questioning of the Board Members seems to be the ridiculous statement that if you want to know such information perhaps you should stand for election as a Board Member. To me this clearly indicates they believe you have to be a Board Member to know such technical and complicated information that should be kept from us mere members. Information, i might add, that the constitution requires they divulge to members in a set time frame.

Unless you have found a way to get a PPC (or any other non conforming aircraft) licensed with CASA that I have been unable to find, I'm sure the argument that if you don't like it, go GA RPL also has no place in the quest for information and accountability. Some of us don't get a choice about which organisation we are governed by so we try to ensure we know whats happening with the organisation that has a direct bearing on whether we can fly or not. I don't think that is unreasonable.

I guess I must be wrong to want to know important information as to how our organisation is going, and thinking it was the responsibility of the elected members to ensure ordinary members were advised of such information. My apologies, i didn't mean to step on anyone's "toes".

Kev

The word 'secretcy' is just not appropriate when talking about the boards' required degree of confidentially. The board needs to operate with a degree of confidentially to be efficient in what it does, ....otherwise nothing would be achieved at all. Getting a consensus from 12 people is bad enough..it just would not work, in the time that it needs to, if thousands or even hundreds were bought into the loop.You elected the current board members as your trusted representatives, and the current board is doing that well, and as an efficient team. A lot of what we have been recently dealing with was reported accuratly in the last magazine, in a timely fashion, and should continue to be. The board doesn't even share it's decisions with the GM and office exects until it has hashed things out, made a combined decision, and feel it is ready to be shared with all. I can guarantee you there is nothing 'secret' going on, that you won't hear about in the short term.

 

Remember we are often harshly critized for the decisions we make on your behalf....but I can assure you, from what I have seen so far, those decisions are usually the correct and appropriate ones for the organisation, and the members, as a whole.........If you find yourself not happy with all this, the solution is easy, put your hand up next time the elections come around........................Maj......

The only way we can be assured that nothing secret is going on is by the ones that are allegedly "keeping the secrets" telling us everything is OK? Sure.... That will work.

The Board is there to make decisions, I don't think anyone disputes that. The Boards total lack of ability to convey those decisions in a timely manner to the membership via minutes to meetings or announcements on the web site is nothing short of pathetic management. (where are the minutes Maj?) Isn't this sort of behavior what got us in strife not so long ago, having people making decisions with no scrutiny or accountability?

I think the time has come (did it ever leave?) to do what should have been done before and dismiss the whole Board, install an administrator and completely re write the whole rule book, complete with accountability and strict reporting procedures (with consequences if not followed) , before installing a new Board completely free of the pressures of secrecy and the "tow the line or we won't let you see anything important" type of bullying behavior that seems to be ingrained in senior Board members we have currently.

We don't need our Board to keep feeding us platitudes on how well they have done, I want to see the proof in writing of all its wonderful achievements and be able to judge for myself if I think it really is as wonderful as we keep being told.

Kev

I am a bit confused, the board voted to remove the insurance cover that the FTOs don't have but many have thought they did have. And they sent a letter in January reminding the FTOs that the insurance they don't have may be introduced like it was prior to the vote. The insurance may be introduced but at a cost.Can't we stick to FTO = flight training organisation instead of splitting it into sftf and ftf?

When a CFI wants to use a property for training it is assessed by RAAus as either suitable, or not, for the type of flying training to be conducted there. If approved it becomes a Registered Flight Training FACILITY. With a FTF or STFT being only property, that property seems to me to be clearly covered under the policy as "property used to conduct flight training".

Have the Board and GM been referring to FTF when they are in fact meaning the people or business (instructors) actually conducting the training (which you refer to as FTO)?

I thi

I understand your sentiments here Kev, but I think this thread is an example of the NEED for board confidentiality. The channels of communication from any organisation need to be managed carefully to avoid confusing and potentially damaging information being spread. The breakdown in communication is entirely the fault of the GM in this case. It is not the job of a board member to communicate operational things like this to the membership and things often go badly if they do.It is, however, the job of the Board to keep an eye on the actions of a GM, and also his official communications, to make sure what he is doing is in line with the board's intentions. In this case the board should censure the GM for the lack of timeliness of his letter and make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

And with the greatest of respect to Maj, Board members need to get their facts straight before making information public. This takes time and work so it is perhaps understandable that board members don't communicate often using forums like this.

You can't have secrecy AND a lack of information to the members. This will always result in members feeling left in the dark and that they have deliberately been excluded or ignored for unknown reasons.

Until our board is capable of providing information in a timely manner, they do not deserve to be able to also keep everything secret.

I have just read the actual policy document on the RAAus website and did not find any reference to the exclusions of a FTF. There is however reference to an instructor and student pilot/passenger being covered. There is also reference to the property being used for flying activities being covered, it did not exclude a registered FTF. (which is after all a property being used for flying activities). From what I can understand of it, FTFs have not been excluded. IF i am correct, and If they are to be excluded in the future, I think it must be as a result of a request from RAAus to exclude them in an attempt to reduce the premium. (which is a pretty low act in my opinion, as the number of instructors would be a very small percentage of the total membership and those operating the FTF's are still members, still paying full membership fees, including the insurance component)

Anyone else read it and come up with a different opinion?

A certain amount of Board confidentiality is necessary for the board (any board), to operate as they do. Believe me, the average member would not even want to deal with half the rubbish a board member has come his way, on a daily basis. You may for a day or two, but after that you would say 'to hell with all that'.....if on the other hand you enjoy that sort of stuff and making difficult decisions on behalf of your fellow sportsman and women , then raise your hand next time an election opportunity comes your way.I do my best to release information that I think the members need and deserve to see, as best I can...on this forum, and to members individually.

I have to respect the board confidentially otherwise I would be removed from the loop. And a board member out of the information loop, is of no purpose as a board member to anyone........ask the few ex board members of recent times who couldn't handle confidentially, just how valuable they are now to the membership ........Maj.....

I have no problem with a confidentiality agreement on a particular subject/matter if the board believes it is justifiable or necessary in the circumstances, and votes to introduce it accordingly.

As I have previously asked, why do our board members have to sign a confidentiality agreement to get information they are entitled to under our constitution and who decides what is covered under that agreement?

Or is that confidential too?

Whilst new board members are forced to sign a confidentiality agreement that seems to cover all board activities ,or not have access to the information they need, we can vote in as many new reps as we like and nothing will change. Any such agreement must be on a case by case basis and only if the subject requires confidentiality for commercial of privacy reasons.

I am interested to know how our reps are forced to sign an agreement to get information that our constitution demands they have an automatic right to access.

As for standing for a position on the board, at this time i can honestly say i have little interest in being a member of RAAus, let alone a board member. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I am only a member of this monopoly at this time because i have no other suitable option if I wish to continue to fly (legally). I don't think the current situation where a new Rep is effectively gagged will encourage anyone to stand for a board position.

Seems fair that they be asked to contribute.