This is a new initiative from the HRA Committee to ensure that members are kept up to date on issues that affect the club and how the Committee is dealing with them. We will publish a summary of the proceedings of each meeting as soon as possible so members can see what their Committee is working on and where our club is heading.
If members want further information or wish to table items for the Committee to consider in the future please send an email to president@hra.org.au
This was the first meeting of the 2024 HRA Committee. The members of the new Committee are:
| Office Bearers | |
| President | Owen Polanski |
| Vice President | Tim Shepherd |
| Secretary | Liz Partington |
| Treasurer | Kerril Maloney |
| General Committee Members | |
| Membership Secretary | Kate Officer |
| Social & Standard Car Class | Rob Cranston |
| Competition Secretary | Peter Canals |
| HRA Update Editor | Paul Mollison |
| Jess Pigot | |
| Matt DeVaus |
The Committee also has a number of non-voting delegated positions:
| Alpine Rally Liaison | Steve Young |
| Club Scorer | Nick Wright |
| HRA Archive Officer | Tom Latta |
| HRA News Editor | Jeff Cameron |
| Scrutiny Liaison | Chris Ellis |
| Equipment Manager | Chris Ellis |
| VCRS Delegate | Andrew Paice |
| VRC Delegate | Joel Wald |
| Member Development | Alan Chambers |
| Web Adminstrator | Steve Hollowood |
New President, Owen, welcomed the 2024 Committee and thanked them all for their commitment to the future ongoing success of the club.
President’s Report
Thank you to Steve Young for his dedicated work over the last two years as president. It has been a challenging time but he leaves a wonderful legacy with securing both a new Clerk of the Course for the Alpine Rally of East Gippsland in Troy Bennett and also for finalising the Naming Rights sponsor of the Alpine in Lovells Suspension. This is an exciting development as it secures the clubs flagship event into the future.
The major ongoing challenge for the HRA over the next four years is to attract new and younger members. We need to keep the club in a position to stage not only major events like the Alpine Rally and Rally Retro Festival but the many other grass roots style events that our club and the wider sport need.
The reality for the HRA is that we have an aging membership and as our more experienced competitors and volunteer officials retire we risk losing not only the physical ability to stage events but the loss of countless accumulated years of experience and knowledge.
My number one priority for the club is to both attract younger members and ensure that knowledge and experience is passed along to those younger members to help secure our future.
Some of the strategies to help with this will include:
- Improving communications, particularly between the Committee and the membership. This post on our website is the first step in that.
- Modernising our image and processes without losing the essence of what makes the HRA what it is and where it has come from.
- Developing a fuller range of “Grass Roots” events like Autocross, khanacross, Come & Try days, tarmac sprints and track days, social tours, driver and co-driver training days and officials training days. This is part of the way we create pathways for new and younger members into the sport and to re-engage some of our current membership.
- Growing our relationships with other clubs as well as Motorsport Australia to achieve more synergy in our activities.
This is a huge agenda and will take more than the two years allocated to my tenure as President. I am delighted that Tim Shepherd as Vice President is committed to continue on the same path for the following two years when he will take over as President. We will need that continuity.
Finally, it is absolutely essential that we get the support of every member to make this agenda work. We need you to support the club in practical ways by volunteering as often as possible to help out in staging events and sharing your expertise and knowledge with other members.
There will be lots of opportunities to step up over the next two years and it’s crucial that you do as the numbers of people doing so has declined quite alarmingly and it’s impossible to keep doing what we do without your energy and time.
A summary of HRA Committee Meeting 15/02/2024
Committee Structure
The proposed re-structure of the Committee as announced at the recent AGM to increase voting members from ten to fourteen was discussed and decided not to proceed with this proposal. Committee members felt the current structure with the inclusion of delegate members as needed to complete certain tasks would achieve the same result.
Club Plates
Tim reported on his ongoing deliberations with HRA club plate inspectors, the AOMC, the Victorian Rally Advisory Panel (VRAP) and VicRoads. The basis of these deliberations is to ensure that cars which are not eligible to be on Club Historic plates are directed to the alternative options of either M plates or RP plates as in the case of most rally cars. Hopefully in the coming months we will have a clear direction and can communicate that with our members who hold Club Historic Plates.
Motorsport First Aid
Martin Warneke presented a proposal to Committee regarding providing First Aid training to members with a particular focus on ‘First on Scene’ support for rally competitors in the event that they come across a crashed on course. The Committee is strongly in favour of this concept and will continue discussions with Martin to finalise the proposal and present dates to the membership. This could also include a half day Navigation/Co-Driver training session. As we firm this proposal up we will let everyone know dates and venues.
Great Forest National Park
The Committee noted the public proposals for a National Park to be created in the forest surrounding Melbourne. If this goes ahead the potential is that all special stage rallying will be banned from these forests which will effectively shut out Yarra Valley Stage, Marysville Stages and Akademos if it goes ahead. This is the single greatest threat to our sport that has been seen over the last twenty years. There is a response being planned by VRAP in conjunction with Motorsport Australia and the HRA stands ready to offer any support which may be deemed useful in that endeavour. The Committee is following up on possible discussions with senior Victorian politicians to gain some clarity around the likelihood and timeframe of any such development passing through parliament.
The HRA Magazine
The editor has written to the Committee to express his concern at the difficulty in sourcing articles for the magazine. In fact, the problem is bad enough that he doesn’t have enough material to create the normal ‘Summer’ edition. This means the next edition will be the ‘Autumn’ edition and should appear sometime in March. So, if you have something to say that is of interest to our membership now is the time to commit it to paper (or PC). Experiences from Bagshot at the end of last year, the recent Rally Retro Festival or for that matter anything which will be of interest to the members please send it to editor@hra.org.au It doesn’t have to ‘War and Peace’ just a couple of hundred words would be very much appreciated.
Policies & Procedures
The Committee is working on developing a range of policies and procedures over the next few months. The first of these policies is around the use of Social Media. This also includes a set of updated rules relating to how HRA social media can be used. See a link to these documents below.
HRA Social Media Policy (pdf)
HRA Social Media Rules (pdf)
Again, if members want further information or wish to table items for the Committee to consider in the future please send an email to president@hra.org.au.
Historic Rally Association 