President’s Message

By Steve King, President of CHERPA

Well, the federal election has passed, and I won’t say we didn’t see this coming.

Welcome to the New World.

Now more than ever, we believe it is important to illustrate to the Federal Government and consumer advocates our capacity to self-govern under the auspices of our new industry-based Code of Practice, which we emphasise is a living document that we are always looking to improve.

We will discuss this in depth at our upcoming AGM and look for further support from those in the industry outside of CHERPA to keep us in the game.

At this stage, we have had numerous discussions with Rent4Keeps and some other smaller players who have agreed to come under this industry-based Code of Practice (along with some others who we feel are close to committing as well), which we hope will make it more palatable for the new government to accept.

Under the present circumstances, we feel the need to restart lobbying the government and build upon the relationships we already have in place with some Labour members with whom Tim and I have met previously. With your consent and further funding, that process will start very soon.

Also, I believe we all need to consider the use of TaleFin as our preferred credit reporting bureau, which will grant us better real-time reporting data leading to more informed decisions, and which will even help with our lobbying costs through providing rebates back to CHERPA.

As most of you already know, our AGM will be held in Melbourne on the 8th July. We have secured the Novotel on Collins, with full details attached in the newsletter. Once we have confirmed our guest speakers, we will provide you with further updates.

Remember this quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“That which we persist on doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed , but our ability to do has increased.”

I look forward to catching up with as many of you as possible at the AGM.

Regards

Steve King

President of CHERPA