Report from the National Commodore
April 2008

Dear Commodores and members,

I have pleasure in welcoming you to Kingscliff and our National Board Meeting, which is my last as National Commodore. I thank the Northern NSW Squadron and Commodore Campton and his officers for hosting us.

I hope that you might forgive me for a few digressions into moments of self-indulgence but, if not, bad luck because you are going to get them anyway.

It is with some sense of relief in anticipation of newfound leisure hours but also with a real sense of loss that I leave this Board.

In the last few weeks I realised that I have been involved in Squadron and National administration for a third of my life. Too long!

When I attended my first NBM as a Staff Captain in 1990, charged by the way with the responsibility of having to organise the whole function, it was a very different world and a very, very different Association than what we find today.

Certainly, change had been slow and leisurely to that point, thirty years after our foundation, and we had a low profile within the world of volunteer marine rescue, which was not even known by that collective term. We could just jump into a boat, any of our member’s boats, with anyone who wanted to go, and charge off to be well-meaning casual volunteers. Even at that we were ahead of any of the other organisations because we had our National Training Orders that gave us some real guidelines as to what we might teach members if they were willing to learn.

All of this started to change dramatically in the mid 90’s and since then the pace of change and the demands on our time, skills and administration has not slackened.

The National Board that I was elected to chair in 1998 had to make some very hard decisions and initiate many changes that would alter forever the culture of the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard. Surprisingly however, like most well considered changes, once implemented and shown to work they quickly become the ‘new’ culture and rapidly thereafter, the ‘tradition’ and then the ‘norm’.

The Board has faced serious challenges over the last decade, notably from government and their agencies and the expectations and demands of the public for greater professionalism.

As an organisation I firmly believe that we have together met those demands and Coast Guard has grown and strengthened, not always easily and not without resistance, but this process of evolution must and will continue.

Ten years ago
• Our corporate image had a low public profile. Today it is standardised, widely recognised publicly and, with the style guide distributed at this meeting, will be updated and refreshed with accessibility for all levels of the Association.
• Our accounting procedures were often done manually and we had no GST. Accounting and auditing occurred at the flotilla level and there was no ability for us to consolidate our annual revenue, expenditure and resource values.
• Our National Magazine was a fledgling effort and suffered from spasmodic publication dates. Now it comes out regularly every 6 months and is also available electronically on the website.
• Ten years ago we did not have a website.
• Training was standardised under the NTO’s but now they have been re-written to met current demands and standards and we have all of our training delivered under nationally recognized qualifications through our RTO.
• Very few bases and even fewer officers were equipped with computers. Administrative communications were by phone and letter and now are carried out almost exclusively by electronic means.
• Our membership demographic mainly consisted of older middle-aged males but has now shifted to also include a mix of younger males and an increasing number of females, particularly in positions of authority and responsibility.
• In the last few years members have been far better recognised for their contributions through recognition under the National Medal and a wide range of internal awards for achievement in administration, association activities, operations and training. They can also be recognised for significant hours of radio duty or activations in on-water assists.
• Most, if not all, procedures, processes and policy actions have been formalised and standardised to ensure consistency of application over that decade. Previously many decisions had been made in an ’ad hoc’ or variable manner.

So, where to now? The challenges will be in your hands and those of your successors.

It is no secret that we have out-grown and very nearly out-stripped our capacity to function efficiently as an ”Association”, both in terms of numbers and also the size and scope of our financial turnover. The current Executive have discussed this at length and believe that over the next 3-4 years the new Executive and Board will have to address the probable change to a limited company with all of the complexities of due process that come with that. It can be achieved if you win the hearts and minds of the members with valid and well-founded argument for that change. This is as big a challenge, if not greater, than that faced by us in the late 90’s with the Federal introduction of GST to an organisation that sometimes recorded its accounts with pen and paper and organised its tax return paperwork out of shoeboxes.
The Association owes a large debt to Tony Holmes who, as NADCO in the late 90’s, had the onerous task of overseeing and driving the adoption of GST practices across the organisation.


Unfortunately we have been occasionally distracted by sporadic assaults mounted by disaffected members or ex-members who wish to lash out at our processes by trying to drag us down or ignore the due process of our Constitution and By-laws. Over the last decade these people number less than a dozen and government agencies across Australia with whom the Executive have met, recognize our independence as an Association and our ability to govern ourselves within our Constitution and our right to do so.

As members of this Association it is important for you to know and apply the Constitution and By-Laws in the administration of units, management of our volunteers and accountability to higher Boards.

Government attitudes to VMR organisations and the demands being put upon us in return for increased grants, continues to be one of our greatest challenges.
This is a challenge that has been addressed at the National and State level through the on-going evolution and application of our National Training Orders and CBT; through the Administration Orders and audited financial procedures and the acquisition of purpose-built vessels meeting survey requirements. This will no doubt continue to be so. Up until the mid-90’s we received nothing and we had little, if any, hoops to jump through. As funding increased, so did the demands.
Certainly great strides forward in grant acquisitions and working with government agencies have occurred in Victoria and this may form a model for other states, but be very careful. If government owns too much of us then we lose the ability to act on own; we can lose our identity and autonomy.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that we are the servants of government; we respond, as always, to the needs of the boating public in need.

At National level you, the members of the Board, will always have a joint responsibility for:
• Crisis management as the needs arise
• Development of corporate consensus
• Strategic planning and goal setting to keep vitality within Coast Guard
• Maintenance of the national identity and image of the organisation, a unique achievement in the Australian volunteer sector

As the leadership body you, the members of the National Board, need to remember and readily accept your responsibilities. You don’t need to come up with all the right answers. Don’t shoulder all the responsibility. Use the experts within our ranks, and outside, to address issues and workloads and remember it is the BOARD who makes the final decisions.

I know that this organisation is in a healthy and well-founded position; ready to accept change for the better; ready to address the future with a fresh, energized and professional attitude.


I urge you to think long and hard about your decisions and above all be ethical in your actions. Corporate governance of Coast Guard is not about personalities; it is very much about responsibility and dedication.
I am extremely confident that we can grow and prosper into the next decade and that is now your task.

I would like to finish by quoting the dolphins from the fourth book in that famous Sci-fi trilogy as they too left for home ……. “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

Chris Gillett ESM
National Commodore