Key Principles — What Does the Club Industry Stand For?

Over the last century, the industry has grown from a handful of relatively small clubs to being a major part of the fabric of NSW, delivering $9 billion annually through social and economic contributions. The foundation of that success has been harnessing the industry’s collective knowledge and expertise to work towards common goals.

During the recent COVID pandemic, it became difficult for the club industry to come together in the way it had done previously. Sharing thoughts, ideas and having robust debates about the future — particularly in a period where the industry and clubs were undergoing significant change — wasn’t easy. As a result, the industry and its association, became more disconnected. 

Fortunately, it seems the pandemic is now behind us — touch wood. The opportunity to reconnect as an industry and unite in working towards a vibrant and sustainable future is well and truly upon us. It was in this context that ClubsNSW set about running its first ever Policy Forum & Workshop.

Policy Forum & Workshop

The Forum gathered 45 individuals from across the club industry to share their thoughts and ideas about how we can work together to secure our future for generations to come. Our aim was to come up with a draft set of principles to guide how we approach change and reform in our industry, to set ourselves up for success. 

The participants for the workshop were drawn from different regions across NSW, different size clubs with different purposes. While it’s never entirely possible to get a truly representative sample of such a diverse industry, it was a pretty good effort. 

We were fortunate to have The Hon. David Harris MP Minister for Gaming and Racing open the forum and share his perspectives and approach to the club industry. In addition to Minister Harris, the group also heard from senior gaming industry executives, former regulators and expert consultants on their view of the challenges and opportunities ahead. Then it was down to work with Impact Team at PWC who took us through a series of activities focused on creating a vision future the future of industry and what we need to do to get there.

Draft Principles

After a long day of robust discussion and debate, all the different threads were brought together into not one, but two sets of draft principles (see Figure 1).

The first set of principles focuses on the key messages we want to communicate to external stakeholders, including government, media, club members and the broader public. The second set of operating principles are designed to guide the way we work in trying to achieve better outcomes for the industry.

A copy of the full report from the day, including participants, can be found here.

Feedback

We are now seeking your feedback on the draft principles so that we can refine them into a body of work that the entire club industry can unite behind.

You can provide feedback in the following ways: 

• Attend your next regional meeting, where the principles will be discussed; 
• Send us your thoughts via email to [email protected]; or 
• Call ClubASSIST on 1300 730 001 and ask for the Strategy Team.

We look forward to hearing your ideas about how we can come together to move the industry forward as one.