Page 3368 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 September 1991
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Clauses 66 to 72, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clause 73
MR COLLAERY (4.02): Mr Speaker, I move the following amendment:
Page 33, line 25, omit the penalty at the end, substitute the following subclauses and penalty:
"(2) The committee of an association prescribed for the purposes of section 75A shall ensure that the prescribed number of copies of the documents referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) and (b) are available for perusal by members of the association immediately before and during the annual general meeting.
Penalty: $2,000.".
Briefly, the reason for it is that I am of the view that, if we are going into this detail in the running of the associations, we should go to the next step and ensure that a copy of the accounts is circulated at the beginning of a meeting.
Ironically, last night I was at a fairly well attended public meeting of a fairly well-known association - in fact, one that has given the Attorney and the Assembly a little bit of a serve today. I noticed that at that association meeting no accounts were circulated and everyone there - a roomful of people - voted to pass the annual accounts. It was a completely correct and proper association with an excellent honorary auditor, but the fact remains that you see this constantly and you are asked to take people on trust. People are often too embarrassed to put their hands up and say, "Can we have a look at it first?", because everyone knows each other.
I move this amendment for that reason and no more. It is a matter of convenience. It ensures that the prescribed number of copies are available. Of course, that is a matter that the Attorney can look to when he is dealing with those matters in the regulations. That is reviewable in itself, I suppose, under the subordinate laws legislation. So, I commend this amendment as a commonsense provision to take away a little bit of embarrassment and to fix up proceedings at a lot of these shows.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.04): Mr Speaker, having seen these amendments, which were circulated some time ago by Mr Collaery, the Government is quite happy to accept this. It sets up basically a two-stage process whereby the large associations are to be
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