Associations Incorporation Amendment (Review) Bill 2016
06 April 2016
In November last year NSW Fair Trading published its report on the statutory review of the Associations Incorporation Act 2009 (NSW) (covered in our November Update last year).
In response to the review, the NSW Parliament recently released the Associations Incorporation Amendment (Review) Bill 2016. At this time it is anticipated that the Act will commence by 1 September 2016, at the same time as the new Regulation (see below).
The Bill implements all of the recommendations made by Fair Trading. Some of the changes include:
- Simplifying the circumstances where a model constitution automatically becomes the constitution of an association.
- Adding matters to be addressed in an association’s constitution such as winding up and the maximum length of term of office bearers.
- Granting the Director-General the power to wind-up an association, cancel the registration of an association if it is in the public interest and change the name of an association if an association fails to abide by a request to do so.
The Associations Incorporation Regulation 2010, which contains the model constitution, will be remade before 1 September 2016. As part of the remaking of the Regulation, Fair Trading’s report recommends that the model constitution be revised so that it is in plain language.
