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About Adventure Activity Standards
If you are a member of a bushwalking or skiing club, we very strongly urge you to educate yourself about AAS, because this will affect you over the next few years. The Adventure Activities Standards project is a Victorian Government-funded scheme which endeavours to create standards for outdoor activities which carry a degree of risk. The AAS have been developed by the Outdoor Recreation Centre (ORC) for a variety of activities, including bushwalking and ski touring. It is claimed that the AAS is intended to: - promote safety, - protect against legal liability and negligence claims, and - to assist organisations in obtaining insurance. They are promoted as ‘voluntary guidelines’ which apply only to formal groups, including commercial entities as well as non-commercial organisations such as bushwalking clubs. Informal groups (eg: a bunch of friends) are theoretically not covered by the AAS. We at B&AR walk with both informal groups and with formal non-commercial volunteer groups, so our comments are from that perspective, not from a commercial/industry perspective. The AAS process has been controversial, to say the least. At least one major and respected bushwalking organisation in the State has apparently refused to endorse the AAS. VicWalk (the Federation of Victorian Walking Clubs) does not appear to fully endorse the concept of AAS. A number of concerned individuals, many of whom are well-known and respected in the bushwalking and ski touring community, have formed an organisation called Adventure Victoria to lobby against the AAS process. Although we are not members of AV, we understand many of their concerns about AAS, and we suggest you visit their web site. If you support their aims, you should consider joining; becoming a non-voting member is free, and voting membership costs $20. More information Adventure Victoria Outdoor Recreation Centre Read a presentation given to the Victorian Government’s Sport & Rec Sector Forum in June 2004, here |
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©2005-2009 Lachlan Shield |
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