It’s been years in the planning, and months and month of hard work by our volunteers, but we are excited that we are almost here – we are proposing a NEW CONSTITUTION!
Earlier this month we issued a Notice of a Special General Meeting to change the SEQICC’s Constitution.
The crux of the constitutional changes are about ensuring the SEQICC remains an Indigenous-owned and controlled community organisation, and is centred around the needs of Indigenous businesses headquartered in our region – South East Queensland – while still encouraging supporters from elsewhere – Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
I and the board are aware of the timing of this initiative (in the middle of a global pandemic), and we have done much soul-searching about whether we should postpone until later.
We decided to persist for a number of reasons:
- While we are in the midst of a pandemic and many of our businesses will be experiencing hardship (including our own board members), we believe that ‘business must go on’ as much as we can.
- The SEQICC has struggled for too long and these proposed changes will enable the organisation to move forward with strength and clarity.
- When life gets back to normal, we want to hit the ground running. Our new constitution and new board is key to that.
What will the timeline look like?
The discussion paper has all the information, but the timeline will look something like this:
- Special General Meeting (22nd April) – all our members invited to vote for the new Constitution. If passed, we will submit the new Constitution to the Office of Fair Trading for acceptance.
- Call for new members – once the new constitution is accepted (could be weeks), we will then call for members under the new Membership structure.
- New Membership Applications will be received and processed
- Annual General Meeting (hopefully June) – a new board will be elected.
Would you like to join the board?
We encourage all eligible members who have time to commit, to consider standing to help drive and build the SEQICC for Indigenous business. In particular we will be looking for a President, Secretary, Treasurer and other board positions. We are definitely after board members who are keen to lend a hand.
All the documentation for the meeting next week is on our updated Governance page.
Do we have your correct details?
You may not have been sent the original Notice because we don’t have your correct details, or we may have missed your application them over the years. Our volunteer team have begun updating the Indigenous Business Directory. It hasn’t been live since 2017 and needed some hard-coding to get her live again. Thanks for your patience on this. Please check your listing and let us know via the Change of Details form if you need to change anything urgently. Our volunteers will update it as soon as we can.
The link for the SGM meeting (via Zoom) will be sent from Marrawah Law who will be overseeing the elections of both the Special General Meeting and the Annual General Meeting. All information will be posted on our social media channels as well.
Thank you all for your patience over the past few years. We’re getting back on our feet again and we really appreciate all those who have continued to support us.
Cheers, Leesa