A benefit of incorporating is an association has perpetual succession, which means it can continue to exist regardless of any changes to it its membership.
However, there may come a time where the association has a lack of members or there is no longer any interest in continuing its activities and the incorporation of the association should be ended.
Ending an association
There are a number of ways in which an association’s incorporation can cease. These include the:
- association’s members voluntarily applying for its cancellation;
- Commissioner ordering its cancellation;
- association’s members voluntarily applying for its winding up under the Corporations Act 2009; or
- association or its members, creditors or the Commissioner applying to Supreme Court for its winding up;
An association’s incorporation may also come to an end if its members choose to either amalgamate (merge) the association with another incorporated association to form a new incorporated association or becoming registered as a different type of body corporate under another law.
Reporting defunct or disbanded associations and clubs
We are compiling a list of associations which may be defunct as they have not been submitting an annual information statement and appear to have been inactive/dormant for 12 months or more.
If you are or were a member of a club, society or association which is now defunct please let us know by completing our very simple 'report a defunct association' online form.
Handy information you might be able to provide us includes:
- Registered name of the incorporated association:
- Association Registered number
- Contact details
- Last known activity
- Any previous members
Show Cause notices about to be issued to incorporated associations under s144 of the Associations Incorporation Act 2015 (the Act)
The Commissioner for Consumer Protection has reasonable cause to believe that the attached list of incorporated associations are no longer operating and are about to be issued with a show cause notice under s.144 of the Act.
These incorporated associations have not lodged an Annual Information Statement (AIS) in the past three years or more and have not responded to the Commissioner’s attempts to contact them or have been reported as defunct.
If your association is on the list of show cause notices about to be issued to incorporated associations and is still operating, it is needed to lodge the outstanding AIS by 16 June 2025 to avoid a notice of proposed order to cancel being issued under s147(2) of the Act.
Please contact our team on 1300 30 40 74 or email infostatements@demirs.wa.gov.au for any further information and advice.
How to submit Annual Information Statement
To submit the AIS, a committee member needs to have an AssociationsOnline user account that is linked (connected) to the association.
If you have not previously logged in to AssociationsOnline, you will need to create your own user account by following the below instructions:
- Go to the AssociationsOnline portal, Click Enrol, then enter your details and click submit;
- To activate the account, find the activation email and click on the link to confirm;
- Once the account is active, you will be able to log in to your account;
- You then need to connect the user account to the association by clicking, “link to an existing association;” and
- Once your access has been approved, you will be able to lodge the AIS.
Once you have a user account linked to AssociationsOnline, log in and press “start a new application,” then click the “information statements” button.
Alternatively, a manual form can be accessed on Information Statement.
Please email the completed form to infostatements@demirs.wa.gov.au