Membership requirements

Indigeneity requirement

The CATSI Act ensures a corporation is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned and controlled through the Indigeneity requirement. 

The requirement is that the majority of members must be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It applies to corporations if their members are natural persons or bodies corporate.

The rule in the CATSI Act for members is that they must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. But a corporation can choose to allow non-Indigenous people as members by putting it in their rule book. So the CATSI Act protects Indigenous ownership by requiring that a majority of member be Indigenous.

In a corporation with:

• 5 or more members – 51% of the members must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people 
• 2 to 4 members – all the members, or all but one of the members, must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people
• one member – that member must be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.

If your corporation’s rule on member eligibility allows people or bodies corporate who are non-Indigenous to become members, when the directors assess a membership application they must refuse the application if accepting it would put non-Indigenous people in the majority.

If you allow non-Indigenous people as members, you must record which members are non-Indigenous on your register of members.

Checking Indigeneity

It’s the corporation’s role to check and accept Indigeneity of its members and directors.

Indigeneity of natural persons

For natural persons, the legal test for Indigeneity has 3 factors:

1. Person is of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent.
2. Person identifies themselves as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person.
3. Community recognises the person as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person.

Each community may also have its own criteria, process and protocols for recognising Indigeneity. For example, this might have to do with descent, cultural practices and lore.

Indigeneity of corporate members

A body corporate is an organisation rather than a natural person. They might be a corporation, company or other type of incorporated entity.

Under the CATSI Act, for a body corporate to be Indigenous it must be controlled by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. This means that a majority of the people who influence decisions about finance and operations within the body corporate are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

To make sure this is happening, we may look for:

• the practical influence Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can have over the body corporate
• any practices or patterns of behaviour that affect the body corporate’s financial or operating policies.

For example, a key factor is whether Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up a majority of:

• members/shareholders
• directors.

If a corporate member has equal share of control between Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous members, they’re considered a non-Indigenous member.