Can our club hold just an email address for each member?

No. Your club must hold a postal or home address for each member. A PO box is fine. Here is what CAQ asked Fair Trading, and what it said.

No. Your club must hold a postal or home address for each member. Email alone is not enough.

A PO box is fine. You do not need a street address.

Ink drawing of a bank of post office boxes with one door open and a letter inside, beside a card on an easel showing a large @ sign.

Where the rule comes from

Most clubs use the Queensland model rules. Rule 13 says the register of members must include "the postal or residential address of the member".

CAQ has its own constitution. It asks for the same thing: a postal address for each Registered Player.

What CAQ did

In September 2026 the CAQ committee wanted to hold only an email address for each member. So CAQ checked.

CAQ read the rules.
CAQ wrote to the Office of Fair Trading and asked one question: does an email address count as a postal or residential address?
Fair Trading replied on 24 September 2026.

Ink drawing of a letter travelling from a croquet clubhouse to an office building, and a reply travelling back.

What Fair Trading said

Fair Trading does not interpret a club's rules. Under the Associations Incorporation Act 1981 (Qld), that is the management committee's job.

It did give some guidance. A PO box is a postal address. An email address is "an electronic means of communication".

So email is a way to reach a member. It is not an address.

Could the rules be changed?

Yes, but it is a lot of work. CAQ's Member Clubs would need to pass a special resolution. Each club on the model rules would need to change its own rules too. Fair Trading would have to register every change, and it has not said it would.

The effort is high and the reward is small. CAQ does not recommend it.

What your club does now

Nothing changes. Keep one postal address for each member, as well as their email.

If a member is at risk of harm, your committee can keep their details off the register that other members can see. That is rule 13(5).

You do not need a second register if myCroquet holds the details and your secretary can show them to a member who asks. That is CAQ's reading. The rules do not say where the register is kept.

CAQ will now look at technical coding solutions to increase security, rather than legal ones.

Read the full report

Member Addresses and the Constitution (PDF, 8 pages) has the whole story: the rules, CAQ's letter, Fair Trading's reply in full and the conclusion.