RCCIWA Monthly Teleconference Recap
On Tuesday we held our monthly RCCIWA Teleconference. This regular phone meeting is a great opportunity for our members to get together and share their what they have been up to as well as discuss common issues and operational matters. One of the features of this meeting is each of our members giving an update from their organisation. Some of the common topics discussed were:

            Operational Activities

All of our Chamber are extremely busy, with many right in the middle of organising their annual business awards. An enormous amount of work goes into holding an event like this and right now the majority of those on the line are finalising their category and submission criteria, meeting with members in regard to their nominations, speaking with sponsors and of course organisation all of the logistics for the actual night. With attendances of between 200 and 400 people , this event is a big deal. It is also one of the highlights on the local business and social calendar and provides incredible recognition, rewards and profiles for their local business and broader community.

Quite a few of our members are putting their community and business directories together. As with the awards, many of our members deliver a local business directory, both a hard copy and on line version. Directories are an invaluable service, no only for the locals, but also for all visitors to each regional area. At our June meetings we will be discussing these in more details and looking at the digital directory and what is working well.

Place Activation and Liveability

The was quite a great deal of discussion about reinvigorating the main streets and CBD areas of each regional town or city, with a focus on utilising empty retail and office spaces. This led to the broader discussions of place activation and liveability and the important role the local business organisation has to play in this space. There is quite a bit of work being done on these two topics all over regional WA currently, and we hope to have a guest speaker on place activation at our up coming June Meetings. Below are a few very informative sites on these topics that we have come across recently that will give great inspiration:

https://saveyour.town/

http://renewnewcastle.org/

https://www.townteams.com.au/

 

Mobile Black Spot Program (MBSP) – Round 4 announcements
In the week commencing 18 March 2019, the Federal Government announced the outcomes of Round 4 of the MBSP.   Under Round 4 Telstra will build 131 new mobile base stations and small cells to remove black spots and improve coverage for customers living in regional and remote areas. This represents a combined investment of $55.6 million, with $23.3 million from Telstra, $18 million from the Federal Government and $14.3 million from the Queensland, SA, Victorian and WA State Governments. In Round 4, we will deliver 49 sites to New South Wales, 18 to Queensland, 19 to South Australia, 22 to Victoria and 23 to Western Australia.

For WA, Telstra is building 23 of the 26 sites receiving funding in Round 4, which includes the following locations:

• Arrowsmith East
• Bannister
• Camballin
• Cheynes
• Coalfields Road (Darkan)
• Gnowangerup Jerramungup Road
• Kanpa
• Kooljaman Resort
• Laverton, Cosmo Newberry
• Laverton, Mulga Queen
• Mettler
• Milo, Midlands Road
• Nanga Brook Campsite
• Nannup North
• Narrikup West
• Newlands
• Ngaanyatjarra Lands, Kiwirrkurra
• Ngurrawaana
• Patjarr
• Shannon Campground
• Tampu
• West Pingelly
• Yardie Creek, Ningaloo (Yardie Creek Road)

A full list of these sites receiving funding under Round 4 is available here.  Once the fourth round of the Mobile Black Spot Program is completed, Telstra will have invested over $280 million and built over 780 new sites to improve coverage for regional areas around the country - a significant proportion of the total 1047 sites co-funded by Government under the Program since 2015. This investment further underpins Telstra’s commitment to regional and rural Australia.  For more information about Telstra’s investment in the MBSP please visit their website.

RCCIWA Members Forum – June 13^th and 14^th 2019
Planning has already commenced for the first biannual RCCIWA Members Forum, to be held in Perth at Parliament House on Thursday June 13^th and at The Mercure Hotel Perth on Friday June 14^th.  For this first Forum of 2019, we are looking at what technology we may be able to utilise so that members unable to make it to Perth, can still participate and contribute. We will keep you posted on this. We will also be managing the registration for the meetings and the BAH via an online platform – so hopefully this makes it easier for everyone.

I am also pleased to announce that the NAB have very generously agreed to host our Business After Hours which will showcase great produce and beverages from Regional WA. The terrific team from Accor Hotels WA will be able to take the night off and join us for quality networking and NAB hospitality.

In order for us to plan the Forum so that it is relevant and informative for you, we would love your feedback on the following – just email me with any suggestions you may have:

• Members of Parliament you would like us to invite
• Questions for those MP’s
• Topics and issues, you would love covered on Day two, the Operational Day
• Any guest speakers you would like to hear from on either day
• Any suggestions you have for the format and the timings of both days
• We have larger capacity for our BAH, so please start thinking about any of your members who may be based in Perth, that you would like us to invite. We will put out a request for this next month.

Website Refresh - Send us your Documents
We are currently working on developing a member’s only access area on our website that will be a resource library to share information from our members with our members. 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 by the end of April 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, 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.