The Association is in a really interesting position at present and I’ve been impressed with the amount of progress made in various areas in recent times as well as the clear passion that people have for the industry. I believe membership of the Association offers outstanding value and a key role we have is to communicate the benefits of the membership along with bringing to life the recently developed strategic plan. This plan sets out goals of lifting the profile of the organisation, working hard to improve recruitment and retention rates of workers in the wool harvesting industry, improving opportunities around training and raising the bar on health and safety for everyone associated with the work we do. Lofty goals, and from my perspective a great time to be entering the organisation with so much enthusiasm to attack the challenges and opportunities we have.

For now I’m focusing on developing an action plan that comes out of the key goals from the strategic plan, continuing to gain some knowledge of ‘how things work’ in general, looking to see how I might be able to support executive committee members and lending a little bit of support to Tahi Ngatahi.