Requirements for registration

There are requirements for a group to register and stay registered under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 (CATSI Act).

Use this checklist to find out if meet the requirements to apply to register a corporation.

Checklist of requirements

Corporation name

Your corporation name needs to include certain words, and can't use restricted words. It must not be the same as another organisation's name.

Member and majority of member requirements

There are rules that apply to individual people or bodies corporate to be members, and also rules about member composition (the majority of members). The CATSI Act provides a basic framework to protect Indigenous control of a corporation, but within that boundary allows each corporation to decide many of the rules for membership eligibility. For example they can choose to allow bodies corporate as members (corporate members), to allow non-Indigenous people as members, to increase the minimum age of members, whether they will have a direct membership or representational membership.

Director and majority of director requirements

There are rules that apply to individual people as well as board composition (the majority of directors). The majority requirements are designed to protect Indigenous control and member control, provide separation of powers between between the board and management.

Internal governance rules

Every corporation must have rules that govern the internal operations of the corporation. They must have a rule book and also adopt any of the replaceable rules in the CATSI Act that they didn't put in their rule book. 

Contact person or secretary requirements

Large corporations must have a secretary. Small and medium corporations have a contact person. Find out more on the role of secretaries and contact persons.

Both a contact person and secretary must:

• be at least 18 years old 
• usually live in Australia.

A person who has been disqualified from managing a corporation can’t be a contact person or secretary.

They must give their consent in writing.

Pre-incorporation requirement

Corporations don't make themselves. They can only be made when people say they want to create it and agree on how it will be structured, its internal governance rules, and who will fill the various roles.