You may have seen the recent release of draft guidelines for Pilates by AUSactive. These have been compiled without input from the Pilates Association Australia.
I have been in discussion with AUSactive and it has been strongly recommended that the PAA be represented on the stakeholder group. I have not heard back as yet whether this will happen.
AUSactive have released the draft guidelines for public comment. Our members can respond directly to the draft by clicking this link: https://survey.ausactive.org.au/zs/oqCBLC
Alternatively, you can provide feedback to the PAA and we will collate the information and provide it to AUSactive. Please send feedback to info@pilates.org.au
There are a wide range of views as to how individuals should respond, ranging from “don’t help them” to “make sure you take the opportunity to give feedback”. One suggestion was that all members should respond with “use PAA guidelines”.
I am preparing a draft response which will then be informed by any feedback from members. The issue that I feel most strongly about is unsupervised Pilates studios. Since part of AUSactive’s objective in writing these guidelines is risk mitigation, I cannot see how risk can be sufficiently mitigated in an unsupervised environment, no matter what is done.
There are many other issues that will also be raised including the environment in which classes are held.
While on the topic of AUSactive, there was a recent flurry of media exposure to a proposal made by AUSactive to have gym memberships made tax deductible. This was not successful and was never going to be successful as it is completely contrary to our tax system, where personal or domestic expenses cannot be claimed as tax deductions. It is a real pity that the news media allowed AUSactive the opportunity to broadcast this position with no interrogation of the details or the futility of this approach.
Robyn Rix, President
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