RICHARD PETTY CPA Australia President

Hello fellow members,

I’m delighted to be taking over from Alex Malley as President of CPA Australia. Alex pioneered blogging – at least he introduced very public blogging – at CPA Australia. It was a great initiative, one of many that Alex has left us with.

I confess that I’ve not to date been a big blogger, but I take it that this form of communication has the advantage of being a bit less formal and stuffy than other types of writing (such as the President’s column and so on). So I’ll play by that rule.

I did read all of Alex’s posts as they appeared throughout his journey in this seat and I note that they do a great job of conveying his inimitable style. For those of you who have not yet had the good fortune to meet Alex, reading his on-line-diary gives a pretty good account of his charisma, integrity, professionalism and humanity. His presence around the board table will be sorely missed and I wish him all the best as he takes on new challenges in life.

Last Friday I attended the President’s changeover dinner in Melbourne. This is the function at which Alex is thanked for past success, I am warned of the enormity of the challenges ahead and reminded of the honour that comes with the post of President in our wonderful organisation, and everyone in attendance tells their best accountant joke. It was a great night with several significant markers – not the least of which being that for the first time we invited our counterparts from the other two Australian-based professional accounting bodies to join the fun. The representatives who came assure me that they had such a good time that they plan on issuing a reciprocal invitation – these are small but important further steps towards working even more closely together in representing the interests of the accounting profession. I’m particularly pleased to be able to write that at the end of the evening, the staff at the venue told us that “accountants do it in style – you guys rock!”. Yes, we continue to blast away all sorts of conventions and misconceptions that the eponymous Joe/Joelle Public seem to hold regarding accountants (in the most appropriate of ways, of course).

This year the President’s charity (another Malley legacy) becomes a “tradition” as I continue the cause by selecting Room to Read as the charity of choice. I hope that you will support the charity – even if only in small ways. I plan on interviewing the founder of Room to Read, John Wood, in an upcoming issue of INTHEBLACK and I am sure that you will find John to be a rare and inspirational character. For now please visit Room to Read if you wish to know more.

Finally, a call to action of sorts. Rather than have me set an agenda for discussion, I thought it might be a good idea to see what you’d like to “talk” about. So here is your invitation to post your comments and let me know what you think we should be discussing. I will read all posts and I will reply to as many as possible.

If half of the 10 people reading this post respond we still won’t have a huge sample but the feedback may inspire some interesting future topics that lead to a doubling in the number of readers. If we manage to double the number of blog readers each week then we’ll have all of the CPA Australia membership tuning in to the blog in a little over 3 months time… I know, I know… there are bigger goals in life, and I hope we kick those too, but for now let’s start by seeing if there are 5 people who read this initial post and reply.