For nearly one hundred years, Australia’s trained surf lifesavers have been providing ‘a safe beach and aquatic environment throughout Australia’. In that time, they have rescued more than 500,000 people and provided first aid to a million others.
‘A surf lifesaver is a person who demonstrates the character, skill and service that epitomises the best of the Australian culture and epitomises the strength and character of the Australian way of life’.
SLSA organisation
Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) is a nation-wide organization, recognised by the Australian Sports Commission, with more than 113,000 members, of all ages, in 303 surf life saving clubs around the Australia coastline. It is made up of a national body and state and territory surf lifesaving bodies. Some state branches - SLSNSW and SLSQ also have regional branches (11 in New South Wales and 6 in Queensland) that assist in coordinating the large number of surf clubs across the country. They are a source of volunteers, volunteer beach patrols, junior education (nippers), surf sports competitions and fundraising.
In addition, professional SLSA lifeguards are outsourced to many local councils,
national parks and resorts. There are 520 SLSA lifeguards who service 200 beaches, across the country. SLSA operates around 70 per cent of total lifeguard services through an entity called Australian Lifeguard Services. SLSA lifeguards differ from surf lifesavers as they are full-time employees of the local government or a private organisation.
Australia's surf lifesavers also engage in regular competition. These competitions, or surf carnivals, are held at club, regional, state, national and international levels.
Youth and surf lifesaving
As well as providing surf rescue services around the country, SLSA is also a significant provider of education services. 40,000 nippers learn basic surf safety skills and trained surf lifesavers visit schools throughout Australia. Surf Survival, Surf Awareness, Surf Smart and Surf Safety are programs that teach students basic surf survival and rescue skills and an understanding of the surf environment.
SLSA plays a key role in the community in providing a safe and supportive environment in which young people can grow and develop into young adults. With 50,000 members (over half of SLSA’s membership) under the age of 18, they are critical to all aspects of surf lifesaving. But diversity of youth membership from different multicultural backgrounds is recognised as a real issue for surf lifesaving and its future growth.
A cultural diversity workshop titled ‘We are one but we are many’ was held as part of the 2006 SLSA National Leadership Camp. Feedback from the workshop suggested that “we need to find out why other cultures are interested in surf lifesaving and what our organisation can do to accommodate their needs and wants”.
SLSA has identified cultural issues that could impact on surf lifesaving involvement including dress, gender, alcohol, prayer, diet and physical competency.
It was resolved that to remain relevant SLSA needs to give the whole community a sense of ownership of the surf life saving movement and surf clubs need to appeal to all members of the community.
Education is one part of this - there are a range of simple beach safety tips on SLSA’s website in the top ten community languages spoken in Australia, including: Italian, Greek, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog (Filipino), German and Macedonian. But participation is another crucial element.
Inclusive membership
SLSA has adopted an inclusive policy where membership is open to anybody, regardless of age, race, religion or sex. SLSA believes that there is a place for everyone in surf lifesaving - if someone is unable to perform the duties of an active surf lifesaver, then perhaps they can assist in the administration, communications or fundraising areas.
In a 2003 research paper, the Productivity Commission noted that:
‘many traditional community organisations – including trade unions, the mainstream churches, scouts and guides, service clubs such as APEX and Lions, and the Country Women’s Association – had experienced significant declines in memberships over the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. ABS surveys suggest that the level of participation in voluntary groups declined significantly between the early 1980s and the mid 1990s.’
In contrast, SLSA has experienced the opposite trend in membership. Between 1961 and 1999, SLSA experienced a 350 per cent growth in memberships and between 1978 and 1999, a 38 per cent growth in volunteers. In the last five years SLSA has had growth of 12.7 per cent in memberships and 29.4 per cent in volunteer surf lifesavers.
While SLSA is committed to a process of inclusiveness, which provides all Australians with an opportunity to experience some form of surf lifesaving activity, they understand that there are perceived barriers to participation. As such, engagement of broader community groups is one of the core community goals, which forms part of SLSA’s Future Directions 2004-2010 strategy
They also understand that their membership growth has been limited to a predominantly white Anglo-Australian demographic and that they need to target other ethnic com munities to participate in life saving, which represent a significant portion of the Australian population.
‘It is important that there is more ethnic participation in order to sustain member numbers and be able to serve the Australian population effectively. The situation will only become more critical as Australia continues to increase its cultural diversity.’
‘Sound the Siren’ report
In 2000, SLSA commissioned a research report into the changing face of SLSA called ‘Sound the Siren’ to address why the range of nationalities that make up their total membership was not comparable with the overall population of Australia.
The initial brief included both ethnic and Indigenous Australians, however Big Picture Consulting Group (who produced the report) subsequently recognised that these are two distinct groups which each require comprehensive research and strategic planning. As a result, due to the limits of the project the focus was on ethnic Australians.
The report looked at: barriers to ethnic Australians joining surf lifesaving clubs; attitudes of ethnic Australians to volunteerism and how these affect SLSA; and strategies to boost ethnic membership.
The aim of SLSA's equity policy is to promote an environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. The issues of social justice, equal opportunity, discrimination and harassment are promoted at club, branch, state and national levels.
SLSA believes:
i. Social justice is about ensuring all people - whether members of SLSA or the community - receive a "fair go".
ii. Equal opportunity is about ensuring every person is treated the same and has a similar chance to participate or receive SLSA services and products. Equal opportunity strategies also permit the introduction of special initiatives to ensure participation or receipt of SLSA services and/or products.
iii. SLSA views any detrimental form of discrimination as serious and something that must be eliminated.
iv. Harassment is offensive, humiliating and intimidating and is counter-productive conduct in the SLSA environment, and may occur in relation to a person's sex, race, religion, age, disability, pregnancy, marital status and sexual preference.
SLSA state that they will treat all complaints of discrimination and harassment seriously, and will ensure complaints are dealt with promptly, impartially, and confidentially. If discrimination and/or harassment are found to have taken place, appropriate action will be taken.
