Clarification on AGM Member Numbers and Voting

We have become aware of some allegations that EA is not transparent about the basis for determining that 820 Voting Members constituted a quorum for the 2020 Annual General Meeting and that EA has not published the total EA membership broken down by State since 2017.

1. The basis for determining that 820 voting members constituted a quorum for the 2020 Annual General Meeting.

The EA Constitution outlines the basis for determining a quorum at a General Meeting. Clause 16.1(b) of the EA Constitution states that a quorum shall be at least 5% of the Voting Members, based on the total number of Voting Members on the day prior to the relevant General Meeting. The total number of Voting Members on 17 January 2021 was 16,500.

Because the Meeting on 25 January 2021 was an adjourned meeting, the date used to determine the total number of Voting Members does not change, and therefore, the number required to constitute a quorum did not change

From the Q&A published on 25 January, immediately following the lapsing of the Meeting, the only piece of information that was missing from that communication was EA’s total number of Voting Members on 17 January 2021.

2. Publishing of the total number of EA members broken down by State since 2017.

The total number of EA members are published annually in the Annual Report.

From 2008-2009 to 2015-2016, membership figures were published in the Annual Report. The only exception to this was in the 2011-2012 Annual Report, where participation numbers were published.

When producing the 2018-2019 Annual Report, we discovered that the membership numbers in the 2016-2017, and 2017-2018 Annual Reports had not been included.

We re-introduced publishing the total number of EA members and a State by State breakdown since the 2018-2019 Annual Report was released. Annual reports since 2008 are available to be viewed HERE.

Article courtesy of Equestrian Australia