Okay. So there’s two types of meetings that could occur. First one is a strata committee meeting. In this case there’s a requirement for the owners’ corporation to create a pecuniary interest disclosure book. A lot of strata managers aren’t really that’s attuned to this requirement so I don’t see it occurring very frequently, but some are.
When someone is elected to a committee, they’ve got fiduciary duties to satisfy the interests of the owners above their own. If you’re the developer and the strats committee is looking at making a decision about defects, well, then that’s a clear conflict of interest and the developer committee members are not able to vote on that.
In fact, they’re supposed to disclose that there’s a pecuniary interest and it gets written in the pecuniary interest disclosure book. Then they need to leave the meeting when the matter is being discussed and being voted on. Once the motion’s decided, they can come back into the meeting and then vote on other motions. So at a committee level, the answer is they can’t vote.
But at a general meeting level, it’s a little bit more complicated because they can’t vote on defects when the building is four storeys high or more. But they can if the building is three storeys or less, like a low-rise apartment block or a townhouse.
I think it’s an error in the drafting or just from Fair Trading, because I’ve noted on their website that they said incorrectly that the developer wasn’t allowed to vote on any motions of any type of building. But right now, they can still vote on defects at general meetings provided the building is three storeys or less.
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