A Better Life With chronic pain? - Vietnam Veterans Association of ...

DEBRIEF WINTER 10 EDITION
As National Secretary I have identified a number of
areas of administration that required attention.
NATIONAL SECRETARIES REPORT
National Sponsor
I am pleased to report that
we have made contact with
our national sponsor, Rear
Admiral Neil Ralph AO
DSC RAN he has been
returned to the Debrief
mailing list and hopefully
will be attending this congress.
Policy hand book:
In my opinion a number of existing items in the policy
handbook require updating and the items raised by
NSW and Victoria over the past year require a decision,
I have recommended a number of amendments
and an annual review of the policy handbook in future.
Constitution:
I have put a number of recommendations to the national
council, most importantly are the administrative
amendments that are related to the change of name approved
in 2009, others are administrative amendments
to improve the administrative process.
I cannot over emphasise the need for adoption of at
least the first six constitutional amendment recommendations
I have made in a separate paper. Non adoption
could affect such things as our income tax exemption
from the Australian taxation Office.
ABN Registrations:
Again as part of the change of name process approved
in 2009 a number of amendments to our Australian
Business Number (ABN) registrations were required
and these have now been completed.
Debrief Magazine:
The subject of the editing and production of the magazine
has been under discussion for some time, in anticipation
of this continuing I asked all branches to consider
the services they consider as alternatives and
asked for quotes based on a similar production for
comparison.
Future programs for consideration:
A number of projects have been investigated and in
some cases initiated, these include:
The Bullet project:
This project authorises a commercial enterprise to use
our logo as a marketing tool, the authority is for a one
year period and is renewable, and there is a financial
return to the association for every unit sold with no
expense to the association
The rose project:
This is a long term project as it takes a number of years
to develop a suitable rose, produce stock and market
the project, no specific name has been selected to date
and again there is a financial return to the association
with no outgoing expenses.
The Wollongong University medical school mental
health project.
The association, in cooperation with other ex service
organisation has agreed to assist and support a mental
health project at Wollongong University. The project
depends on government funding and an application has
been lodged by the university with letter of support
from the ex service community.
Again there is no cost to the association however our
members may be invited to participate in parts of the
project.
The Mines Advisory Group project.
Earlier this year I attended a meeting with executive
members of the Mines Advisory Group that were visiting
Australia, the group support removal of mines and
unexploded ordinance in areas of past conflict to allow
the local populations to use areas of land that previously
were unusable.
Their main focus of the meeting was a request to support
their operations by distributing newsletters and
items of information throughout our membership and
promoting the group’s activities to the Australian ex
service community, I indicated I would pass the request
to this National Congress for endorsement.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS:
It should be noted that a number of recommendations
have been sent to the national council for consideration,
it is then a matter for the states to accept these
recommendations and put them as motions for adoption
or reject the recommendations.
On a number of occasions comments have been made
that the national executive does nothing, If you compare
the recommendations to the actions by states to
comment, discuss, question and adopt these recommendations
I feel the actions by the national executive are
appropriate.
The grass roots membership are the final authority on
policy within the association, there is a belief that the
general membership are not interested in
4