EFA’s 2013 Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday, 16th November, at:
16:00 AEDT (NSW, VIC, TAS)
15:30 ACDT (SA)
15:00 AEST (QLD)
14:30 ACST (NT)
13:00 WST (WA)
Access details
To access the AGM IRC channel, please go to the following URL:
http://client01.chat.mibbit.com/
1. Leave the ‘Connect’ selection as ‘Mibbit’ [webirc]
2. Enter a ‘nick’ (username). Please use your full name.
3. Enter #EFAAGM in the ‘Channel’ field and click ‘Connect’.
You should then be taken into the AGM Channel.
If you are unable to connect, please email [email protected] or call 0414 669 787.
Proxy Form
If you are unable to attend, but wish to appoint a proxy, please do so prior to the start of the meeting using the form below. Please note that the Proxy Form includes only the motions to be moved at the meeting. The election of Board members is not included in the Proxy Form and will be conducted using an online system. Voting in the election will be open to all eligible members, regardless of attendance at the AGM, or of lodgement of a Proxy Form.
Meeting Agenda
1. Minutes of 2012 AGM
Motion to be moved: That the meeting accept the minutes of the AGM held on 15th November 2012 as a true and correct record. A link to the Minutes is available below.
2. To consider the Annual Accounts.
Motion to be moved: That the meeting accept the financial report for the 2012/2013 financial year. The Financial report is available below.
3. To consider the Annual Report of the Board on the activities of EFA for the period 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013. A link to the Annual report is available below.
Motion to be moved: That the meeting accept the 2012/2013 Annual Report of the Board of Management.
4. To consider the appointment of Auditors.
Motion to be moved: Motion to be moved: That the meeting authorise the board to appoint an auditor for the EFA accounts for the 2013/2014 financial year if the board considers it appropriate.
5. To declare the election of the 2013/2014 Board Members.
Note: In accordance with Rule 9.6, Officers of the Association (i.e. Chair, Vice-chair, Secretary, Treasurer) will be appointed from the above Board Members by resolution of the Board following the AGM.
2012 AGM Minutes
Minutes from 2012 Annual General Meeting
2013 Annual Report
2013 Annual Report [HTML]
2013 Financial Report
EFA Cash Position – FY1213 [PDF, 174KB]
EFA Accounts – FY1213 [PDF, 183 KB]
Board election
There are five Board seats vacant, and six nominations have been received. An election is therefore required.
The election will be conducted using the OpaVote online voting service. Voting will be open to all EFA members, regardless of their membership type, who were financial at the close of nominations (4pm AEDT on Saturday 19th October).
Please note that attendance at the AGM, or lodgement of a proxy form is NOT REQUIRED for voting in this election.
All eligible members will be sent an email containing a unique URL, which will enable them to cast their vote through OpaVote’s web interface.
In order to enable these emails to be generated, eligible member’s email addresses will be uploaded to the OpaVote system, which is hosted in the continental United States. Once the election is concluded, all data, including email addresses, details of votes cast and voter’s IP addresses will be deleted from the OpaVote system. For more information, please see OpaVote’s Privacy Policy at the link below.
If any eligible member does not consent to their email address being uploaded to the OpaVote system to enable this election, please email [email protected] prior to 10am AEDT Friday 15th November 2013, so that the relevant email address can be removed from the upload file.
Please note that javascript is required for this voting system. If you choose to not normally allow javascript, we ask that you temporarily enable it for the opavote.org site, to allow your vote to be lodged.
Each eligible member will have five votes, of equal value, to be assigned to the five candidates for whom the member wishes to vote.
Members are not required to use all five votes, and may therefore vote for none, one, two, three, four or five candidates. The ballot will however allow for six votes to be entered. Where a member has placed six candidates on the ballot, the vote in position six will not be counted (the votes placed in positions one to five will be counted). The order in which the member places the other candidates (ie those placed in positions one to five) is of no consequence.
The voting emails will be sent at 12.30pm AEDT on Friday 15th November 2013. Members may vote at any time after they receive that email, with voting to close at 4.30pm AEDT sharp on Saturday 16th November 2013 (30 minutes after the start of the AGM). Votes will then be tallied while the AGM is in progress and the result of the election will be declared prior to the end of the meeting.
Tim Emanuelle has been appointed by the Board as Returning Officer for this election. Any queries for the Returning Officer should be directed to: [email protected].
Candidates for election to the Board
The following people have nominated for election to the EFA Board, listed in alphabetical order.
Alan Isherwood
Alan Isherwood is a long-time volunteer and ex-board member for EFA having served between 2008 and 2011, along with having represented EFA at various conferences and meetings with government officials. After a sabbatical, Alan is ready to re-join the board with new enthusiasm.
In his day job, Alan works as an IT Systems Administrator for a large Australian university looking after a broad set of systems.
Alan has a strong interest in keeping information ‘free’ through programs such as Creative Commons and the General Public License (GPL); unwarranted censorship of digital content (such as video games and the Internet); and the misuse of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies hurting innocent individuals.
Alex Schlotzer
My name is Alex Schlotzer and I’m nominating for EFA’s Board because I want to make sure we continue to strengthen our governance structures and build EFA’s campaigning capacity for the future.
My working and activist background is in areas like governance, campaigning, communications and policy; working for community groups, NGOs and unions. There are many challenges facing EFA and it’s vital we methodically and constructively work through them to ensure we strengthen communication links; strengthen our governance structures and maintain grassroots involvement.
I possess the skills, energy and time to dedicate to the position and I seek your vote.
Brendan Molloy
Brendan Molloy is a strong advocate for information freedom, government transparency and copyright reform.
Brendan has been actively using Freedom of Information requests to inform public debate on issues ranging from Internet censorship and data retention, to information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s IP
provisions and gene patenting.
He is a professional software developer, a volunteer administrator of Right to Know, a member of the National Council of Pirate Party Australia, and recently ran for the Senate in NSW with the Pirate Party.
Using the experience he has attained during his time as Secretary of a political party for three years, he would like to assist the EFA in becoming a more transparent and interactive organisation, with heightened member interaction.
Heather Gray
The Outreach and Internationalisation Project Officer for the Griffith School of Information and Communication Technology, I am currently the primary course convener for Business Informatics offerings across Griffith University and Open University Australia. As a digital divide researcher I explore technology leapfrogging and mobile technology use in business and education in the Australasian region. My industry background includes short and long term contracts with governments in Queensland and South Korea and international corporations in roles including business systems analysis and business process coach. My PhD resulted in a circumplex model for measuring older adult engagements with computer and Internet technologies.
Dr Jenny Ng
Dr Jenny Ng specialises in Intellectual Property Law, IT Law and eCommerce Law. Jenny has been admitted as a lawyer at the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
Jenny is a lecturer who teaches and researches mainly in her areas of specialisation, such as Intellectual Property Law and Internet Law. She has conducted research extensively in the academia and in practice. She is also currently a Project Leader of an IT based grant project.
She has specialised in Research and Knowledge Management at an overseas top tier law firm. She has also written for the Supreme Court of Queensland’s History Programme Yearbook in her capacity as their Legal Research Officer.
Her doctoral research in domain names has won a research paper prize in a leading Australian University and an Australian grant. In 2012, she published her doctoral thesis as an international monograph with Routledge, Taylor & Francis (UK). She is currently a lecturer at Charles Darwin University.
Peter Tonoli
Having been involved in the internet in Australia since its inception, I have in excess 20 years experience in the IT industry. My experience varies from voluntary system administration and operation of early bulletin boards; to 17 years of IT management working in the medical research and education sector; to working in the non-profit sector for various free speech and data sovereignty based organisations. I am passionately concerned with free speech, data privacy, and data sovereignty, and have a keen personal interest in all matters pertaining to the internet. In the past I have acted to protect the rights and freedoms of internet users and I remain committed to advocating on behalf of internet users in the future.
