I raised the whole business of the compulsory strata training for committee members in my session on ABC radio Afternoons this week and wondered if this was a form of digital Darwinism. 

Is it a side-effect that people who are uncomfortable with or not prepared to get comfortable with computer and the internet will move off committees. And if that’s the case, is it such a bad thing?

After all that’s where all the up-to-date information about strata rules and regulations is now stored. We reached the conclusion that it’s not fair abut it might not be bad either.

You can access the phone-in –  where listeners ask me questions about strata, here – just whizz forward to the one-hour mark if you don’t want to hear the whole of James O’Loghlin’s excellent show.

Topics that callers brought up included:

• How to get rid of a strata committee member
• Whether it was unusual that owners in a two-unit block didn’t have proper strata meetings,
• The difference between maintenance estimates and actual costs
• An owner who has missed several levies payment but his invoices say he’s not in arrears
• Residents who are using their bathroom as a laundry and flooding common property.

I’m on ABC 703 every second Wednesday at 1.30pm. Meanwhile we’ve had a couple of questions on the Forum too.

• Can you pass a by-law compelling owners to stick to the original DA when they do renovations? That’s HERE.
• Can the committee decide not to clean inaccessible windows?  That’s HERE.

So easy to ask and answer questions

Anyone can read our posts at any time, and now you can also ask and answer questions anonymously too.

As part of our continuing efforts to make the Forum more accessible, we also now make it possible for anyone to click on “reply” and respond to published posts.

The first time you do it you will have to provide an email address (which won’t be visible on the Forum) and a nickname (which will).

The responses will still be moderated, so we can filter out the minority of internet nasties.

However, since this website is self-filtering – it’s only read by intelligent and engaged people like you – the moderation will only require a light touch.

So let’s give it a go. Just click “reply” at the top of the post you want to respond to. Or go to this link if you want to ask a question.

Subscribing to a topic means you will be alerted every time someone responds to the post and replies. However, you must be registered with an active email address for that option to be offered. If you are, make sure the automatic replies alert box below left of the reply window, is ticked .

That way you’ll get an alert whenever the discussion moves forward, and you can also chip in with your own comments and questions. See you in the Forum soon.