Notice of 2025 Annual General Meeting

Notice is given that the 2025 Annual General Meeting of AAC Falls Creek Inc will be held:

DATE: Tuesday, 20 May, 2025
VENUE: via Zoom videoconference and at Quest Brighton on the Bay (250 Esplanade, Brighton)
TIME: 7:30 pm AEST- Annual General Meeting to commence

This will also be a Special General Meeting to make some minor modifications to our Rules of Association.

RSVP by 5pm AEST 18 May 2024 is essential

AGENDA

  1. Apologies
  2. Receive and adopt the minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting
  3. Business arising from the Minutes
  4. Correspondence
  5. Receive and adopt the Committee's Reports
  6. Receive and adopt the Profit And Loss Account and Balance Sheet as at 31 December 2024
  7. Proposed New Annual Subscription & Levy for 2026
  8. Receive and adopt the Auditor's Report
  9. Appoint an Auditor for 2025
  10. Election of the Committee
  11. Special Resolutions to change the Rules of Association
  12. A.A.C. Business
  13. General Business

Preparation and conduct of the meeting

  • To be admitted to the meeting, and to participate in the election if required, you must RSVP by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 5pm AEST Sunday 18th May. Prior to the AGM you will be sent a link to join the meeting, whether you intend to attend in person or via zoom.
  • The meeting will be kept as succinct as possible. We also need to make voting as uncomplicated as possible, while ensuring that it is done faithfully.
  • Therefore all proxies, items of general business must be submitted to the Chairperson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 5pm AEST Sunday 18th May. Any proposed Motions must also be provided to the Chairperson by this date.
  • You are strongly encouraged to send any questions to the Chairperson by the same date. There will be an opportunity to submit some questions on the night but questions with notice will be more manageable with the technology.
  • Voting may be a bit laborious. Please be patient if votes need to be counted.

For Zoom attendees

  • Please prepare in advance. Install Zoom on your computer, tablet or phone and use Zoom’s facilities to test that your audio and video are working.
  • If you have a headset with microphone, please use it to reduce background noise.
  • Please keep your mic muted during the meeting unless the chairman recognises you to speak. The chairman or his assistant may mute you if necessary.
  • We prefer having all cameras active during the meeting but you may be asked to “mute” cameras if there are difficulties.

For in person attendees

  • Please wait to be recognised by the chair before you speak. You will need to use a microphone so that you can be clearly heard by zoom attendees.

Eligibility

  • Only financial full members aged 18 and over may participate in the meeting. This includes nominating candidates for election, standing for election, voting in elections or on motions at the meeting, assigning or receiving proxies and speaking at the meeting.
  • For Proxies and Nomination forms to be valid, both nominator and nominee must be financial at the time of lodging.
  • Attendees must be financial by close of business on Monday 19th May. To be recognised as financial, any outstanding payments must be received in the club's bank account.

Election of committee members

The committee recommends that a total of 9 committee members be elected:

  • 3 executive members
  • 6 ordinary committee members.

(At the committee meeting after the AGM, the committee elects members to specific positions.) If a ballot is required, ballot papers will be sent to all who RSVP-ed. Completed ballot papers are to be to returned by 10pm AEST Sunday 18th May 2024. (If you RSVP after 15 May, you may not receive a ballot paper until 18 May and still need to return it by 10pm.) Results to be announced at the AGM or shortly thereafter.

If you are interested in serving on the committee, you can find out more by contacting the Chairperson or other committee members.

At the time of this notice, all current committee members except Will Zacharin are intending to stand again this year. A current member has offered to take on the Treasurer position. Like most organisations, the club becomes more reliant on technology to operate efficiently and communicate effectively. We would like to bolster the IT skills on the committee to spread this load. Skills in governance and process improvement are also being sought.

Nomination forms are available from the link below and must be returned by 5pm AEST Sunday 11th May 2024. If a ballot is required, you will be advised by Monday 12th May and asked to submit a short candidate statement by Thursday 15th May which will be included with ballot papers. 

 

Special Resolution to modify the Rules of Association (our constitution)

  1. That the proposed changes to improve Disciplinary hearings and appeals be adopted

An explanation of the proposed changes follows below.

Documents

 

Jenny Hughes (Secretary)
C/- ProAcct Advisors & Accountants Pty Ltd
PO Box 166 Heidelberg Vic 3084
Phone: (03) 9880-9600
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Explanation of Proposed Changes to Rules of Association

A. Summary

Incorporated Associations, of which Australian Alpine Club Falls Creek Inc is one, are governed by Victorian legislation and regulations. These are updated from time to time. There is also a set of model rules, the default constitution for incorporated associations. These reflect general good practice but clubs are free to modify them to suit their circumstances.
Eleven years ago, when the regulations and model rules were last updated, we were compelled to change some of our rules to be consistent. Even where not compelled, we made some rules consistent with the model rules for the sake of simplicity.
In November 2023 the Victorian government confirmed changes to regulations for incorporated associations and changes to the model rules. Some of the model rules have changed for the better and we proposed to change ours to match the improved versions

Most of the proposed changes were adopted by the AGM in 2024 but some details needed more work in the rules relating to disciplinary hearings and appeals

B. Reason for Proposed changes
When we were compelled to add new provisions for disciplinary hearings and appeals to our rules, we adopted the model rules for those aspects with only minor changes. It always seemed problematic that all members were invited to vote at a disciplinary appeal meeting. The person appealing could probably round up supporters but it might be hard to get enough other members to participate and vote. It could be very hard to make a disciplinary ruling stick. Now the 2023 model rules provide for an appeal subcommittee that is appointed. General members do not vote. There are also new provisions about procedural fairness.
 
We should update our rules to reflect the 2023 model rules for disciplinary appeals, and also clarify that we can recover costs (eg extra cleaning or repairs) from a member without that being regarded as a fine.
 
The move to an appeal subcommittee would be a significant improvement and we should adopt the new model rule wording as far as feasible. 
C. Concerns at previous AGM

There was some unintended ambiguity in the proposed new wording of Rules 28 and 29. This has been clarified.

There was also a typo in the change proposed for Rule 27. This has been corrected.

The AACFC Committee has now settled on this revised version and it is was circulated to members who were present at the 2024 AGM. Some questions from members were received but we understand that these were all satisfactorily addressed.

The specific changes are detailed in aacfallscreek.com/pdf/AGM2025/ProposedChangesDetails2025.pdf

The current Rules of Association can be found at aacfallscreek.com/xDocs/rules/Rules2024.pdf

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