ITCZ, thanks for the reasoned response.
As you say I suspect that we're actually advocating the same thing. You're right about the history- particularly the AFAP side of the coin- and that I don't know it all and particularly don't know a great deal about the split in '81 (or was it '83- either way I wasn't yet in my teen years) or the intracisies of '89 although having done a uni assignment on it I at least consider myself to be 'educated' on what happened but possibly not fully aware of the role that AIPA played in all of that.
I guess my frustration is that both AFAP and AIPA probably share the responsibility for a poor relationship over time and that attempts by one group or another to paint AIPA as the big, bad ogre who only care about J*, QFlink et al because QF drivers are now at risk as being an overtly simplistic view of the future.
I'll continue to write to my AIPA reps to tell them to work with AFAP. I hope you do the same with your AFAP guys. At the end of the day I don't care what the name of my association is as long it represents all parts of my 'group'. Longer term I'd like it to represent every driver in Australia. Whether that's AIPA or AusALPA I don't care.
Have a great day.