Page 3201 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The Bill before the house tries to balance two competing issues, issues that I believe this Territory will have to tackle finally with some other legislation. The first of those issues is the small voluntary associations - the non-profit groups of citizens with few standing assets and little organisational ability, and certainly not the back-up to employ expensive company auditors. Balanced against that are the vast club organisations in this Territory, some of them with millions and millions of dollars of turnover a month, where there are quite strong reasons for the Government to want to ensure that their accounts are properly presented, that there is full disclosure of accounts, and that accountability is at a premium.
The monthly turnover of a few clubs in this town exceeds that of some of the small cooperative societies, and that is a matter of concern. In due course we need to examine very clearly whether we want to move in clause 73 to determine whether we should provide that, where a non-profit association is very large, it should be compulsorily moved to a corporate structure or cooperative society status and subjected to the added surveillance of that regime. I foreshadow further research by the Rally on that issue. I foreshadow the fact that we need - - -
Mr Berry: Springing this rubbish on people.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Berry calls this rubbish.
Mr Berry: I did not say that at all. You have sprung this on people.
MR COLLAERY: He interjected that it was rubbish. Mr Speaker, I would seek your indulgence at times to protect me from Mr Berry.
The Bill seeks to achieve something that is becoming wellnigh impossible. It seeks to balance the accounting records being sought for very large commercial combines in the club situation - clubs that own millions of dollars of assets, some of them located outside the jurisdiction, some of them being based, as a security for loans, outside the jurisdiction, where there are still voluntary boards and where the accounting regime of the 1953 Act still applies. I am seeking, with some amendments which I foreshadow, to tighten up with one or two commonsense requirements. I will speak to them at the time; but I do say that we need to see the 1991 Bill as the beginning of a process of translating the very large clubs into a different corporate structure, with different reporting and accounting mechanisms from those of your average P and C.
It is an almost impossible balancing act for our legislative draftspeople, the Law Office and the Attorney to find a correct balance between ensuring that the affairs of the small voluntary groups are well met and the affairs of very large clubs, which I do not wish to name but which we can all imagine, are properly kept under purview. As Mr
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .