Northern Victoria Region
Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (12:52): (258) My question is for the Minister for Health, and I ask: will the minister order the immediate postponement of next week’s Remembrance Parks Central Victoria annual meeting to enable reasonable notice to be published in all communities where the trust manages cemeteries? On Friday 16 June 2023 a notice of the RPCV 2021–22 annual meeting was published in the Bendigo Advertiser. The location of the meeting was stated as an online webinar. As such, RPCV has an obligation to publish notice of the meeting in newspapers in Shepparton, Donnybrook and Sunbury, where the trust manages cemeteries. Also, section 18H(1) of the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act 2003 states that:
A Class A cemetery trust must hold an annual meeting before 30 December in each calendar year.
Prior to 2020, annual meetings have been held regularly in November each year. Two things happened in 2020: COVID and a change of chair. The 2020 annual meeting was held in February 2021, possibly due to COVID, but no trace can be found of the 2021 annual meeting, and now the 2022 meeting is to be held more than six months late, a further failure of governance under the current chair.