MWA President Speaks Out
The following response was provided by the President of Motorcycling Western Australia, Peter Campain. This was issued in response to the recent correspondence issued by the President of Motorcycling Australia, Roy Chamberlain. This follows from a recent statement from the Motorcycling Victoria Board of Directors, expressing their own displeasure at Mr Chamberlain’s statement.
Statement from MWA President Peter Campain
Most competition license holders have been sent an email from the President of Motorcycling Australia talking about the voting for a new constitution. Given Roy has given you his distorted view of the universe I thought I should tell you what it looks like from WA.
For a number of year MA has been working toward a structure where the state bodies cease to exist and everything is run from Melbourne. Granted MWA has had its issues however I think over the last year we have made big steps toward becoming the governing body that the members deserve.
Run the sport from Melbourne think Ridernet or pick up the MOM’s and try to find a page without a typo. You are bound by policies that have never been published outside of the MA office cellar. If you are familiar with the track standards you can watch National events on tv and play a game called spot the non-compliance. Do the same at State or club level and your insurance can be cancelled.
There is no disputing that the various state bodies have had their issues and there are some things needed to change. From my engagement with the various State Presidents, it seems to be there is a general acceptance of the need for change however giving the keys to an organisation that refuses to acknowledge its own problems is not the answer.
This time of the year in 2022 and 2023 you may have heard all the noise over insurance renewals. In each year MA who is the sole owner of MAIL, the MA insurance company, have used this to pressure the State Bodies to give up ground in the management of the sport.
This year we have been through two rounds of it. A few months ago the states were given new affiliation agreements to sign and told to sign or no insurance. The new agreements have a lot of conditions and the worst relates to insurance. If there is an accident to rider or member of the public and the track is not fully compliant to MA standards (to my knowledge no tracks in the country are), if the officials are found not to have applied the rules properly, if the event does not comply to all MA policies including those that have never been published anywhere they can be found or there is a conflict of interest at the event then MA reserves the right to cancel the insurance cover after the event.
I have asked MA to provide some qualification for those officials, volunteers and riders now at risk and while I was told it was coming, two months later still nothing. I don’t think the MA board has sufficient experience at grass roots to understand what they have done. Don’t worry about insurance for racing as it will be interesting to see how many officials front up for 2025.
If you are from a regional club read the MA medical guidelines, if you can’t get the required people much less afford them then an incident can see the insurance revoked because of the medical cover whether relevant or not. If you are from any club in the State that has multiple officials from the same family (which club does not) and they work at the same event it’s a conflict but you won’t be able to assess how serious it is because you can’t find the policy to read it.
The current barney is over a new constitution for MA. The proposed new constitution removes all state rights and allows MA to dictate what goes into the state constitutions, this then cascades to the clubs. The process to elect the MA board effectively allows it to pick its own members regardless of what the states think. MWA in concert with several other states engaged a law firm that was experienced in this area to give us advice on the new constitution. We were given a list of points to dispute that were not in the interests of the members and were not required by any legislation. The constitution committee was over seen by staff from the Australian Sports Commission whose view of how the sport should be was decided by a bunch of people who have clearly not tried to run a sport and the ASC meeting chair refused to discuss any issue that did not suit them, so we are now required to vote on a constitution that four of the seven State bodies did not support through the negotiation stage. We now have the ASC threating to remove their recognition of MA and the State bodies which takes out significant funding and MA threatening to remove the insurance.
MWA has been actively engaged in the current review process and always acted in good faith. We responded to the working group on the 3rd December saying that we were not happy with the process then without as much as an acknowledgement of that communication we get the current communications storm.
The MWA board is meeting next week to consider how the interests of the WA motorcycling community can be best served and what choice we have in this matter.
Peter Campain
President Motorcycling WA
