As Lady P rightly points out, these are not charges, they are de facto fines and as such will probably not stand up to scrutiny in NCAT.
It seems some lawyers are encouraging strata managers and strata committees to pass these by-laws, despite knowing full well that they are of dubious legality and probably unenforceable.
Why do they do it? Because the majority of strata residents – owners and renters – have no idea of their rights and may be scared into behaving more considerately.
So is that such a bad thing if it makes people better behaved? Bad by-laws eventually encourage bad behaviour because their flaws undermine the whole system. Lose once at NCAT and any future deterrent is diluted.
Have a look at this story where an owner was told by an NCAT Member that her scheme’s “costs” by-law wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
You can’t charge people for a service they didn’t require or agree to. And you can’t say that an allegation of a breach of by-laws can be charged back to the alleged culprit (especially if there is a question over their culpability).
NCAT has the capacity to award costs (although traditionally they don’t). It’s up to the owners corp to make a strong case for fines and costs and that should be deterrent enough. But rest assured any claim for costs will be undermined if the scheme has a dodgy by-law in place that tries to award the strata scheme the same powers as the Tribunal.