Dear Member,
The law relating to Associations in Western Australia – such as ours – changed in 2016 and BSWA, like other Associations, were requested to transition to the new law by 1st July 2019 at the latest.
The government produced a helpful document called the model rules (https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/publications/model-rules-associations-2016) which each Association had to review and incorporate into its Constitution.
BSWA set up a SubCommittee (consisting of Sam Hemachandra – private practice lawyer and BSWA member; Ananda Thilakasiri – ex Director of Corporate Services at Rockingham Council and ex Executive Committee member of BSWA ; and Venerable Mettaji, novice monk and ex-CEO of Financial Service companies and Not for profit charities) to undertake the complex task of merging the key elements from our present constitution with the required model rules.
The Constitution in your hands has been reviewed by the BSWA’s long-serving lawyer, Doug Solomon; endorsed by the Sangha of Bodhinyana Monastery and Dhammasara, Monastery; and unanimously passed by the BSWA Management Committee. Now it is your time to decide.
We thought long and hard how to simply explain how the task had been completed so you could clearly see.
We therefore decided on a colour – coding system on one document (highlighted version), to explain the elements of construction,as follows:.
- The base document is the model rules and the words taken from the model rules are in a blue font.
- The primary elements that were retained from the present Constitution were placed at the front of the proposed new Constitution and are in the normal black font. There are small sections – also from the present Constitution – in other parts of the document. They too are shown in black font for clarity.
- In instances where the recommendation is to improve on the model rules or input an extra item from the present constitution – the words are highlighted in yellow.
Hopefully you will be able to see the depth of consideration that has been given by multiple people to this task, and the benefit of adopting the vast majority of the model rules that the Government proposes.
Sincerely
Lay Har Goh
BSWA Vice President
Proposed Constitution for AGM 02032019F
Proposed Constitution for AGM 02032019 – Highlighted version