About ATA ... What is it we will do?
We are a not-for-profit professional organisation covering the whole of Australia that is run in accordance with our own Constitution. The ATA Constitution can be read in PDF form on this link, it covers all the areas many members of other organisations are seldom aware of and ask questions about.
Within the constitution is the "OBJECTS OF THE COMPANY", that is what ATA is here to do.
Here are the objectives:-
- To facilitate balanced, holistic and integrated tree management.
- To promote and encourage Australian qualifications and education in arboriculture.
- To be active in the development of education and training for the arboricultural industry.
- To discourage organisational membership being a prerequisite or the mandate to obtaining of work or education.
- To procure arboricultural information for the public domain and to disseminate such information.
- To interact with other facets of tree management including but not limited to forestry, agriculture, town planning, landscape design and architecture, nursery, firewood, environment and conservation.
- To support research in arboriculture.
- To further public interest and education in the care of trees.
- To recognise personal achievements, competencies and qualifications without discrimination based on tenure.
- To promote competition between arboricultural associations.
- To encourage members to work to Australian Standards, Regulations and Laws where they apply and deviation from such to be justified.
- To develop and continually update a basic arboricultural certification for the public domain.
- To actively seek to remove exclusivity, barriers and other impediments to any particular group, association, business or individual pursuing business or enterprise in the arboricultural industry where they are legally entitled to do so.
Helping remove barriers and impediments
Australian Tree Association is here to help you go about your work uninterupted or impeded not by law, but organisations and authors of documents, that say you should have so many years experience or belong to some boys club to do what you are legally entitled to do (work).
The following was written in an Arborist's report for a school site in 2011, "The pruning works should be performed by well qualified and experienced arborists, i.e. climbing arborists should have a minimum qualification of AQF Level 3 (Arboriculture) with 5 years post-qualification experience; supervisors should have a minimum AQF Level 5 (Arboriculture) with 7 years post-qualification experience and be familiar with and have a proven record of working with veteran trees". For those of you studying it can be seen as a serious impediment. For those of you who had many years of experience prior to gaining official qualifications we understand the insult. For employers educating staff it makes the light very small at the end of the 7+ year long tunnel. We believe if qualified individuals are not competent then that issue should be taken up with the individual not tarred across the wider populous. If specific or certain RTO's are "ticking and flicking" their students then that is an issue to be taken up with that RTO. The irony is that those specific trees were pruned by energy contractors on one side to accomodate clearances for power wires. Please follow this link to Google street view and see the trees and location for yourself.
We are not your business competitor
Many organisations have evolved to believe they should be responsible for sorting who gets the work, who is qualified etc. Perhaps the best and most recent display was where the QAA wrote to members telling them that a list of councils and other corporations would be directing their enquiries for arborists to the QAA. Of course to be on the list of "approved" certain criteria had to met which also came with a hefty fee. We will not solicit business. Any leads which arrive at ATA will be politely redirected to Google or Yellow Pages. ATA will do their best to educate members, businesses and the public on how to check their arborist or service provider. At no time will ATA stand between you and your prospective customer. In fact ATA will act on behalf of members to assist in removing such impediments.
All too often members of other arborist associations seem to stay with them and complain. When you stay and complain, you've got no one to fault but yourself. Worse still your membership fees are funding them! Do not support interference into the market place, your prosperity is at stake, vote with your dollars and feet .... walk away and join ATA.
ATA is founded on solid principals that are set in our Constitution, as listed above, that is what we will do. Open, honest and transparent. ATA members have an exclusive forum at Treeworld.info dedicated solely to them so they can converse with Directors and other members from public view, a great facility to easily get involved and have your say.
