Registering

Provide pre-registration service

Pre-registration meetings with groups

ORIC staff often field queries from groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are thinking about incorporating, and wanting more information about their options. Some conversations occur over the phone; in other cases, an ORIC officer will meet with the group to discuss options and determine whether registering under the CATSI Act is appropriate in their circumstances. This pre-registration service is also available to groups that are already incorporated under alternative legislation, and considering transferring their registration to the CATSI Act.

Pre-registration workshops with groups

A portion of the corporation-specific training that we run is to assist groups who are planning to incorporate for the first time, transfer their existing registration or amalgamate with another organisation. We provide information on the requirements and process, and help develop a constitution (rule book) that is consistent with the CATSI Act.

Draft rule books

ORIC recommends that corporations regularly review their rules to make sure directors andmembers can understand them, and the rules work well for their corporation’s changing circumstances. ORIC provides a number of model rule books on its website, and offers assistance to corporations to create or revise their rule book. In many cases this service is combined with a pre registration workshop mentioned above.

Register corporations

At 30 June 2018 there were 3046 corporations registered under the CATSI Act. The year before there were 2904. That’s a net increase of 142 corporations (taking into account new incorporations, reinstatements and deregistrations); a growth of 4.9 per cent. Of those 3046, 186 (6.1 per cent) were registered native title bodies corporate (RNTBCs).

Figure 1: Registered and new corporations from 1990–91 to 2017–18

Figure 2: Number of registered corporations by region as at 30 June 2018

Table 2: Number of registered corporations by region as at 30 June 2018

New registrations

During 2017–18 there were 183 new registrations—six more than the previous year. This includes eight transfers of incorporation to the CATSI Act from other incorporation legislation and four reinstatements. The year before, 13 of the 177 registrations were transfers and five were reinstatements.

Note: the figures below include applications for reinstatement. In 2017–18 six applications for reinstatement were received, and four corporations were reinstated. Requests to register a corporation were processed in an average of 13.8 days.

Table 3: Request to incorporate

Deregistrations

There were 41 deregistrations this year, compared with 54 corporations that were deregistered in 2016–17 a decrease of 24.1 per cent.

Register documents and changes

ORIC receives a range of information, forms and reports that need to be added to or update information on the Register of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporations. In 2017–18 ORIC processed 5967 registration jobs (6224 including Registrar-initiated jobs).

The range of jobs requiring changes to the register includes:

• change corporation name
• change corporation address and/or other contact details
• change directors, contact persons or secretaries
• change rule book
• lodge updated membership list
• change native title status
• lodge general, financial and directors’ reports.

Table 4: Sample of registration activity from 2013–14 to 2017–18

Notes:
• Some requests received during 2017–18 were carried over into the next year.
• Where a request to change details for a contact person or other officer is not approved, usually the reason is that the person making the request is not authorised to change those details.

Figure 3: Requests to change rule book

Figure 4: Requests to change name

Figure 5: Requests to change corporation contact details or details of contact person, secretary or director/s

Depending on the type of changes required to the register, the time to process them varies.

Table 5: Average processing time for each kind of change request, 2017–18

Exemptions

The Registrar has the power to grant exemptions in relation to particular sections of the CATSI Act. The power enables the Registrar to adapt the legislation to meet the individual circumstances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations. The Registrar’s policy statement PS–07: Exemptions provides more detail.

In 2017–18 ORIC processed 562 applications for exemptions from various provisions of the CATSI Act. On average, applications for exemptions were processed in 8.3 days.

Table 6: Requests by exemption type, 2017–18

Table7: Exemptions requested, granted and refused in the last three years

Figure 6: Exemptions finalised in the last three years

Lodgement of forms and reports online

ORIC provides forms for corporations to register and meet their reporting and other obligations under the CATSI Act. To optimise accuracy of the information and efficiency of the process, we encourage corporations to use ORIC’s secure system for online lodgement at online.oric.gov.au. When a corporation needs to lodge a report or update their details, they can log in and their corporation’s registered information will pre-populate the relevant form. In that way they can easily revise their information and instantly lodge it with the Registrar. To ensure access for all, we still provide PDF versions of our forms, which corporations can download, print, complete, scan and return.

Each year we see a steady increase in the percentage of forms and reports submitted through the Registrar’s online lodgement system. This year:

• 66 per cent of all forms were submitted online. That’s a 14 per cent increase from last year.
• 87 per cent of general reports were submitted online–13.1 per cent more than last year.

The rate of corporations’ compliance with their annual reporting obligations will be addressed later in this document. See ‘Promote timely lodgement of annual reports’.

Figure 7: Forms and reports lodged online from 2009–10 to 2017–18

Figure 8: General reports lodged online compared to hard copy from 2009–10 to 2017–18

Provide access to public registers

ORIC manages the Register of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporations, and makes part of it—contact details and certain documents about each corporation such as financial reports and regulatory actions by ORIC—publicly accessible on
the web. We also manage and publish online the Register of Disqualified Officers. Maintaining and providing access to these information resources is a highly valued service provided by ORIC.

In 2017–18 there were:

• 103,588 website visits to search the public register—which is 13.58 per cent more than the previous year (91,180 sessions). Around half of all visitors to the ORIC website end up on a corporation search result page.
• 436 visits to the Register of Disqualified Officers.