The Victorian Transport Association (VTA) elected Cameron Dunn as the new president during its annual general meeting in Melbourne yesterday.

Dunn will replace Brendan Hopley, who will remain a member of VTA’s executive council after having served as president of the association for four years.

Dunn, who is also a member of its executive council, has held the position of VTA vice president for the past four years.

He has over 30 years’ experience in the Australian transport sector, and has served as MD of privately-owned national bulk and dangerous goods transport company FBT Transport since 2009.

Dunn is also the current deputy chairman of the National Bulk Tanker Association (NBTA), and a member of the Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association (PACIA) board and the Australian Road Transport Industry Organisation (ARTIO) Victoria board.

"It is a great honour to have been elected President of one of the oldest and most influential transport associations in Australia, and I thank my fellow councillors for entrusting me with this significant responsibility," Dunn says.

"I look forward to working closely with the Council, Peter Anderson and the secretariat to positively advocate on issues impacting our industry, and help to make our members more productive, profitable and successful."

VTA CEO Peter Anderson welcomed Dunn to the new role and thanked former president Hopley for his contribution to the industry and the association.

"Cameron Dunn has been an active and valued member of the VTA for many years and on behalf of the executive council, secretariat and membership, we congratulate him on his election as President of our association," Anderson says.

"Cameron has a unique familiarity with the numerous issues facing our industry on a state and national level, and with his experience and contacts he will play a vital role in advancing our strategic efforts to influence positive legislative, regulatory and practical change.

"We are thrilled that outgoing President Brendan Hopley will remain a member of the executive council, and we sincerely thank him for the generous time, effort and dedication he applied to his four years as president.

"Brendan has successfully overseen a period of positive and significant change and transition at the VTA, and I look forward to his ongoing counsel and friendship."

This article was originally sourced from Fully Loaded. 

Flight attendants have voted overwhelmingly to formally merge with E tÅ«, to form the country’s biggest aviation union.

The Flight Attendants and Related Services Association, or FARSA has been in an operational merger with E tū for the past two years.

FARSA President, Marja Lubeck says members have voted over the past fortnight on the merger, with 90 percent in favour, which is a vote of confidence in the strength it offers members.

"We are now a part of the country’s biggest private sector union. We cover 50 percent of all aviation workers in New Zealand, with 7000 members and growing," says Marja.

"We always believed we were stronger together and that’s been endorsed by our members. This is an exciting opportunity to create a new union for aviation workers, including a stronger voice for young workers, who can look forward to the many benefits this merger will bring."

This article was originally sourced from Voxy. 

The Auckland Old Folks Association was founded in 1945 to provide social services for the elderly in an inner-city neighbourhood of social, cultural and demographic diversity, particularly through fostering gatherings among its members “irrespective of status or creed” in a hall designed for that purpose.

In 2011 the association’s purposes were extended to support arts and cultural production, with a particular interest in performance and intergenerational cultural exchanges. While the association now also supports events by and for younger members, its humble past remains central to the Association’s mission, where art practices, activities, research and thought retain a connection to the ordinary demands of being a community.

In an era of professionalisation the vitality and substance of making often give way to commercial demands. The Association’s goal is to establish an independent platform that allows work to be produced holistically, and where some of the demands to excel; to develop a brand; to have a following; and to be new and extraordinary, can be set aside in the interests of a non-exclusionary process and lasting generosity.

The Association’s goals are long-term, aiming to support activity over the lifetime of participants and contributors. The organisation as a project in itself will always be open to renewal, existing as an expression of the energy of those involved.

The Association acknowledges the remarkable legacy of the original Auckland Old Folks organisation, and seeks to maintain the qualities of pragmatism and service the OFA has given the community and the local environment.

The Association’s committee currently consists of Sean Curham (coordinator), Alex Monteith, Cat Ruka, Danny Butt and Mark Harvey. Terms of membership of the Association are currently under development.

This article was originally sourced from OFA. 

Confirmation by crossbench Senator Brian Burston of his support for a Senate Inquiry into the Child Dental Schedule (CDBS) has significantly bolstered the chances of the threatened scheme surviving into the new year, and beyond.

It is the latest decisive step in a determined campaign by the ADA to save the CDBS which has attracted widespread support from the dental profession, allied health professionals and the public.

Since its launch in January 2014, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule (CDBS) has had a significant impact on the oral health of Australia's children, providing over 9.7 million services in just over its first two years of operation (January 2014-January 2016).

In a meeting with the One Nation Senator, the ADA argued the many merits of the CDBS, as it has done since the Government intimated and then confirmed earlier this year that it intended to close the scheme.

The ADA underscored that the oral health of many of Australia's children was at serious risk with 1 in 2 children experiencing decay in their deciduous (baby) teeth by age 6 and nearly half of children aged 12 years having a history of dental decay in their permanent teeth.

Consigning the rectification of this oral health deficit among Australia's children to the Government's proposed new scheme, the Child and Adult Public Dental Scheme (caPDS) is a regressive step thanks to its reliance on an already overstretched public system to deliver the necessary oral care.

In light of these very real concerns, Senator Burston agreed that his party would vote to direct the closure of the CDBS to a Senate Inquiry when the legislation to close it reaches the Upper House.

This article was originally sourced from ADA. 

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Grain Trade Australia (GTA) appointed Pat O’Shannassy as its new chief executive officer (CEO), effective Nov. 1. O’Shannassy became interim CEO of GTA following the passing of Geoff Honey in June.

“Pat has been very effective in the interim CEO role and has established strong working relationships with the board and staff, members and the broader grains industry,” said Peter Reading, chairman of the GTA.

O’Shannassy was previously a director of GTA and a past director of the Australian Grain Exporters Association (AGEA) and member of the Commodity Markets Council (U.S.).

“Pat has vast industry experience, having spent more than 20 years in the grains industry in Australia and USA,” Reading said. “He has a diverse experience across the entire value chain, with roles in management, grain origination, trading, trade policy and business strategy, gained from working for trade houses, financial institutions as well as customer service and information focused businesses.”

O’Shannassy holds a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from the University of Melbourne and a post-graduate diploma in applied finance and investment.

“The grains industry is progressing through an exciting phase in its growth and development,” O’Shannassy said. “I look forward to working with GTA members and all segments across the value chain and continuing to make a contribution to the ongoing success of the Australian grains industry. The grains industry is such an important part of the agricultural and export sectors of the Australian economy.”

The GTA was formed in 1991 to formalize commodity trading standards, develop and publish the trade rules and standardize grain contracts across the Australian grain industry. GTA's role today is to help ensure the efficient facilitation of commercial activities across the grain supply chain.

This article was originally sourced from World Grain, and written by Holly Demaree. 

The Australian Information Industry Association has a new chair, elected at its annual general meeting in Brisbane on Thursday 3 November. He is John Paitaridis, universally known as JP, managing director of Optus Business. He previously served as one of the AIIA’s two deputy chairs.

JP is well known in the industry. He joined Optus four years ago to help boost its credentials as a provider to the business community. He was previously with arch-rival Telstra for many years, in a variety of senior sales and management roles, most recently as managing director of Telstra Enterprise and Government.

His election to the AIIA chair is effective immediately.

Mr Paitaridis said in a statement that he intended the AIIA to have a greater focus on nurturing partnerships and collaboration.

“The AIIA has a significant role to play in leading and promoting the ICT sector. To do so, it needs a big vision and clear agenda, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

And a challenge it will be.

The AIIA is still in a parlous financial situation, the result of financial mismanagement and bad business judgements going back ten years. Between 2005 and 2011 it made significant losses – except for a small profit in 2010. It has lost money again in the last two years, including a massive $443,000 loss in the 2015-16 financial year, on revenues of $4.7 million.

It has been more successful in increasing revenues from events and sponsorships, though these barely cover the cost of sales. Its biggest event is the annual iAwards, held in each state and nationally, which lost $259,000 last year.

The bad financial news was delivered at the AGM by Charles Lindop, CEO of KTM Capital, who was re-elected as treasurer.

Membership fees – and the number of members – are declining, and have not been meeting targets.

Membership is down to just 281 – only 59 of whom are from medium and large IT companies, and from which the large majority (79 per cent) of the membership revenues come. The organisation has a complex sliding membership scale, with larger vendors paying massively more than the SMEs and micro-businesses that comprise the bulk of the membership.

Off the record, many members and those who know the organisation well have told InnovationAus.com that all is not well.

The AIIA has often been criticised for representing the interests of multinational vendors over those of smaller indigenous companies.

A key complaint, often repeated, has been that the board no longer has a strong representation from the CEOs of the very largest vendors, and that it is not as cohesive as it was.

Mr Paitaridis replaces Kee Wong, founder and managing director of technology management consultancy e-Centric Innovations, who did not recontest the position of chairman, but who was re-elected to the board.

Mr Wong had been chair since 2012. The two new deputy chairs are Elizabeth Vega, CEO of Informed Solutions, and Mike Pym, CEO of Pyms Technology Lawyers, both of whom were previously on the board.

There were four elected positions to be filled among the 16 person board. As well as Mr Paitaridis and Mr Wong, Kate Burleigh (managing director Intel Australia) and Marie Johnson, (managing director and chief digital officer, Centre for Digital Business) were re-elected.

Three members stood down, and an additional three board positions will be appointed over the next three months.

Other board members are:

• Mark Nicholls, managing director, Information Professionals
  
• Martijn Blanken, group managing director and chief customer officer, Telstra
  
• Matt Codrington, executive director Australia & New Zealand, Lenovo
  
• Murray Hurps, general manager, Fishburners
  
• Pip Marlow, managing director, Microsoft Australia
  
• Peter Strohkorb, CEO, Peter Strohkorb Consulting International
  

Retiring from the board were Peter McGrath (former CEO of Nextgen), Martjin Blankin (chief customer officer at Telstra) and Rob Hillard (technology leader at Deloitte).

The AIIA press release quotes CEO Rob Fitzpatrick saying the organisation wants to sharpen its focus and extend its relevance after a period of consolidation.

“Strategic plan”. “Consolidation”. “Sharpen our focus”. ”Extend our relevance”.

Mr Fitzpatrick, who has been in the day-to-day management role since January this year, and Mr Paitaridis, have a big job ahead of them.

This article was originally sourced from Innovations Aus.

Professor Julian Eaton-Rye is certainly persistent. After bidding three times in six years, the University of Otago biochemistry professor is finally bringing the 18th International Congress on Photosynthesis Research to Rotorua in 2020. His commitment will see some 1,300 academics and professionals across a broad range of fields associated with photosynthesis meet in New Zealand for the first time. These will including world-leading specialists in plant science, agronomy and agriculture, ecology and climate change, to those looking to capture solar energy into useable fuel.

What finally secured the win? “We showed them we were organised,” he says. “The conference cycles between Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world. I was on the international committee. It was the turn of the Americas in 2013 and in the 2010 bidding period they didn’t bid, so I thought, ‘why not?’. However, the US put in a late bid and they decided to go with them.

“In 2013 in St Louis, I decided I was going to bid again. The conference was expected to go to Europe, but I wanted to let them know we were still interested. We tied for the conference in the initial voting, and again in the second round. Then, after a long discussion they decided it was Europe’s turn. This third time everyone knew it was ours and we didn't even have a competing bid. In essence we won it in St Louis as long as we were prepared to be patient.”

Eaton-Rye notes that support from Tourism New Zealand in all three bids was vital to his ultimate success. This included comprehensive bid material and promotional marketing material, from slides to videos, that made a positive impression. “In every bid we’ve been the most professional. People think we’re obviously capable. And I know New Zealand's reputation and appeal has definitely been a big drawcard. A large number of delegates plan to bring their families and stay longer. Throughout this process there has been strong support and great enthusiasm for bringing the conference here: ‘Keep going, Julian, people want to come to New Zealand!’”

He adds: “Tourism New Zealand’s Conference Assistance Programme backing was very important to making this all work out. I received financial support to attend the conference in the Netherlands to deliver the third, successful bid. That was very important; The University of Otago will support me to attend one international meeting a year but I had already been to one this year. If Tourism New Zealand hadn't paid that would have come out of my own pocket, so that was a big boost. I was surprised it was an option, but it was great.”

Personal victory aside, Eaton-Rye says winning a conference like this has multiple benefits for New Zealand, not least an estimated $3 million injection for the local economy.

“It’s an opportunity to do something for this field. Science funding in New Zealand is not so good, particularly in basic research for plant sciences. We can't do some of the research we’d like to do, but this will raise the profile of the plant science community in New Zealand. Usually these things are held in big cities and become quite anonymous, but here it will have a much bigger profile with the community, and in terms of media attention. Its great for the local students and professionals in these fields to have these people on their doorstep to learn from and network with. A number of universities will get involved, and we aim to have a website with educational materials on it for schools, as well as hosting public lectures around energy security, food security, the implications for climate change.”

Rotorua also played a starring role in winning the event, thanks to its appeal as a tourism destination and its excellent events infrastructure, including conference venue the Rotorua Energy Events Centre. Eaton-Rye adds: “Given the city’s focus on forestry and forestry sciences, the opportunity in Rotorua to involve the local community is unique and we will harness the local expertise. We have invited Scion, the Crown Research Institute for the New Zealand forest industry, to become involved. A conference like this will have lots of spin offs for plant science and the energy sector in New Zealand.”

If you would like to find out more about Tourism New Zealand, please visit www.businessevents.newzealand.com

The business has a plan, the staff are engaged. Management and employee KPIs have been identified and bonuses to be paid for meeting same. Management KPIs have been set, operational costs minimised, and employees encouraged to use their initiative. "Relevance" is now fully operational; happy staff, happy customers and profitability for all ensured.

As a direct result of implementing the above plan the San Francisco based bank Wells Fargo has just, September 2016, terminated 5,300 employees and been fined some USD$180 million. To both meet and exceed the first of their KPIs employees created fictional PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enrol existing clients into fake online banking services. That done they achieved their second KPI by transferring client's monies from real accounts into the fake accounts. This was replicated for "at least" 1.5 million "new" accounts. The third KPI was met when employees submitted 565,443 applications for new credit card accounts; without the client's knowledge. Finally the fourth employee and management KPI was met as the clients incurred fees; such as annual fees, interest charges and overdraft-protection fees.

Wells Fargo has announced that it will pay "full restitution to all victims". One wonders what it will take to achieve "full restitution of its business reputation".

The lesson to be learned is simple. "ticking all the business relevance" boxes is not the "be all and end all". Businesses are complex. A set of operational rules, no matter how complete require continual revisiting and oversight. Finally consider firstly giving written instructions, "how to tie your shoelaces" to a 5 year old; and secondly the skills needed to write said instructions in the first place.

The usernames and passwords of nearly 70 million Dropbox users were stolen and posted for sale on the internet, the company disclosed in August, due to a 2012 hack. While a Dropbox company blog post assured its users that their passwords remained safely encrypted and stored data was not exposed, the hack serves as a reminder why cloud storage and file-sharing service should not be used for storing and sharing sensitive board documents.

By taking advantage of the widespread availability of high-speed network connectivity and the declining cost of storage, Dropbox’s proposition led many companies to replace local data storage with cloud storage.

However, some of the very features that make Dropbox so popular—such as easy access to files on mobile devices and easy sharing with anyone—pose a serious security risk when the service is used to store and share boardroom data. So much so that, according to a 2016 report by MobileIron, a developer of enterprise-level secure mobile access management solutions, the Dropbox mobile app remains the most banned app by American employers.

Dropbox Drawbacks

Here’s why Dropbox may not be secure enough for board use:

1. Multiple instances of files. Dropbox, by default, creates a duplicate mirror folder on each user’s computer, containing all of the files uploaded to the cloud. Once the link between the local and the cloud folder is severed—such as when the user is not connected to the internet— the two folders become separate entities.

2. You don’t know where your files are. With Dropbox, users have no way to determine where their “cloud-stored” files are physically stored. Cloud storage services do not disclose this information, nor do they disclose which other companies’ files share the same server or servers. According to InfoWorld, “multi-tenancy”—the practice of storing the files of multiple customers on the same server—poses not only the risk of private data accidentally leaking to other tenants, but also that of data theft due to vulnerabilities in other tenants’ files.

3. Concerns over encryption and file transfer security. Even though, according to Dropbox, file data is stored in discrete file blocks that are fragmented and encrypted, IT administrators have no control over the data security and encryption.

4. Data on a stolen laptop can’t always be remotely wiped. While Dropbox provides the ability to remotely wipe the Dropbox folder from a stolen laptop containing sensitive data , for example, it can only do so if the stolen laptop is connected to the internet. Without internet connection there’d be nothing to prevent an outsider from copying the files from the Dropbox folder.

5. No control over the encryption/decryption key. Dropbox, not the user, holds the encryption/decryption keys for the user’s files. If this key falls into the wrong hands (as, according to Symantec, was the case in the Stuxnet malware attack) a company’s files may be compromised.

Companies can and should do better to protect their sensitive data than rely on one-size-fits-all cloud storage services. Beyond finding the right platform for your company—whether it be a dedicated board data portal or a custom system—the challenge lies in educating employees and executives of the perils of sharing sensitive files using the same cloud storage services they use for their own personal files. There’s simply too much at risk.

This article was originally sourced from Dilligent.

AuSAE is delighted to announce that The Future of Associations is now being printed, and will be available in Australia from 29th November.

The association sector’s response to the cover choice was almost unanimous, with most association professionals preferring the contemporary red front cover shown below, over an alternate white cover design with different graphics.

Interestingly Brendon Ward, CEO of AuSAE and Omer Soker, author of the book both initially felt that the white cover might be more practical. However, both let go of their own perceptions in a commitment to give members what they want.

“I do like the crispness and cleanness of the red cover,” said Ward.

“This is salient for all associations,” added Soker. “One of many lessons shared in the book is to give members what they want and need, regardless of your own personal preferences. It’s about being truly member-serving.”

AuSAE members can now order copies from the first print run at the discounted member rate of $18.99 plus postage by clicking here. The non-member price is $23.99.

Writing in the book’s Foreword, Brendon Ward said “AuSAE is delighted to publish The Future of Associations. Omer Soker has done a wonderful job – his conversational writing style, astute analogies and frank advice result in a compelling and easy read that will keep you engaged and wanting to come back for more. This is a must-read for all association professionals who are serious about the sustainability of their organisations.”

The book’s synopsis is highlighted on the back cover, reproduced here.

To order this first ever book on the association sector in Australia and New Zealand, click here.