V07 CoCA news October 2009
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| CoCA – Coalition of Civil Celebrants Associations |
| Our thanks to CoCA for providing this report so all celebrants may keep up to date with this group that represents our interests to the Attorney General. |
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October 2009 Report for the ACCN e-Magazin
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From: Lance Tapsell CoCA President
At the beginning of September the delegates of CoCA met with the A-G for a 45 minute meeting in Sydney. The meeting was a very frank, open and positive one. The A-G shared with us, his vision of where CoCA would sit in the grand scheme of things and how we could assist him and his department.
We were also able to show the A-G a long list of achievements that CoCA have managed in a short space of time and that we a "can do" attitude. We were able to discuss the many ways that CoCA could assist and provide valuable input to him and his department as we are after all the people that know what the marrying public want and what is needed by the celebrant population. |
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Naturally CoCA, being a national organisation, can no longer afford to be self funding as we have delegates in Perth & Far North Queensland as well as the eastern seaboard and it would unfair on their associations to be burdened with the costs of travel etc. In this light, we discussed funding with the A-G and provided a submission for funding that would enable us to continue to function. The A-G was very receptive to our funding needs.
During the meeting we were able to highlight some of the frustrations with the department. For example at one point he A-G asked how many celebrants there were in Australia. A simple and reasonable question. I was able to advise him that we didn't know and the reason we didn't know was because it was (according to his registrar, Deborah Nance) classified information. We provided a guesstimate of 9000 but stressed that it was only a guess. This translates to only 2 calls to the MCS per year per celebrant. Based on the supposed 18,000 calls received by the MCS per year.
The A-G promised to reply to our submissions by the end of October. To date we have not received his reply. However we remain hopeful that we will receive his positive reply shortly.
In anticipation of his reply the delegates of CoCA will be meeting in Sydney on the 19th November to discuss our future direction of the organisation.
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