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Business View Australia - June 2015 11
we a society of engineers or
were we an association that
represented the business in-
terests of the companies?
So the Board of the day de -
cided f irmly in favour of the
lat ter and we star ted wi th a
const i tut ional change to take
us from individual to corporate
membership and the changed
program rode through the or-
ganisat ion and truly culminated
wi th a change of name of the
organisat ion to Consul t Austra-
l ia, which obviously represents
a broader membership than
just engineers, because cur-
rent ly only hal f our members
are in engineer ing and the oth-
er hal f are in a range of other
mul t idiscipl inar y act ivi t ies and
many of them may be in pure
archi tecture or environmental
science or quant i t y sur veying.
So we recognise that we need
to improve the business inter-
ests of the bui l t environment
in the pr ivate sector and not
necessar i ly the technical dis -
cipl ines contained therein. We
have a strong memorandum of
understanding wi th the var i -
ous professional inst i tutes in
the states where we concen-
trate on the business issues.”
Benefits that Con-
sult Australia
members enjoy
Consult Australia lobbies with
the government at all levels to
fur ther the interests of its mem-
bers. Specific areas in the legisla-
tive and regulatory environments
are identified and the views of
members presented to the con-
cerned politicians or government
depar tments. The association
could take up the issue of tax on
small businesses, environmental
clearances, land release issues
or planning regulations on behalf
of its members and ensure that
governmental authorities under-
stand the impact of their actions
and take corrective steps so as
to prevent a negative fall-out for
the association’s members.
Employees of Consult Austra-
lia also make submissions to
the government on a range of
issues to present the views of
the members of the association.
Meetings are organised with of-
ficials and member firms are
given the oppor tunity to interact
directly with bureaucrats and
other of ficials by organising var-