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Concerns with Adventure Activity Standards
We at B&AR have a number of fears and concerns with the AAS process. Although there are some undoubted benefits of the project to the commercial outdoor recreation industry, the good it will do for walking clubs and volunteer groups is difficult to see. In practice it won’t be voluntary Although the ORC has attempted to deflect some criticism by highlighting that the AAS is a voluntary guideline, the reality is that once it is introduced it will become the benchmark by which volunteer walking clubs are measured. This means that in order to obtain affordable insurance, clubs will need to demonstrate that their walk leaders follow the AAS. This in turn implies that there would need to be something like an accreditation scheme for walk leaders in clubs; otherwise, how could a club prove to an insurer that it complied with the AAS? If things followed that path, it would be ironic if a training and accreditation scheme was felt necessary so soon after the closure of the Bushwalking and Mountaincraft Training Advisory Board (BMTAB). It creates an additional administrative burden for volunteers One of the sillier statements in the AAS project is found in the presentation given to the Victorian Government’s Sport & Rec Sector Forum in June 2004, which you can access here. In it, they talk about encouraging and sustaining volunteering. Exactly how you achieve this by giving volunteers more paperwork, and potentially overheads in administering training and accreditation, is beyond me. It’s only marginally useful in promoting safety If it was about promoting safety, there are plenty of more effective ways to do it. While we have no argument with the technical aspects of the AAS, they are unlikely to contribute greatly to safety of either commercial tours or bushwalking clubs, because we suspect the technical (as opposed to administrative and record-keeping) safety-related standards are probably already mostly followed by walking clubs. The people most at risk of coming to grief in the outdoors (casual day walkers, because they usually don’t have the equipment or skills to spend a night out) are not covered by the AAS and will probably know nothing about it. It won’t help much with legal liability and negligence claims There is nothing in the AAS which will actually stop you from being sued. All it does is remove legal arguments about what standard of leadership is required in the outdoors. It says nothing about It’s not guaranteed to lower insurance premiums For all the government carries on about supporting volunteers, they won’t do the one thing that would make life easier for them. I have heard from numerous community groups in my travels that the one thing that would make life easier would be assistance in obtaining insurance. While the aim of the process appears to be to decrease insurance premiums (although we’re not sure, because the aims of the project are not clear), it is not certain that this will be the result. There is no guarantee, for example, that insurance companies will suddenly drop premiums for walking clubs which comply with the AAS; we think that assuming that they will do so is dangerously naïve. Even if they do, the process as it stands seems sure to swap insurance headaches for accreditation headaches, at a time when the community’s outdoor accreditation scheme (the BMLC) has disappeared. 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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©2005-2012 Lachlan Shield |
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