The Australian Karting Association (AKA) will move into a new era shortly with the body electing at the weekend to move to a new management model.
The decision now means the AKA will be governed at the top level by a Board of Directors. The Board will consist of five members covering the disciplines of Finance, Administration, Technical, Competition and Marketing & Promotion. From within these five members a Chairman will be elected.
Each of the Board Members will chair a sub–committee covering their elected area of expertise. All members of the sub-committees will be nominated by Australia’s karters through their Club and State Karting Councils. The final appointments for the sub-committees will then be made by the Board of Directors.
Under the new management model of the AKA, a new organisation (Australian Karting Association Ltd) will be registered with ASIC. This organisation will, for up to twelve months, run in parallel with the Australian Karting Association Inc. (the present organisational structure) before at an agreed date the AKA Inc. will be dissolved and wound up and the only governing body will be the new structure of the AKA Ltd.
It is a significant step forward for the Association, however, it doesn’t eliminate the State-based concept with all States still being represented through the various committees.
Despite being worked on for almost ten years it was ironic that the decision came one day after Cricket Australia also embarked on a path to change the way the game is governed. Cricket Australia dropped its archaic state-based system where the states had unequal representation on the Board of Directors to reduce the decision makers from 14 state-elected representatives to a nine-person board.
Under the arrangement, the new nine-person Cricket Australia board will feature a director appointed by each of the six State Associations alongside three independent directors.