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Australia\'s WIA pushed to Restructure... Again!

Discussion in 'Amateur Radio News' started by Guest, Apr 3, 2001.

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  1. Guest

    Guest Guest

    The Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) is ARRL's counterpart peak organisation down under.



    Unlike ARRL, however, WIA has traditionally operated as a set of several independent, more-or-less autonomous Divisions (with roughly, one WIA Division per call-area: VK2, VK3, VK4, VK5/VK8, VK6, etc.).




    More specifically, amateurs & clubs join Divisions, and Divisions (but not individuals amateurs) join the WIA's Federal organisation.



    The disadvantages include:

    <ul>
    [*]amateurs are unable to elect office holders in WIA's Federal organisation (thus, they are effectively unable to make the kind of changes that a majority of shareholders can make to a corporation's policy making body) and
    [*]the overhead of maintaining lots of Divisional Headquarters means the diversion of WIA's scarce (member-supplied) funds from the important work of promoting Amateur Radio as a worthy hobby - for young & old alike - in Australia
    [/list]



    The level of WIA effectiveness (as an organisation) became clear to this author, among other Aussie hams, a few years ago - when Australia's Commonwealth government raised the annual Amateur Radio license fees to over $50 per year, despite protests from WIA.



    (Australian CBer's - by contrast - continued to enjoy costfree "class licensing" which they had won - not by the lobbying by a national representative organisation, but by civil disobedience... i.e. most Aussie CBer's simply stopped renewing their licenses.



    Sadly, "Freedom of Speech" arguments could be not made, i.e. to try to win zero-cost licenses for hams, in this land without a Bill of Rights.)



    With the Australian ham population dropping, and WIA's operating costs continuing to rise, in part, due to The New Tax System (a value-added tax system), there is - at last - a movement afoot to cut-out one level of WIA burocracy and allow each ham to join "the" (new) WIA.



    Interested amateurs (in Australia & around the world) may like to read a comprehensive position paper by Martin Luther (VK5GN) - a strong, clear-headed leader in the Australian amateur radio community.



    C.f. http://www.bookmate.com.au/radio


    The above link comes from another site, which lists similar papers under the title of "Beyond the Morse Debate":



    <A HREF="http://www.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/beyond.htm">
    http://www.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/beyond.htm</a>
     
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