SCG Working Party on Rules and Process.
Report to SCG 14 February 2007

The SCG Working Party on Rules and Process has met twice and worked via e-mail to produce proposals for:

a)	a new SCG policy, to replace the existing proposed policy (1.05), and 
b)	SCG Meeting Procedures and Processes.

These documents have been circulated separately to members of the SCG and to the Director, HR.

Report
While the SCG is constituted under the University’s union collective agreement (the Macquarie University Enterprise Agreement 2006-2009), the inaugural meeting of the SCG on 14 December 2006 decided that a clear statement of rules and procedures was needed to enable the effective functioning of such a large group.

A working party was formed to devise rules and procedures and report back to the next SCG meeting.  The Working Party consists of the Chair, Carolyn Kennett, John Andrews, Iain Stewart, Cathy Wright and Cathy Rytmeister.

The Working Party met in December and decided to base rules for the SCG on the Senate Rules, as the groups are of similar size and have some common elements in terms of representative structure and breadth of functions.  We also decided, in keeping with discussion at the SCG meeting in December, to devise a subcommittee structure and standing orders or meeting procedures to guide the internal work of the SCG.

Working Party members took responsibility for different aspects of the task, communicating drafts via email and then meeting again on January 30th to finalise proposals.  We decided to propose the SCG Rules in the form of a policy, to replace the current Policy 1.05 as proposed by HR.  We also decided to place our proposed meeting procedures and internal structures in a separate document so that this could be approved for the internal use of the SCG, and could be changed easily by the Group without having to propose a formal policy amendment.

Please note that, although these documents appear quite wordy and complex, in practice their operation will be fairly straightforward.  In particular, the subcommittee, working group and meeting procedure proposals are aimed to assist the Chair and other SCG members by making full SCG meetings as efficient as possible, and keeping workloads to a minimum for all.  This will also make as much use of our individual and collective expertise as possible, which in turn will help the SCG function effectively.  In turn, we hope, this will provide us with the opportunity to have real input into the formation and effective implementation of University policies.

SCG Working Party on Rules and Process

(Formal recommendations to SCG overleaf)

Working Party recommendations to the SCG meeting of 14 February, 2007

1.	That the SCG approve the Working Party proposal for the new SCG Policy, and recommends to the University that this be adopted, replacing the current HR-proposed Policy 1.05.

2.	That the SCG adopt the proposed Meeting Procedures and Processes as internal SCG documents to guide its operations.