RCCIWA Members Forum – Notes from Day One – Parliament House
The first RCCIWA Members Forum was another very valuable and informative event with fantastic information, advocacy, information sharing, engagement and networking. Thank you to everyone who came along and contributed so enthusiastically. There was a very strong collective focus to both days, and it was yet another way that we work hard to ensure the voice of regional business in WA is heard.

Day One was held at Parliament House and was generously hosted by the Hon Paul Papalia CSC MLA. With 36 people in attendance, representing 18 regional chambers, the conversation with the leaders of our state was relevant, robust and enlightening (to all). We also had the privilege of hearing from the newly appointed Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Liza Harvey MLA, just a couple of hours after her appointment.

There were many issues discussed during the day with some key questions from our members being:

• Raising the payroll tax threshold  - no commitment was made on this; however we will keep raising this as an issue as every opportunity. To read our view on this go here
• The development of the Busselton airport
• The inequity of the cash buy back system for regional taxi plate owners
• The good work that is being done by the State Government on driving an increase in tourism numbers to regional WA, with particular reference to regional air fare offers and promotions. What areas are to be  focused on going forward?
• How can we support an increase in regional GP’s?
• What mental health support is there for regional communities?

For notes from the day please read here.

Working Together Program – Agreement Extended
We are pleased to announce that our agreement with the Department of Training and Workforce Development to deliver the Working Together program has been extended for a further 13 months to June 30^th  2020.

Working Together is a dedicated service with a focus to provide information, support and advice to business owners and operators in the Goldfields, South West, Midwest, West Kimberley and Great Southern regions to attract, recruit and retain young Aboriginal Employees. Working in collaboration with the local Jobs abs Skills Centres, Working Together aims to expand work opportunities for young local Aboriginal people by talking with and educating local businesses. It is about delivering local jobs for local people. Funded and supported by the Department of Training and Workplace Development, this program is about to enter its fourth year and we are seeing positive results, particularly in delivering cultural awareness to business owners and connecting potential applicants to the right job for them. Delivered locally by the five Chambers of Commerce in each region with RCCIWA the Program Manager, Working Together is a great example of utilising the trust, engagement and network of local Chambers to deliver real outcome and support the business community. For more information read here.

RCCIWA Members Partnering with Business Station to Deliver ASBAS Program
Last year our friends at Business Station were the successful tenderer for WA, QLD and the NT to provide the Digital Solutions Program for the Australian Small Business Advisory Services, a Federally funded program. ASBAS Digital Solutions provides small business with low cost, high quality advice on a range of digital solutions to help them meet their business needs and grow their digital capabilities.

They use service providers across regional and metropolitan Australia to give small business operators and intenders professional low-cost advice. Services are being delivered through a mix of one-to-one and group formats, including face-to-face and online. Assistance is available until June 2021.

RCCIWA supported Business Station in their tender, with the understanding that RCCIWA members would be able to partner with Business Station in the delivery of the service. I am pleased to inform you that Business Station have been busily reaching out to our members in regards to working together to deliver this service in Regional WA, and to date three of our members, the Wheatbelt Business Network, the Bunbury-Geographe CCI and the Kalgoorlie0Boulder CCI have entered into a formal agreement and will deliver the service locally.

Business Station will be approaching all of our members over the coming months. If you would like to find out more go to https://www.businessstation.com.au/whats-on/

Website Refresh - Send us your Documents
We are pleased to announce that we have built a member’s only access area on our website that will be a resource library to share information from our members with our members.  Now we need to fill it! We get asked every week for examples and templates and thought it would be great to have a live resource you could access. We hope this will be up and ready to go in the next few weeks and to assist us, could you please send Emmi at admin@regionalchamberswa.com.au any documents that you are happy to share with your fellow members. We will assume if you send it to us that you are happy for us to upload this on the members only access section of our website. Please send in pdf format (and in the smallest size you can), documents such as:

• Your Constitution
• Your Strategic or Operational Plans
• Membership Forms, Membership prospectus
• Member Benefits flyer
• BAH information
• Sponsorship information
• Directory information
• Business Awards Information
• Job and Position Descriptions
• Events information
• Policies and Procedures
• Committee Induction pack  etc

Update your Information
To assist Emmi with keeping our website and communications as up to date as possible can you please send to admin@regionalchamberswa.com.au the following:

• Any changes to your contact details, particularly following your AGM. Please also let Emmi know if you have any committee members or general members that you would like added to the newsletter and we will pop them on the distribution list.
• Your new logo if you have refreshed or changed it recently.
• Any activities, initiatives or events you would like us to include in our weekly newsletter. You will notice that we are including an item each week that showcases a great idea, program or event that one of our members is delivering. If you have something you would like us to share – please send through the details.
• Any events you would like added to soon to be coming events calendar on our website. If you have a specific logo for that event - could you also send that through, and we will include it.