Fair Trading Minister Virginia Judge and the Premier Nathan Rees are concerned about money wasted on legal fees when we want to change by-laws. According a circular issued by Fair Trading the other day, they are looking at providing alternate model by-laws that we can adopt “off the peg”.
Nice idea. Of course, if they were really worried about money wasted on legal fees, they might do something about the literally millions of dollars new buildings have to pay barristers just to get what they paid for from this Government’s developer mates.
But getting back to by-laws, among the possible changes they mention might be one to allow people to dry their clothes on balconies rather than force them to create greenhouse gases by using tumble dryers.
The problem starts with Fair Trading’s entirely optional model by-laws which include one that effectively says you can’t dry your laundry on your balcony without the written permission of your executive committee. The trouble is that we have been adopting this by-law without realising we didn’t have to. And once it’s accepted (by simple majority), we need a 75 percent majority to change it.
Fair Trading conducted a survey about this last year, and after 12 months of really hard thinking, their answer is … drum roll, please … to do nothing. Fair Trading says we should keep things exactly the way they are. However, to be fair, they intend to educate us better about our rights (cos it’s really our own fault for being stupid).
Meanwhile if you want to dry your smalls without adding to global warming, you could always try to get your executive committee to grant permission. Otherwise, you still face the almost impossible task of persuading 75 percent of your neighbours to change the by-law.
Minister Judge says she might consider amending the model by-law based on responses to Fair Trading’s non-response. We’re way ahead of you, Minister. Smart executive committees are already allowing low-level drying racks that can’t be seen from the street. Problem solved.
You can read the ultimately pointless but otherwise interesting report on Fair Trading’s website. The address for the link on changing by-laws is HERE and the one on drying your laundry is HERE .