Future Governance Committee

The Finance, Audit and Risk Management (FARM) Committee is one of the Board’s core Committees and plays a critical role in providing oversight of financial sustainability, audit, risk, technology, investment and compliance. 

The FARM Committee chair is an independent co-opted director appointed by the Board with deep financial expertise and is a highly qualified accounting professional, such as a CPA or Chartered Accountant. 

The Future Governance Committee recommends extending the term length and aligning this director appointment with the current three-year director term lengths, approved at the 2025 AGM.

This change would align the FARM chair with their director role as the FARM chair currently has separate term limits in the Constitution. 

The reappointment of independent co-opted directors like this dual FARM chair role, are based on performance and continuing to fill the current and/or future skills required by the Board and FARM Committee. 

If members support this proposal, the Constitution will be amended to reflect the new term.

The Future Governance Committee recommends allowing the GPs in Training faculty chair to serve in a second director role, which would be an exemption to the six-year maximum term for directors. 

We recognise that the GPs in Training faculty chair is different from other directors because they are at an early stage of their GP career and professional life in the College. 

This change would allow GPs in Training faculty chairs to potentially return to the Board at a later stage in a different director role. 

We propose a minimum three-year (one term) break before a previously served GPs in Training chair can stand for election as chair of a state or national faculty. 

They would need to be re-elected to a new faculty council and then be elected as chair by that faculty council. This change would remove any deterrence for GPs in Training serving as their faculty chair if they have a long-term goal of serving on the Board in another director role.   

If members support this proposal, the Constitution will be amended to provide an exemption GPs in Training faculty chair director terms. 

The Future Governance Committee recommends exploring changes to the Faculty Regulations to set a maximum number of terms for faculty council members.  

It’s proposed to set a cap of four terms (maximum of twelve continuous years), and a faculty council member would be able to stand for re-election after a one-term break.  

Faculty council member terms already increased from two to three years in 2025 to align with the new faculty council chair director terms, but there is no limit on the number of terms currently.

These changes are intended to encourage new members to stand for election and serve on faculty councils.  

The provision for re-election would allow faculty councils to retain valued long-term members willing to stand again after a gap in service. 

If supported by members, this change can be made to Faculty Regulations by the Board, with the intention that it’s introduced from the 2027 election cycle. Staggered personal transition arrangements would then need to be made for long serving faculty council members that would be affected by the term limits.

Different faculty councils have different circumstances:  

• some have long-standing members, low turnover, and infrequently contested elections.

• others have a mixture of tenures and contested elections each year. 

We’d like your feedback to better understand the different circumstances and how this change would benefit your faculty council, and any thought you have about how best to implement changes if they approved. 

This is an administrative review, as the clauses were drafted in the Constitution over a decade ago. They're difficult to interpret for members and we want to make sure the process for sending notices of ballots and voting is in line with modern contemporary practice.  

We’re proposing to set the same time limit for notice and ballots in keeping with contemporary practice at a minimum 21 days.