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Editors --- "Australian Association for Maritime Affairs Minutes of AGM" [2008] MarStudies 26; (2008) 161 Maritime Studies 27

• MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING held on Monday 27 October 2008

THE AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION FOR MARITIME AFFAIRS Inc.

ABN: 44 236 050 719

PO Box 55, Red Hill ACT 2603

Phone: (02) 6295 0056 Fax: (02) 6295 3367

Email: acmarst@bigpond.com

Web site: www.acmarst.com

MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
held on Monday 27 October 2008

1. Present

R. Griffiths (Chair), E. Davitt, P. Nelson, G. Newton, P. Rimmer, R. Kenchington, P. Hodgman, M. Ward, J. Davitt

L. Cordner, J. Reeve, J. Chapman, T. Lesh, S. Bateman, P. Leavy, M. White, T. Eadie, A. King

In presenting his apologies Dr White said: “…I consider the Board is doing an excellent job and that the Association is making a major contribution to Australian maritime affairs.”

2. Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 12 November 2007

The Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 12 November 2007 were confirmed as a true record. Proposed E. Davitt/seconded P. Rimmer/CARRIED.

3. Chairman’s Report

The Chairman tabled his report:

There have been four main areas of activity since I was invited to join the Board at its August 2007 meeting, and was then elected to this position at the November 2007 AGM. They have been:

a. clarifying and stabilising our financial situation;

b. marketing our publications and expanding our membership;

c. preparation of publications and submissions, and

d. publicising the AAMA.

Financial Position

The previous bi-polar structure of our accounts, with separate KMO and AAMA sets of books, made it difficult to appreciate the true financial position. We should all be grateful to our Treasurer, Ted Lesh, for consolidating the accounts.

The true financial position was parlous. Put simply, costs exceeded income.

By shifting to largely electronic distribution, with full cost recovery for all hardcopy printing and postage, we were then able to reduce costs significantly and produce products that are more useful to our members and subscribers. That strategy appears to be working and the financial position appears to have stabilised.

Marketing Publications and Expanding Membership

The Board recognised that the AAMA is a not-for-profit organization, which needs to be able to demonstrate that costs incurred are directed to the aims of the Association. We would rather spend the AAMA’s limited money on gathering and disseminating maritime information than on paying overheads like printing and postage.

Consolidating the accounts also permitted the Board to recognise that membership of the AAMA should be separated from subscription to a particular publication, in this case Maritime Studies. Separating subscriptions from membership also improved transparency for members and subscribers, allowing them to see what they were paying for and, over time, may encourage donations.

The Board then took advantage of our emphasis on electronic publication to make it easier for members and subscribers to disseminate our material widely. We took a conscious decision to keep our charges for that as low as possible, partly to meet our charter and partly because the more widely our subscribers can distribute our material, the more difficult it becomes for them ever to consider terminating their subscriptions.

Preparation of Publications and Submissions

The Association is indebted to the editors of our two main publications, Maritime Studies – Warwick Gullett - and the Maritime Digest – Ernie Davitt. Those publications are what the rest of the world normally sees of the AAMA, and give credibility to any other utterances or submissions that the AAMA publishes.

The Maritime Digest has benefited most from the move to electronic publication because, freed from the space and cost constraints of hardcopy, it has been able to expand to cover more of the vast range of maritime news information that is so sadly neglected by the Australian media. In their turn, Digest subscribers have been able to make good use of its electronic format, eg the RAN can now distribute the Digest to all its personnel. On the other hand, the Maritime Digest has a major vulnerability in that it relies on just two people, Ernie to gather and determine its content, and Jean to compile and distribute it.

Maritime Studies, on the other hand, appears to have a quite different problem. There seems to be a shortage of academic papers of adequate standard for peer review and publication. This is something that the Board will need to keep under review and we need to encourage all AAMA members to point potential writers of maritime papers towards Warwick. On the plus side, at least Warwick now has two Assistant Editors so he should not feel totally alone when working on Maritime Studies.

Our submissions to two major reviews – the Defence White Paper and Infrastructure Australia’s list of infrastructure priorities – have had to rely on drafting resources at hand. The Association needs to develop its capacities in this regard.

Publicising the AAMA

Publicity is both an aim and a consequence if the AAMA is to achieve its raison d’être. Like most things in life, there is no magic bullet; publicity is all about cheerful hard work and getting all the little steps right. It’s like “booting” a computer – a tiny first step makes possible a slightly more complex next one, and so on.

First we need to establish our credibility, which we do with the AAMA’s publications and submissions. Then we need to get decision-makers to take notice of them (or, at least, we must convince others that the decision-makers take notice of us). Then we will be invited to provide comments and submissions. At that point others will notice that the AAMA is a channel for communicating with decision-makers and more information will come our way. Thus our influence grows.

Simply being able to “be there” is a first step – finding the resources to respond to requests. This year there have been some requests for maritime information from small schools. The numbers of students were not great but if we can build a reputation in that area – education – the AAMA will be meeting its charter.

The more we can encourage organizations and individuals to communicate with the AAMA, the better we will be able to do our job. It is therefore incumbent on our members, and particularly our Board members, to share maritime information to the maximum extent possible.

Conclusion

2007-08 has seen the AAMA make a good start on recovering from the problems it faced.

Our next challenge will be to persevere, to seize every possible opportunity to improve the nation’s understanding of maritime affairs, without concern for the magnitude of the challenge and despite our apparently limited resources.

Richard Griffiths

Chair

In supporting the Chairman’s remarks Mr Davitt said the Board was most grateful to the Chairman for his hard work during the course of the year and for the very innovative approaches he had proposed to put the Association back into a sound financial position. He also pointed out that Mr Griffiths had done a lot of hard work in preparing the various submissions put forward by AAMA during the year. The Board supported Mr Davitt’s comments.

The Chairman moved that his report be accepted, seconded P. Rimmer/CARRIED.

4. Treasurer’s & Auditor’s Report

The Profit & Loss Statements and Balance Sheets for the Australian Association for Maritime Affairs and the Kindred Maritime Organisations were tabled. Also tabled were the Auditor’s reports for the year 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008 for both the AAMA and the KMO. From 1 July 2008 the Association’s bookkeeping has been simplified and the “Consolidated Balance Sheet”, based on the end-of-financial-year balance sheets of the AAMA and KMO, shows the opening balances for this new set of books. This document has been approved and stamped by the Auditor. (All these documents are attached to these minutes.)

In the absence of the Treasurer, Mr Nelson moved that the financial statements and the Auditor’s report be adopted/seconded Kenchington/CARRIED

5. Election of Auditor

Marland & Marland were reappointed as Auditor for 2008-2009: proposed E. Davitt/seconded

G. Newton/CARRIED.

6. Nominations for Board Membership

The following accepted nomination to the Board of Management for 2008-09:

Richard Griffiths

Ernie Davitt

Richard Kenchington

Peter Rimmer

Gina Newton

Mr Nelson informed the meeting that while this would be his last meeting as the representative of AMSA (a Corporate Member) on the Board, Mr Phil Burgess would be taking his place.

In their absence, the following were nominated to the Board of Management for 2008-09 subject to their acceptance of the nomination.

John Reeve

Lee Cordner

Ted Lesh

Sam Bateman

John Chapman

Warwick Gullett

Philip Burgess

7. Election of Office Bearers

All positions on the Board having been declared vacant, Mrs Davitt took the chair and called for nominations to the position of Board Chairman.

Mr Richard Griffiths was nominated to the position of Board Chairman by Mr Davitt, seconded by Mr Hodgman, and elected unanimously.

With Mr Griffiths back in the Chair, Mr Ernie Davitt was nominated as Vice Chairman and Mr Ted Lesh as Treasurer. Both were elected unopposed.

Mr Griffiths thanked those present for their attendance and declared the meeting closed.