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Thank you to all members for the overwhelming support for ADTA through the annual membership renewal period. We look forward to continuing to represent your interests as Australian driver trainers. We have a full calendar for the year ahead! It is our pleasure for the team to provide an overview of our activities in each newsletter.

We are excited to have the speaking program for the Main Conference finalised, and full details are linked below.

As part of ADTA membership renewal, more than 95% of members chose to again take out the member exclusive insurance offer for Professional Indemnity and Public Liability. ADTA offers this facility as a member benefit in collaboration with IWIA/IAA/CGU, and clearly this insurance is a welcome service for members. All parties worked hard to maintain the same pricing for the insurance product for 2026-2027, providing a major benefit for ADTA members. We thank our insurance colleagues for their great service, now over many years, to ADTA members.

The Board and staff of ADTA appreciate the confidence that members extend in renewing membership, and we look forward to a successful year ahead for all.

UPDATE: the release of this newsletter was delayed as ADTA experienced system issues and our website was offline for an extended period late last week. The outage was a precautionary measure by our platform provider due to suspicious activity that they detected. All of our systems have now been restored. We are awaiting a formal incident report from our provider and at this stage there is no evidence of any data breach. We are actively monitoring this and will provide further advice to members as required.

Main Event Conference 2026

Same Venue New Name!

Our Main Event Conference 2026 is happening on Friday, 16th October 2026, and we’d love for you to join us!

Get ready for a fantastic day of industry connection, inspiration, learning and networking, bringing our members and industry professionals together for another great Main Event.

🎟️ Tickets are now on sale! Don’t miss your chance to be part of the 2026 conference.

📅 Friday, 16th October 2026
📍 Elysium Manly (formerly known as Manly Pacific Hotel)

Access our full speaker lineup here and see what’s in store for this year’s event.

Secure your ticket today while early bird pricing is available and join us for a great day with the industry!

Buy tickets here. 

 Board Nominations Now Open!

All current financial members of ADTA received formal notice that Nominations for the ADTA Board opened Monday 17 August 2026. Nominations will close Wednesday 16 September 2026. The Nomination Form for use by financial members is available here.

The election of directors will be finalised by members at the 2026 Annual General Meeting, to be held Friday 16 October 2026. Following previous practice, the AGM will be scheduled as a separate part of the ADTA 2026 Conference, to be held in Sydney at the Manly Pacific Hotel.

The current members of the Board are:

• Heath Ward, President
• Glen Till, Vice-President
• Noel Lawson, Treasurer
• Dion Changuion
• Denis Gracie
• Peter Hill
• Michael Humphries
• Jacinta Tam

The Constitution provides a formal mechanism for director retirement at each AGM. All retiring directors intend to renominate for the Board.

At the July 2026 meeting of the Board, Nicole Thompson confirmed her resignation from the Board. Following a competitive recruitment process, Nicole was the successful applicant for the employee position of ADTA Safer Drivers Course Coordinator and will commence in September 2026.

Exciting News Around the Office

We’ve got some exciting changes happening across our office team!

After a massive 10 years with ADTA across both Safer Drivers Course and Membership, our beautiful Nadia will be dropping back to one day per week as she enjoys her semi-retirement.

We’re so incredibly grateful for everything Nadia has contributed over the past decade and are thrilled she’ll still be part of the ADTA family! 

We’re also excited to announce that Michelle, who is currently our NSW Safer Drivers Course & Events Coordinator, will be moving into the role of Membership & Events Coordinator.

Michelle has been a familiar face to many of our members through her work with the Safer Drivers Course, and we’re excited to see her bring her experience and passion into this new role.

And with Michelle moving across, we’re thrilled to welcome Nicole Thompson to the ADTA team! 🎉

Nicole will commence her new role as our NSW Safer Drivers Course Coordinator in early September.

You may recognise Nicole, as she has been a valued member of the ADTA Board for the past two years. She has recently stepped away from her position on the Board to take on this exciting new challenge with ADTA.

Nicole has been the proud owner of Spotto Learner Driver on the Central Coast for the past seven years, offering both automatic and manual driving lessons. She is passionate about helping learners build confidence behind the wheel, while also giving parents peace of mind along the way.

With her industry experience, passion for learner drivers and commitment to supporting our members and the wider community, we’re incredibly excited to have Nicole taking on this important role.

There are certainly a few changes happening behind the scenes, but we’re excited about what’s ahead for ADTA! 

Welcome to the team, Nicole! We’re so happy to have you with us! 

NSW Update

Driving Instructor Program contact details

Please make note of the new contact details for the Driving Instructor Program.

New contact details

Licence Programs and Testing
PO Box 1027
PARRAMATTA NSW 2124

Phone: 1800 642 452
Email: [email protected]

What this means for you?

You can start using these updated contact details right away.

There are no changes to program requirements, processes, or how you operate - this update is just about how you get in touch with us.

Member Details on ADTA Website

After detailed review, the ADTA Board decided to remove the public listing features for member contact and location information.

There are bad actors online who promote the commercial sale of ADTA “lists” of contact details and email addresses. Membership database details have never been released commercially and never made available from the ADTA member database. These offerings are in effect a commercial scam and a misrepresentation where they claim ADTA authorisation.

To remove any potential for further misuse, the public listing of member details has been deactivated for our website.

ADTA will continue to use social media and other promotional channels to highlight and encourage the use of professional driver trainers.

Rural Road Safety Month

More than two of every three lives lost on Australian roads in 2025 happened regionally despite being home to far fewer people than our cities. That’s 906 (out of 1315 total) lives lost on country roads in a single year, up from 820 in 2024 - a 10.5% hike. Almost one in five fatal crashes (18%) involved a heavy vehicle. 

Now in its ninth year, RRSM aims to highlight the additional risks when driving on rural and regional roads across Australia. The national awareness campaign is an initiative of the Australian Road Safety Foundation (ARSF) and will run for the month of August. 

Speeding, not wearing a seatbelt and fatigue remain leading factors for fatalities and serious injuries on rural roads. 

Far from being a young-driver problem, mature Australians were the hardest hit. Together, Australians over 40 made up more than half of all regional road deaths. 

It’s the everyday drive that is proving most deadly. The majority of fatal country crashes happened in daylight hours, on an ordinary weekday, and involved just a single vehicle. 
 

To download free resources and get involved, click here.

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