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You have possible redress under section 138 of the Act which relates to the “General power of (an) Adjudicator to make orders to settle disputes or rectify complaints”.Subsection 1 says this:
(1) An Adjudicator may make an order to settle a dispute or complaint about: (a) an exercise of, or a failure to exercise, a function conferred or imposed by or under this Act or the by-laws in relation to a strata scheme, or (b) the operation, administration or management of a strata scheme under this Act.
Subsection 2 says this:
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), an owners corporation or building management committee is taken to have failed to exercise a function if:
(a) it decides not to exercise the function, or (b) application is made to it to exercise the function and it fails for 2 months after the making of the application to exercise the function in accordance with the application or to inform the applicant that it has decided not to exercise the function in accordance with the application.
So you need to specify the function that the executive committee has failed to exercise – and that has to be couched in terms of either your by-laws or the Act and then apply for an NCAT ruling on section 138.
That said, there has to be a clear failure to fulfil specific responsibilities required by the Act or in by-laws. The EC not doing what you consider to be the right thing, when there is no legal or quasi-legal requirement for them to do so, simply won’t fly.
