Page 17 - The Outdoor Showman OCT-DEC 2021

Award Modernisation
By Marjorie Chant
In 2009 the then Labor Government decided to modernize the Federal Award System by joining together a lot of various Awards and ‘simplify’ the system.
One of the Awards to be scrapped was The Showmens Guild Award 2002 and we were going to be amalgamated into Amusement, Events & Recreation Award 2010 Entertainment & Broad- casting – Travelling Shows. This would have included us in with Racecourses and Theme Parks.
Yvonne Seymour and I found out about this by accident at the AALARA conference only 10 days prior to this happening. We immediately set about trying to hold onto our Award, as if we lost our Rates the Travelling Showman would not be able to survive.
With no expert assistance and no Knowledge of what it entailed we,
in blissful ignorance, set out on our journey. The SGA had been paying an Industrial Relations firm to look after the paid employees at Yatala and we decided to get in touch with them, af- ter nearly a week of being fobbed off I got in touch with a Solicitor friend and he gave us the name of Dan Houlihan from IR First. By this time we had about 5 days to get some- thing in writing into the Commission.
Yvonne and I spent that time non-stop compiling what turned out to be a 60 page submission into why we should keep our own Award.
This was presented to Justice Giudice and 5 other Judges and 1 Commis- sioner by our IR Representative in Sydney with Yvonne myself and Max Laurie present. It was interesting to note that the IR Firm the SGA had been paying for a number of years was also there representing AA- LARA, however, never mentioned the Showmen that had been paying for his services or had never bothered to answer our calls.
The Award process in itself is quite in- timidating, you have the 5 High Court Judges on the top tier, their personal assistants on the next level, then their assistants, next the IR Reps that are speaking on behalf of their clients and lastly the people employing the
IR Reps, only the Reps are allowed to speak on your behalf.
The greatest surprise was when we were accepted into the second level of discussions. This was when the real work began where we had to prove that we were a unique stand alone industry, no easy task with us only representing approximately 1000 members. Yvonne and I spent weeks on the phone and writing letters to gain support, as the second submis- sion had to be presented by Friday 12th June 2009.
We had great support from Mark Bryant of QCAS, Damon Phillips CEO RASQ and from 10 Big Shows, Geoff Fader formally from FCAS, Mr. Ken Pascoe the then President of QCAS and Nambour Show Society, Malcolm Buckley (Rural Services) SA Chamber of Agricultural Societies, and Roger Saunders Mt Gambier Show Society.
Other sources involved were the West Australian Guild, Sth Australian Guild, Jennie Pell, Richie O’Neill from
I think Marburg, Sue Constable, Sue Hood Dubbo Show all giving letters of support.
We canvassed numerous politicians and asked them all to send letters
on our behalf, which they did, I think Julia Gillard Deputy Prime Minister must have been truly sick of us as she received numerous letters on our behalf from many politicians, however she did write to Justice Giudice on our behalf and suggested we get consider- ation as a separate Award.
We even received a letter of congrat- ulations from the then Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard for our input
into the new Modern Award. Luck if you can call it that again fell our way and after submitting another 60 page document and everyone saying we no hope we again made the cut into the third and forth, the final draw.
By this time we had started to be recognized by others so not only did we have Tony Doyle (AALARA) not working on our behalf but 2 other Unions decided they wanted us as well. The MEAA (Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance) and the SDA both put in Submissions to claim us.
In the last Submission Yvonne and I
started to gain a little confidence and changed the Scope and Locality of our original Award to try and include the Federal Agricultural Show movement we were asked to speak at their meet- ing at Melbourne Show-grounds, which we did, however, from that we realized that we were getting no support from either Victoria Mr. Jim McCutchen VAS president or NSW Mr. David Wood the President of ASC, so unfortunately the Agricultural Show Movement weren’t included in our Award.
Through Roger Saunders (Mt Gambier) and Malcolm Buckley (South Australia), Mary Jo Fischer MP, Wilson Tuckey MP and Barnaby Joyce MP took our peti- tion into the upper and lower Houses of Parliament we were interviewed
on the ABC radio’s Country Hour at Adelaide Show and even received a mention in the Financial Review.
Yvonne and I were religiously at every Review did between 40/60 page submissions each time to show our uniqueness as a stand- alone Industry. At Royal Melbourne Show September 2009 I received the call saying we weren’t given the old Guild Award back but a new one called The Travelling Shows Award 2010. And the rest is history.
The greater majority of Travelling Showmen would not be operating today without this.
THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN 15
Yvonne Seymour and Marjorie Chant