Strata managers’ umbrella body the Strata Community Association (SCA) Australasia has announced the resignation of long-serving CEO Alisha Fisher, capping almost eight years at the helm of the peak body for strata managers across Australia and New Zealand.

The press release announcing her departure is a cornucopia of arguably justified congratulation: growth, reform, “increased national influence,” a starring role guiding the industry through COVID, a new Registered Training Organisation, the Strata Insights research program, and – the line that really deserves a moment’s pause – “strengthening the SCA National Code of Ethics”.

SCA president Joshua Baldwin says Fisher leaves the organisation “stronger, more influential and more respected,” and Fisher herself is quoted saying her focus was always on “supporting the continued professionalism of the strata sector.”

More respected? Maybe so, but that’s a low bar to traverse when you think of how poorly, on occasion unfairly, some strata managers have been viewed by their clients in the distant and recent past.

What’s missing in the peaen of deserved praise is any acknowledgment of the industry’s most inconvenient truth: just two years ago the SCA-NSW president was compelled to quit after ABC TV’s 7.30 news magazine and Four Corners alleged irregularities in his company’s fee and commission arrangements.

The ex-president and his company are now facing criminal charges brought by NSW Fair Trading over the same allegations. Meanwhile the scandal led to an uprecedented scrutiny of Australian and New Zealand strata managers and how they operate.

Good, honest and decent strata managers in both countries found every decision they made and every piece of advice they offered being questioned by suspicious clients.

Innocent unless proven otherwise, the alleged miscreants strongly dispute the charges and have said they will challenge them vigourously in the NSW Supreme Court when the matter is heard next month.

Whatever the outcome of the trial, this is precisely the territory that SCA is claiming credit for cleaning up. Maybe they have – the self-congratulatory boasting of the handful of other strata companies that rode the wave of sweetheart deals, vertical integration and conflicted interests has certainly dimmed.

And two other strata managers in NSW have been struck off for various degrees of dishonesty and incompetence – a departure for an industry that for many years seemed to be immune from any real scrutiny.

Perhaps if the press release had said Ms Fisher was a steady hand on the tiller during turbulent times, including the unfortunate resignation of the NSW President, and sought to tighten compliance throughout the industry, the avalanche of praise would carry more credibility.

Or even if they’d acknowledged the events but said they can’t comment because the case is before the courts – a convenient but credible sidestep of the thornier issues.

None of this is to say Ms Fisher was in any way culpable, or that her record doesn’t include real, substantive work; the qualifications overhaul and the research program are genuine achievements.

But a farewell press release that skates past scandals entirely reads less like an oversight and more like a conscious decision to ignore recent history.

We wish Ms Fisher well in her next venture, wherever it may be, and she takes a bucketful of experience – good and bad – with her.

Meanwhile SCA’s search for a new CEO is underway. Whoever gets the job inherits an organisation that, regardless of its considerable advances in the field, still seems to have trouble looking at itself too closely.