John Skene recruits our 1300th member

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In the 1980s we had 800 members. We recruited our 1000th member in that decade and membership numbers went up, and then down after 1996 when members took the opportunity to flee the rigors of local government and have a go at private certification – you know, put everything in your partner’s name, approve everything (and not even have to go to the site!) and make some money.

The gradual but increasing proportion of planners since we started accepting planners as members a decade or so ago has meant that in October we came very, very close to reaching 1300 members.

So Louise emailed all of our delegates offering a $50 incentive to go out and recruit someone to be the 1300th member. Something a bit better than our standard bottle of wine for recruiting a couple of new members and considerably less than what seems to have been the practice in rewarding purchasing officers across the industry – no televisions or electronic devices delivered to your home from depa.

Within 40 minutes of the e-mail going out, our long-standing delegate at Randwick Council John Skene recruited Scott Williamson. Thanks John and welcome Scott. And to show what a good bloke John is, he donated the $50 to the Children’s Cancer Institute of Australia.  Nice one. John has worked in local government since 1976 and a member since 1991 after abandoning a career in HR – clearly his good values and caring attitude didn’t fit too well - working at Bankstown and Randwick since 2002.

Scott is a planner too, so there’s something about the diversity of our membership when an experienced health and building surveyor recruits a young planner.

In a way it’s a shame they are both blokes (because this is no longer a blokes’ organisation) but in the last membership report to the Committee of Management meeting two weeks ago, there were 23 men and 26 women new recruits. Our Committee has two women members of nine but for proper proportional representation we could do with one or two more when the elections are held next year.

There was still no recruitment of new members at Orange.