That ICPA (Aust) introduce a by-law allowing financial ordinary members to be affiliated with other branches from their State.
Ordinary members who wish to be closely associated or connected to another branch should be encouraged to do so. For example, a financial member of the Julia Creek ICPA branch would only have to pay our Mt Isa BOTA a small fee, endorsed by our branch at our AGM, to be an affiliate member of our branch, not purchase two full memberships which is currently the only available legitimate option. We are noticing that some branch events require compulsory branch membership of ICPA to participate such as sports camps, and that this is leading to a prevalence of members holding two ICPA memberships. Our branch has members who have paid full membership (that is branch, State and Federal fees) twice over, so QLD State has received $60 and Federal $44 from the same member. State-wide there are some instances where one spouse is a member of one branch and the other spouse a different branch. There are also travelling families who have membership with their local branch and additional membership with another branch when they are contracting in that area. We appreciate that multiple branch memberships cause issues for the current online membership system and significant changes would have to be made to the constitution and database to accept affiliate memberships as an additional category. Therefore instead, we are requesting that affiliates be defined within an ICPA by-law and give branches the discretion whether to accept affiliates and charge a fee. Affiliates may engage with branch activities and motions however cannot be on their affiliate branch/es Executive nor be a branch delegate for affiliate branches. Every committee in Australia is struggling to get volunteers so why don’t we let financial members wanting to help and join in with other branches be supported to do so.
