The development of Adventure Activity Standards (AAS) has been endorsed nationally by both the Sport and Recreation Ministers’ Council (SRMC) and the Standing Committee on Recreation and Sport (SCORS) and are intended to be the way in which standards are adopted within all states and territories.
Tasmania led development in this area for many years, but a significant amount of work has been undertaken in Victoria since 2002 to develop AAS. Since 2002, standards have been developed for 15 activities, facilitated through the Outdoor Recreation Centre - Victoria Inc. (http://www.orc.org.au). The standards are seen as industry driven and have been endorsed by the Victorian Government land managers and agencies.
While the Victorian AAS have been used as the basis for how the standards should be presented, wide variations in environmental, legal, industry and activity parameters in each state has meant that it is essential that they are reviewed and signed off at a state and territory level. AAS have already been implemented in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, and local versions are now currently being developed in Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania.
Prior to the commencement of the AAS project in Victoria, Tasmania had been involved, for some time, in developing outdoor recreation industry guidelines. This process began in 1994, with the publication of the Tasmanian Department of Education’s first comprehensive handbook establishing best practice standards, which went online in 2002. Following the launch of the website a very large number of visits were recorded from local commercial and not-for-profit organisations looking for organisational and planning information.
In 2003, to meet the need for a specific reference document for government agencies, not-for-profit and commercial operators, Sport and Recreation Tasmania established a joint working party comprising representatives from all sectors of government and the Tasmanian Outdoor Recreation Council (TasORC) that was responsible for developing web-based resources that would provide up‑to‑date advice on best practice and standards for anyone in the education and recreation industry.
The initiative was supported by a number of government agencies, including the Department of Education, Sport and Recreation Tasmania, Forestry Tasmania, the Parks and Wildlife Service, Tourism Tasmania and Hydro Tasmania. The result of this project was a set of outdoor guidelines, which had been developed in close consultation with, but not validated by, the Tasmanian outdoor recreation industry. The guidelines were published on a website with over 1 200 hot links to the Education Department website and related community and government websites in Australia and around the world. The Tasmanian activity guidelines listed on this site proved to be useful in the development of the AAS in Victoria, and in most activity areas the content of the Tasmanian standards do not vary significantly from the standard validated in Victoria (although the Victorian standards do include more detail in relation to the legal responsibility of organisations with dependant groups).
The process is now at the stage where Tasmanian industry standards can be validated. This process includes identifying any gaps between the existing, but as yet un-validated, Tasmanian standards and other state’s AAS, and making any required alterations to ensure the standards remain current and relevant in the Tasmanian context. In some activity areas, an agreed Tasmanian standard may not exist. In this case the Victorian and South Australian standards will be used as the substantive starting point.
It is important that each AAS be developed independently to ensure relevance and currency in relation to specific activities, while remaining consistent in layout and content. This will ensure that the AAS can be easily used as a reference document that is consistent on a national level. For this reason, the format of the Victorian AAS has been adopted as the national template.
Under leadership from Sport and Recreation Tasmania, a steering committee was established in 2005 to guide the direction of the next phase of the project, with involvement from all agencies with an interest in land management, including the Parks and Wildlife Service, Forestry Tasmania, Hydro Tasmania, the Department of Education, Tourism Tasmania and Workplace Standards, as well as representation from other bodies such as the Tourism Council of Tasmania, commercial operators, community groups and individuals. Working groups were set up to discuss the content of the standards, with representatives from the commercial and community sectors, as well as peak bodies and individuals. For the first stage of the project, three AAS were chosen to pilot the consultation and validation processes. The outdoor activities selected by the steering committee were:
These working groups completed three draft stages of the AAS relevant to their outdoor activity. They agreed on the content for sections related to planning, responsibility of the trip leader/assistant, equipment, environment and conduct, definitions of terms used and further information. The sections of the AAS, including the introduction, guidelines and statutory requirements were to be reviewed by the steering committee and the Crown Solicitor.
The next three AAS to be developed were identified as:
Toward the end of 2006, Tony McKenny, the consultant responsible for the development of the Education Department website and the interim industry site, was engaged to complete the initial three drafts and prepare an additional nine AAS. Twelve drafts have been developed in a consultative process with a cross-section of individuals, trainers, commercial and not-for-profit organizations and government agencies. The period for public comment on the drafts closed on 12 October 2007. It is hoped the final AAS will be available by Spring 2008.
