Government Regulation in the Martial Arts

Sensei Ryan Nicholls here, owner of, and head instructor at RKD Martial Arts, welcome to my Blog, Martial Arts Perth.

I wanted to look at a topic that comes up regularly within the martial arts community, that of Government regulation.

Government regulation is a somewhat dirty topic in relation to martial arts – proposals for instructor licensing requirements, member registration, criminal background checks, weapon licensing and registration, and industry accreditation have all largely fallen by the way-side. Efforts to introduce industry standards have been largely met with a great deal of resistance from the martial arts community and filed in the too hard basket by government agencies.

In Western Australia, apart from laws governing combat sports in relation to events there are no specific laws or regulations that apply solely to the martial arts industry. Apart from general safety and health regulations, employee legislation etc; in other words, legislation that applies to all businesses; there are only two pieces of legislation that really affect martial arts schools. The first is the Working With Children (Criminal Record Checking) Act 2004. Basically, this Act provides that anyone working with children must get a Working With Children Permit which is only issued after a background check on the individual in question. As such, it isn't martial arts specific as all individuals that deal with children in certain capacities must have this permit, and not all martial arts schools will require it (not all schools cater to minors).

The major piece of legislation that effects many martial arts schools (but again, not all) is the Weapons Act 1999 and its subsequent amendments. Obviously it doesn't effect all martial arts schools as not all martial arts schools train in the use of weapons. The biggest area that this legislation effects is in its definition of 'prohibited' and 'controlled' weapons. Basically, prohibited weapons are those weapons that are completely illegal such as the balisong (butterfly knife). Controlled weapons are those weapons which require a lawful excuse to own and carry, and include most martial arts weapons such as swords, sai, tonfa etc. Under the Act, owning the weapons for martial arts practice is a lawful excuse, and carrying them to and from the dojo is a legitimate reason to be carrying them. Thankfully, Western Australia; unlike our Eastern States counterparts; hasn't gone stupid and enforced ridiculous licensing requirements on simple martial arts weapons.

Various Martial Arts Weapons

Why do I say that it is ridiculous to have weapon licensing requirements for martial arts practitioners? Simply, it is a hassle that gives the illusion of protecting the public while creating an unnecessary headache for the martial arts community. First, most major martial arts weapons are relatively large and difficult to conceal – it is fairly difficult to walk down a street with a katana, yari (spear), or naginata (a type of staff with a blade affixed to one end) without being seen. Second, the biggest kitchen knife I own is longer than any tanto (martial arts knife) and only just shorter than my wakizashi (a short sword), but they don't contemplate regulating kitchen knives - my brother is a chef and hauls a plethora of various sized razor-sharp knives to and from work every day! Third, baton weapons (eg tonfa or hanbo), chain weapons (eg manriki) or combination baton/chain weapons (eg nunchuka), are essentially just sticks and chain links – items readily available from your local Bunnings. In the hands of an experienced martial artist it won't make any difference whether it is a genuine martial arts training weapon or the first item they get their hands on (an improvised weapon) – anything can be a weapon. I think Western Australia has it right – legislation that walks a good line between community safety without impeding legitimate purpose.

WKA - one of many Karate regulatory bodies

Apart from the above pieces of legislation, the government has generally left the martial arts industry to itself. Many martial arts have their own regulatory bodies, but there is often more than one body for each art. Often, countries may have their own body, which is affiliated with a world body, and multiple versions of these too! Take karate for example – karate has the A.K.F. (the Australian Karate Federation) which is the Australian member of the W.K.F. (the World Karate Federation). Karate also has the I.S.K.A. (International Sport Karate Association), the JKA/WF Australia (Japan Karate Association World Federation Australia), and individual style associations such as A.K.K.A. (the Australian Kyokushin Karate Association). Some of these are art related (the JKA for example) and some are sport related (the AKF for example), and as such some are inter-related – for example the JKA/WF Australia is also affiliated with the AKF and WKF. On the downside, these associations and federations are oft times entirely self serving, and are set up to provide an air of legitimacy. Even worse, sometimes they are simply a cash grab by the people involved – a registration or annual fee is paid simply to use the name.

Individual regulatory bodies have their own rules and requirements for membership which again, isn't standard across the industry. Bodies independent of style have been set up in an attempt to provide an over-arching self-regulatory body to keep government from introducing regulations and to liaise with government on industry issues. Although these bodies sometimes do good work, they also have a tendency to be self-serving. One particular organisation for example publicly states that it supports the move for a Uniform National Prohibited Weapons Legislation, where a martial arts instructor must acquire a 'Prohibited Weapons Permit' (like the one currently in place in Victoria) in order to teach weapons. Why would this particular organisation support this move? In Victoria in order to acquire a permit you have to be an “accredited instructor”, and guess which organisation is one of the only sources able to provide accreditation? This particular body goes further than this – they are actively lobbying government to require all martial arts instructors to be accredited in order to teach.

Personally, I object to any organisation that is trying to implement a “one size fits all” blanket to the martial arts industry. Many other instructors see through the rhetoric and spin provided by these bodies and realise that, at heart, they are nothing more than a power grab. These interest groups have no desire in ensuring that the community is protected from shonky practitioners, they just want to be able to roundly proclaim they are the “peak” body, and require that all instructors have taken their accreditation course(s). They even believe they have a mandate to implement this requirement! Unfortunately, a number of martial arts instructors looking at ways to establish their own legitimacy have become associated with these groups, paying them money to do their accreditation courses. If you are an instructor establishing your own school, don't look to these bodies for accreditation, you don't need it! Most of these associations are the martial arts equivalent of the A.C.L. (the Australian Christian Lobby) – they lobby hard, purport to represent everyone who could potentially fall under their umbrella, and make vocal claims to have the best interests of people at heart. In reality, they are trying to steam roll their own agenda onto everyone despite being a minority voice. Make no mistake – most martial arts instructors and schools in Western Australia are not accredited by, or affiliated with, these organisations and want nothing to do with them.

So given that Western Australia lacks a regulatory system for the martial arts industry and doesn't want one implemented, how do we protect consumers against the people who do one year of martial arts and then open their own school, or worse, read a book or watch a DVD and then open their own school? Truth be told, the greatest way to weed them out is through market forces. People with questionable training backgrounds and teaching ability tend to succumb to their own ignorance. Somewhere along the way their credentials will be questioned, usually by someone who knows better. If that doesn't happen, usually the product they are selling will fail to impress – there is only so long a charlatan can hold an illusion for before it begins to fade. In the short term, these people may be able to impress with understanding of basics, but in the long term their lack of skill and experience will show. Like any good or bad business, word gets around, and people who are offering an inferior product tend to go out of business.

Just one of thousands of Martial Arts courses available on DVD or in book format

If the instructor or business owner is quite the snake oil salesman, they may be able to stay in business, attaining new students as the older ones leave in pursuit of new challenges and better instruction. But does this actually require regulation? Someone who has a years worth of training will generally only have a years worth of material to teach unless they do further training or start to make stuff up (hence my warning in a previous article about offers of attaining a black belt in a year). During that year, the stuff taught may actually be quite sound though will probably be limited in scope and understanding. When a student stops being challenged by the content or starts to feel their instructor has nothing further to teach them, they may naturally move to a new instructor who does. There is no inherent time frame that a student signs up for at the start - “I want to train with you for the next 20 years” is not a phrase I have ever heard from a beginner in any school. Teaching relationships naturally come to a conclusion when the instructor no longer has anything left to teach the student. As an example, in the free style system I trained in, after my 4^th dan, my instructor and I agreed that he had nothing left to teach me. Although the system had dan levels beyond 4^th we both felt that there was little for me to learn in those dan levels beyond what I had already accomplished with setting up my own school, and we parted ways. There was no expectation on my part when I started that I would even reach that far – in fact, I had started that martial art to kill time until I decided what I really wanted to do. The fact that I stayed for over 10 years was because I enjoyed it and felt I was learning new skills through most of that journey.

The other issue with government regulation in relation to the martial arts, is who decides what can be accredited as legitimate and what can't? With traditional martial arts, who determines which ones can and which ones can't be included? Do we include Silat but leave out Taekwondo? Do we include Muay Thai but leave out Sambo? Do we include Goju-Ryu Karate but leave out Shotokan Karate? With modern freestyle schools, how do we determine school by school whether one is legitimate while saying another is not? If all styles and systems can be deemed legitimate, then what is the point of regulation?

If we go beyond styles and look at the credentials of individual instructors, who makes the call of what is deemed valid? Do we require all instructors to be at least 1^st dan? If we did this we run into the issue that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – belt levels across styles are not comparable. Do we then go by years of training experience and require everyone to have been training for at least 5 years first? Again we run into the issue that time in the martial arts isn't the same as experience – a person could be doing 5, 1 hour long training sessions a week for 5 years or they could have been doing 2, 1 hour long training sessions a week for 10 years. The 5 year example has more hands on training experience than the 10 year example.

If we can't go by style or school, and can't set experience standards, do we look at an individual's technique? Who would judge what is good technique and what is bad technique? Anyone judging would have a natural bias to authorise technique that resembles their own, and label others as illegitimate. In a universe of infinite variation, how do we say one person's method of self defence is right, while another person's is wrong? Watching how other styles do some things I have disagreed with their method but very rarely have I believed they were just completely wrong – less effective yes, but not completely wrong. Why should one person or committee; who have vested interests in the outcome; be able to rule one way or the other? And if it was someone or a group of people with no vested interests (someone who doesn't practice martial arts), they would be in no position to make that call.

In essence, government regulation of the martial arts industry creates more issues than it solves. When it comes to consumer protection, Australia has a robust court system to settle individual grievances. Most grievances will never go that far, with consumers generally doing what they do best – talking about their experience. Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool and many martial arts schools live or die by word-of-mouth recommendations. In marketing, they say that a customer who has a good experience will generally tell 2 people, but a customer who has a bad experience will tell 20 people! This is, and always should be, how the martial arts industry is regulated – by consumers of the service provided.

Thanks for reading – until next week make sure you subscribe to the blog, and if you have any subjects you would like to see covered, post them in the comments section below.