Appointments Council

Hello, I'm Mark Narustrang. I'm a fellow of CPA Australia and I'm a member of the WA Divisional Council. As a member of the WA Divisional Council I've been elected to the Appointments Council and it's that which I'm talking about today.

So the Appointments Council is a little unusual. Not all organisations, well definitely not all organisations, will have an Appointments Council and you may never have heard of one before. But it is critical for CPA Australia because we're a member based organisation. And so as part of that rather than having shareholders elect our directors to the our board, we have our member based representatives do that. And that is the Appointments Council. So basically each divisional council, of which we have 13, provide one member to the Appointments Council.

So we have eight Divisional Councils in Australia and we have five overseas. Those Appointment Councillors vote independently. They are given the information from which to make a good decision but they will vote independently and anonymously for those directors. So the process is fairly long and for those that volunteer to be part of this role you need to be cognisant of that. But it starts early in the year, the calendar year, with assessing what the competency requirements are for the Board and creating appointment criteria which are then used for advertising for candidates. The Nomination Committee, which is a subset of the board comprising two independent members, two representatives of the Appointment Council and two Board directors undertakes a lot of the heavy lifting of the process. They meet with the Appointments Council.

We have a number of joint sessions in which we make decisions with respect to the process but they're the ones that undertake the interviews and provide a short list of recommendations to the Appointments Council. They're also supported by the Executive Recruitment consultants and that firm is available also to the Appointments Council and will meet over a number of sessions which will provide additional information. Any questions the Appointment Council has are able to be raised. The process culminates with the Appointments Council meeting with the support of the Nominations Committee including a short listed report where the Appointments Council members will independently confidentially anonymously vote on who they believe will be the appropriate directors to take the organisation forward.

The Appointments Council role is critical. We elect the directors to the board and the board is responsible for making the decisions and setting the strategy for the organisation going forward.

CPA Australia has over 170,000 members and so that's a lot of responsibility on the 13 Appointment Councillors but it is one that we have to take. So thank you, and if you are interested in the Appointments Council going forward please speak to your Divisional Council General Manager.